Bag the Hun USN v IJN

A first try-out for Bag the Hun with me taking the Americans and Gary the Japanese. As neither of us had played before we went in for a simple dogfight with four Hellcats taking on four Zero's. Again for simplicity we rated all the American pilots as Regular and all the Japanese as Veteran (looking at the plane stats the Hellcat seemed a much better plane than the Zero).

Initial moves saw the Americans closing in on the Japanese from behind though one USN plane has already fallen out of formation:

An initial success for the USN as a long burst of fire kills the Zero pilot, first blood to the USN:

The action continues with planes hurtling around and trying to get into a firing position while maintaining formation:

Getting a shot off requires drawing the appropriate 'fire' card (BtH is card driven) at the critical moment which isn't easy:

The Japanese have lost all formation while three of the Americans are still together:

A Zero gets on the tail of one American (counters mark tailing planes) but it's fire is ineffective:

The American pilot breaks formation and tries to shake off the Zero but it sticks like glue:

Another American tries to distract the tailing Zero:

The action intensifies as more planes achieve tailing status:

Another burst of fire cuts through the Zero severing it's fuel line. The Zero is vulnerable to catching fire and promptly explodes:

Elsewhere another Zero explodes in flames from a fuel line hit:

At this point we called it a day with only one Zero left and the Hellcat's basically undamaged. The rules seem okay and more comprehensive than I thought, I'm sure we didn't do everything right but for a first run-through they played fine.

It's quite hard to get into a shooting position and, while there are advantages in staying in formation, the game seems to be mostly about getting on the opposition's tail and staying there long enough to get some shots in!

The Hellcat has a number of advantages over the Zero (more firepower, more robust, faster) but is less manoeuvrable which makes up for that to some extent as does potentially better pilot quality in the early war years at least.

It would probably work better as a multi-player game with some bombers to protect for one side, there are a number of rules for carrying out bombing and torpedo attacks together with the effect of flak and so on which we didn't get round to looking at. The models certainly will work well with the Cruel Seas ships so I'm sure they will see more action in the future and I'll probably try some solo scenarios next to get a better hang of the rules before arranging another game.