"Wings at War" - "Scramble for Britain"

 A few years (decades?) ago I had a go at doing a wargame of airplane combat over Burma during WW2. The idea was to represent some of the airborne operations of the 2nd Chindit Expedition. I bought a few 1/600 planes from Tumbling Dice and had a satellite image of the appropriate area of Burma printed out to play on. The rules I chose were "Scramble!" and after one game of that incredibly detailed, but clunky and slow game I shelved the project.

Anyway. a few weeks ago my friend Ed introduced me to the "Wings at War" range of games, designed to use the same 1/600 planes that I had bought those many years ago. We played a few games from the "Mig*Alley" rules for North Korea and downloaded the "Desert Spitfires" set to have a closer look. I loved them! They're quick and fun; with proper scenarios; simple, but realistic rules including proper aerobatics; and allowing many, many planes to be flown without too much niggly detail and no paperwork at all!

I immediately looked for a Burma book, but of course there isn't one. "Perhaps I should write my own?" Well, maybe I will, but first I would need to try something more WW2 than MIGs over North Korea... 

So I bought a copy of "Scramble for Britain" the Battle of Britain set. This is a bargain for £10 and comes with a set of lovely Tumbling Dice planes to start you off... I immediately set to work painting the German planes up... Here they are:

Playing with Ed we used dice on the bases to keep track of the 2 stats for each plane, "Energy" and "Height", but with my planes I will be using the 3D printed bases I've designed with Energy on the dials built into the base,.and height designated by extending the heights of planes. They are each attached to a small wire rod that can be stuck into any base as needed and I'll have some extension pieces as can be seen in the following photo.

These are the Spitfires I painted for my Burma game, so they are in the wrong colours for the Battle of Britain. I'll be painting some extras up for a bit of authenticity... I'm not sure I'll repaint these though.

I did start with the brown 3d printed extension pieces, but I found some brass tube and will probably switch to that.

Of course I also needed some ground targets and so went a bit mad scaling down 1/300 buildings from Voxelhouse to 1/1200 on the resin 3D printer...

The tiny spitfires show the correct colour scheme for the Battle of Britian, but I'm amazed I managed to print out the radar stations in so much detail. A couple have a bit of damage, but one is perfect.

And finally some photos of the rest of the Burma planes I painted those many, many years ago... 

I've still got loads to do... There's a load more planes that just arrived today, convoy ships, sea bases, and the Kent coastline