Gary and I's second game of BtH, this time trying out the bombing rules with Gary taking the attacking Japanese and me the defending Americans. Gary had four Zero's and three dive-bombing Val's while I had four Hellcat's.
The convoy with its combat air patrol:
The Zero's approach the convoy and the Hellcat's move to intercept:
Both sides zoom around trying to gain an advantage as the Val's appear:
The Val's manage to evade the Hellcat's attack:
The Hellcat formation splits up with two attempting to engage the Val's while the other pair head off the Zero's:
The situation is complicated!:
The first casualty of the encounter as a Zero explodes! The pilot is very lucky and is thrown clear, managing to open his parachute and land in the sea:
The Val's prepare to make their attack, picking out one of the larger merchantmen:
The merchantmen await the attack:
Two Hellcat's attempt to prevent the Val's attacking the convoy:
The Val's dive! Two bombs result in close misses, throwing water high into the air:
The third Val, piloted by an Ace, however lands it's bomb right on the ship! The result is engine room damage which will slow the merchantman down:
As the Val's attempt to escape one is hit by a Hellcat and explodes:
At this point the raid was over with the rest of the aircraft dispersing safely. The final count was one Val shot down, one Zero down and another probable kill (the pilot was a rookie and had lost control of his plane) for the Americans and one merchant ship damaged for the Japanese. The Hellcat's took no damage at all from the Japanese despite being fired on several times.
Adding the bombers into the game made it more interesting rather than just trying to shoot random planes down. However, after two games, it is obvious that the Japanese can't really cope with the much superior American Hellcat. The big difference is with the aircraft's robustness, rated at 3 the Hellcat is quite difficult to damage while the Zero and Val at only 1 are extremely fragile. The situation for the Japanese is made worse by the better firepower of the Hellcat. Having greater numbers of Japanese planes might help but might not as they would still find it hard to damage the Hellcats.
As for the rules I must admit I have been impressed with them. They are very comprehensive and well written being fairly easy to pick up (though I'm sure we miss a few things out as there is much to take in and several things we have ignored while trying to learn the rules basics). There is a lot of zooming about trying to get a shot in which isn't that easy and I suspect that if you played a lot you'd get to know all the different manoeuvres and the capabilities of the planes making it a very thoughtful game. The problem is that I can't see us playing enough games to get to this stage!
One thing I might do is invest in a few more planes, the Wildcat is much more comparable to the Zero than the Hellcat so some of those might be good and perhaps some larger bombers (probably Japanese) to add more variety.