A Little Battle of Britain CY-6

The good old rules on the table

I know it has been a while but I am back!
This past Wednesday I had a chance to play CY-6 at the club with Soren.  We played a quick game just two airplanes each. I had two German Me-109E-4's and Soren had two British Spitfires that he painted. The Me-109 are some of the first WWII aircraft I painted.

Quick reference sheet my modified aircraft sheet

my old Me-109's with the new flight stands the new stands add the third dimension to the game

Soren's awesome paint job on his Spitfires

The game was fun and we had a fun time.  We started off on opposite sides of the board and we came head on.  Soren split up his two planes and I kept my Me-109's in formation to maximize firepower and hopefully protect my planes from being hit from behind.

Flying head on

Our first pass and no one was hit, we just flew past each other

I flew straight at Sorens one plane while he flew around my flank with the other plane. I had to decide if I should turn and attack Soren's plan that I had engaged or to fly after the other plane. I chose to go after his flanking plane. This was smart as Soren made a hard turn with his first plane and would have hit me from two directions at once,but because I got some distance from the first plane Soren was out of position to hit me from both sides.

The situation after I decided to go after plane number two

Closing in on the second plane, me an my wing man

Soren drew first blood and one of my planes received some airframe damage. I was able to hit Soren with both my planes and the Low Velocity Cannon's were very powerful.  I was able to score a solid engine hit on Soren's Spitfire.

I had to use a red dice to indicate airframe damage since I did not have smoke markers

You can see a red dice on my plane and a black dice on Soren's to indicate the engine damage from my LVC's.

After hitting Soren I had to make another choice, either continue after Soren's damaged plane or engage the new undamaged plane.  I decided to stay together with my wing man and go after the damaged Spitfire and I was able to score a second hit on his plane and the first plane wend down in flames.  But I then turned into Sorens guns and he fired on my damaged plane.

 Soren dives for the deck hoping to get away

 I drop down and get on Soren's six, he was checking his six but it was of no use

 

 Splash on British Spitfire

A view from the top showing the tactical picture

Soren was able to take out my damaged Me-109 near where I shot down Soren's Spitfire. Soren had the position advantage and I had to start to maneuver to keep him from shooting down my last plane.  We started the phase we called the dance.

 I knew I was in a bad spot so I had to gain speed and turn for the deck to try to shake Soren

Me trying to escape

The dance started with me trying to maneuver and turn around but Soren was a step ahead of me and we both made a special maneuver and we continued to turn and dive for the deck.

 After our maneuvers we were both parallel to each other and the only advantage I had was that I was moving at a faster speed than Soren

 We continued to lose altitude and maneuver to try and line up a shot on each other

I finally go ahead of Soren and turned in for another attack, I was not able to get a hit on Soren

My plane to get in front of Soren but it ended up that we ended a turn in the same hex. We had to roll for a collision avoidance.  I failed the roll but Soren passed, he had a chance to avoid collision but he desired to ram my plane with his.  Things turned upside down at this point.

The situation when we ended up in the same hex we were both low and slow from heading for the deck

The air battle did not take us far from the site where we both lost our first planes

Soren was the first to roll on the likely hit chart and he rolled a snake eyes which is a result of: plane crash and pilot dies. I was next to roll on the same chart and the odds were against me and I rolled the same exact roll snake eyes. So both of our planes crash and we both go up inflames.

We had a fun game and things turned out very different than we both expected. I hope you enjoyed the AAR and if you have never played CY-6 get a copy and try it out and have some fun!

Have a great weekend.

Fight's On Cadillac of the Sky Flight Stands Review

Hi again!

This is my first product review ever.  I have made all my flight stands from sculpey and wood dowels with magnets for years. The problem I have always had is that I had to use dice for both altitude and speed. So I finally broke down and started looking for flight stands that allowed me to do what I wanted.  So after a long time of Internet I found Fights' On, a small company that makes great products for Air Combat games.  I placed my order for 6 packages of flight stands.  Each package contains 4 stands so that should give me a total of 24 stands.

 Here is the package with the label.

 Here is the back of the package with the normal chocking hazard warning and the Fight's On address and web address. Yes they are made in the USA!!! In good old Texas!

Here is a picture of three of the four finished stands with the red Me-262 at TAL 4 and the other Me-262 and Me-109G at TAL 6

So what comes in the package?
Here is a picture with all the items that comes in the pack.

The constitutions of all the parts is very good and the sectional magnets are great for adding and subtracting height in a game.  You just have to try our the polarity on your aircraft magnets to make sure they line up with the flight stands polarity. I ended up gluing the magnetic rings into the bases. This way I do not have to worry about them coming out during a game. I did have to change a bunch of magnets on my planes to match the polarity of the flight stand magnets, but this will be well worth the work.

Here is a view of the speed dial, as you can see the speed goes up to 8 so you can use these stands for both CY6 and CY6 Jet Age.  The dials are crisp and easy to read. The dials turn easy to the speed of your aircraft. The stability is good but I would be cautious of using a large bomber with all the sections. I plan to use the 2 inch 3 TAL section for all my TB-3's and FW-200's during games so there is no tip overs during the game.  I think this will be safe at that height.

So I plan to use the following method to determinate altitude with the CY6 6 TAL altitude bands that are used in the game.  I will use one 1/4 inch magnet to represent TAL1, then I will add one of the 3/4 inch magnets to bring it up to TAL 2, I will then add another 3/4 inch magnet to bring the aircraft up to TAL3 or one 2 inch magnet by itself. Then once I go to TAL 4 I will use the 2 inch magnet and one of the 3/4 inch and add anther 3/4 magnet to bring it up to TAL 5 and finally I will add the 1/4 inch magnet to bring it up to TAL 6.

Take a look at the following images to get a visual of what I plan to do for the games.  I will provide some feedback on the stands once I use them in a game with the other members of the club.

Here are some more pictures of the stands with some of my German aircraft.

I am very happy with my purchase and I think they will perform very well at my club with the aircraft we have.  We may have to do some more re gluing of plane magnets to match the polarity of the stands, but it will help in the long run.

These are very good stands and I would recommend them to anyone who wants to depict altitude this way. 
Please leave any questions or feed back you have.

Thanks!