Target for Tonight - Nuremberg

[carojon]

The second test game in our Berlin Campaign took place yesterday at the Devon Wargames Group with an op to Nuremberg by the five Mainforce groups.



If you would like to see how the game went and further thoughts on refining the overall campaign, the just follow the link to JJ's

https://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2019/05/target-for-tonight-nuremberg.html

Jonathan (JJ)

[Daeothar]

Wow; this reminds me of the depth and realism of those eighties strategy games using card tokens and hex boards. They came in land battles variants, but also in naval and aerial games. I distinctly remember playing a Korean War (check your Six?) one which put F-86 Sabres against MIG-15s. but even that game did not quite have the depth of your game!

The intricacies of all included factors of such a bombing run are impressive and I think this is the closest I've seen a miniatures game come to being an actual simulation.

I take one game takes up most part of a day?

[robh]

Great account of how your campaign is being developed.

Attrition rates in TfT are extreme in comparison to the averages suffered by Bomber Command as a whole, but are in line with specific nights losses by individual squadrons. So it works well as its intended "one off" game but needs the sort of work you are doing to function as a campaign base.

[carojon]

Thanks for your comments chaps.

The game runs the length of our club meeting so from about 11am when we set up to about 5pm when we pack up and head down the pub.

The added time is taken with players deciding among themselves what fuel and bomb loads to work with and then setting up the aircraft record sheets and marking up the models. Once that is done the game barrels along quite easily once you get to grips with the play sequence.

To speed things up and to help me record the key events of an op I have put a lot of the pre game planning data into a Cyberboard module which allows me to put up displays of target maps, route plans and aircraft crew stats on a VDU for the players to refer to and also for me to physically record on it where planes are shot down, which crew members baled out and where bombs got dropped in relation to the TI markers. In between that data display, I run videos of actual ops, and on the first game we listened to three crews chatting on the intercom during raids over Stettin, Bochum and Berlin, the latter crew being attacked by a nightfighter and shooting it down on the bomb run, this before the players were preparing to do the game bomb run.

The players are still getting familiar with the bombing up options, in that they are designed to present choices,  not only with heavier lifts giving more chance to score greater VP totals at the risk of heavier losses but also different bomb loads allowing for better targeting of specific targets within the target city. Thus cookies with an incendiary do a better job of starting fires in industrial and transport areas which incur double victory points etc.

robh - your assessment of the TfT system being designed around squadron attrition rates rather than the force as a whole is spot on and, in that, it works very well as a game. I know some of the TfT Facebook group have looked at a squadron level campaign system taking advantage of that set up, but the megalomaniacs among us want to look at a bigger picture and the planning that went in around the greater bombing campaign whilst capturing the drama of the op itself within that game.

Hopefully with the basic structure now established, multiple playing and tweaking might arrive at that balancing point where player decisions pre-operation, together with the added spice of the swings of advantage in the electronic gadgets, mixed with that all important element of chance, now added to with air gunner and nightfighter ratings will produce a more immersive gaming experience putting the players in the commanders and the pilots seats - well that's the idea!

Cheers
JJ