Owl's Head Transportation Museum

This past week my wife and I vacationed in Thomaston, Maine visiting family. While there we visited the Owl's Head Transportation Museum in nearby Owl's Head Maine. My primary interest in the Museum was the collection of flying replica WWI aircraft as well as several original WWI items, including Crosses from a German plane shot down by Maine WWI ace and former Maine Govenor, Sumner Sewall.  This is a well maintained and active museum. The collection includes a running gnome rotary engine that they run for demonstration purposes and flying WWI replicas in 1:1 scale. The collection also includes many WWI-era cars and trucks as well as other era vehicles. Well worth a visit for any fan of turn of the century transportation.

For many more photos, see this Google Gallery.

Northern Conspiracy December 2014 Game Day

This past Saturday the Northern Conspiracy got together for our December game day. Being December 27th the theme was the Christmas Truce of 1914. Our new president, Phil, was raised by his grandfather, a WWI veteran. Phil made a nice opening speech about his grandfather's service and the first world war. We opened the day up with a hot catered breakfast followed by two games.

 Andre ran several battles using his excellent Aerodrome game which has players plot their moves on simulated aircraft dashboards. Figures were 1:144 scale Wings of Glory miniatures. Many of them modified by Andre using decals and paints.

Bob ran an early war (pre-trenches) French vs German scenario using Bolt action rules with his own WWI modifications and his beautiful table featuring hand-modified trees and homemade freshly plowed fields.

Luftwaffe 1946 (2)

My friend Phil and I traveled up to Adler to visit Gordon and Russ. Russ hosted another game of Luftwaffe 1946. The more I play this game the more I like it. Tonight Gordon and I played the Germans and exacted some revenge on Russ for previous deaths in the sky and revenge against Phil for previous deaths in the 30 Years War.  I have to admit some very hot dice this game. I got some devastating shots from my Bf110's belly gunner on Phil and then was able to drop a nice turn on Russ for another kill.

Scenarios seem to be something that will require some tweaking to get balanced, but the game is fun, fast and has just the right amount of historical detail and accuracy. Balancing scenarios in air games is always tough with aircraft differences coming into play. I'm sure once we get a few more games in Russ will have a good amount of data points to be able to dial in nicely balanced scenarios. Until then I'll be a willing data point generator no matter what side I'm on.

Luftwaffe 1946 - WWII Air to Air Gaming at Adler Hobby

Saturday I took a trip to Adler Hobby. Since my surgery I haven't been able to get down to Adler as much as I like. Things at work have made weeknight visits to Adler very difficult for me and Saturday visits haven't worked out in a while. This past Saturday things finally 'clicked' for a visit.

My friend Russ hosted a small play test of some rules he's working up a game for: Luftwaffe 1946. The premise of the game is an alternate history that allows the German air force to extend world war II. I'm not necessarily interested in the Alternate history, but the rules work very well for all historically-accurate air to air combat as well.

For our play test Russ tried three Me109s versus two P-38 Lightnings. Gordon and I were the USA, and Russ and Denise were the Germans. Denise got in early and shot down Gordon while I was tailing her and pumping her 109 with .50 cal rounds from my Lightning. A little too late I got revenge and put her 109 into the canopy. Meanwhile Russ was swinging around for another pass at me, but he dove a bunch to gain speed, while I climbed. Eventually I was able to make the altitude gap unsurpassable and get away from the two 109s. All the while I was thinking continuing to turn fight TWO more maneuverable opponents in a Lightning wasn't wise.

I like these rules. They give just enough detail without any brain-hurting over complex mechanics. You can have everything you need to know on one sheet of paper - big type. Soon Russ and I will work out some dedicated flight stands for his 1/300 models that I will make on my laser in acrylic.

April 2013 Game Night

Last night our club got together for our monthly game night. I played in Ralph's Swashbuckler game that we play tested earlier in the week. With a full compliment of eight players the game was even more fun. At points players were standing among piles of thrown chairs, beaten repeatedly with thrown mugs and spatoons and we had a few good old fashioned run throughs with the sabre. We switched characters between games but d'Artagnan seemed to be in the middle of the trouble every game. One game he ran through one of the Cardinal's guards in one running lunge, another game he got that favor returned. In the final game he was among the fray in a hail storm of flying furniture and glassware.

Playing this game reminded me how much fun we had with the original board game back in the 80s. I'm excited about it enough I'm seriously considering doing something similar by adapting the rules for Samurai warfare. During playing of the game and the play test I thought I remembered someone from our club doing this back in the 80s but when I looked up the rules he used, Samurai Blades, it wasn't a Yaquinto game. I'll have to pick his brain about what he did next time I see him.

The other game last night was Phil's WWII Air Combat game using the new beautiful Axis & Allies Angels 20 pre-painted planes and rules. Phil's scenario was centered around the Cactus Air Force's missions from Henderson field and included scratch built islands and used Axis & Allies War at Sea ships. With the ships and islands at a smaller scale than the planes the game had a 'birds eye view' look that I think worked quite well. The Japanese were able to bomb Henderson field but the Americans insured that they didn't return their planes to the Emperor for re-use.