Attack on the Party HQ

Introduction

This was a quick battle we played recently where we decided to try out the dive bombing rules in Scramble. The game pitted 4 Soviet fighters (2 Lagg3s and 2 Mig3s) vs 2 Stukas and 4 escorts (2 Me109s and 2 Me110s). Another 2 Stukas were brought on during the game when the first two were lost rather quickly.

The Luftwaffes objective was to bomb the local Communist party HQ in the town while the Soviets objective was to defend it or face severe punishment.

The aircraft are from Scotia and Navwar and the buildings are mainly from a NZ company, Military Miniatures, who is no longer around. The Party HQ is a Timecast building and is a beautiful model and the ruins are scratch built. The game was played at night and the lighting was not very bright, hence the poor quality and slightly blurry photos (well that's my excuse).

The game

The early stages of the game

The first flight of brave Soviet defenders has entered the table. Meanwhile the Luftwaffe has advanced quickly towards the target in a slow dive to gain speed. The Me109 and Me110 fighter escorts are hanging back, wary of the cunning Soviet pilots.

Mig3s enter the fray.

More brave Soviets have arrived to defender the motherland. These guys entered a turn or two after the first flight of Laggs arrived and the Germans had already advanced over 2/3rds of the length of the table.

Because of their late arrival, the Migs ended up having to pull some fancy manoeuvres to get into a position to fire on the Stukas.

The Lagg attack

The brave Lagg3s have got themselves into a good position to attack the Stukas. The German escorts made the mistake of staying back too far, which allowed the Laggs to get a good shot off. Normally frontal shots aren't very effective against other aircraft, but the Stuka had the reputation of being a sitting duck when fighters were around.

Stukas in trouble

This picture shows the remaining Stuka from the first flight about to get strafed by a Mig3 and from behind by a Lagg3. However, both planes fired but only managed to scratch some paintwork on the very lucky Stuka.

You can also see the flight of Me109s, which were unable to help defend the Stukas because they were flying at a different height. The Me110s were staying back (out of shot) at high altitude and couldn't help either.

Burning Stuka!

Another Stuka is shown here in trouble and is trailing smoke and fire. This is one of the planes from the second flight (the other is out of picture) and was shot down by the brave Soviet pilots before it was able to release their bombs.

You can just see the nose of one of the escorting ME109s in the bottom of the picture. They managed to block the Russian fighters from getting on the tail of the last stuka by flying right behind it.

Bombs Away!

The remaining Stuka has managed to survive and successfully drop their bombs on the local party HQ. You can see the explosions as the party HQ is destroyed with a direct hit. Someone will face a firing squad or a trip to Siberia for this.

We discovered afterwards that we had played the bombing rules slightly wrong and released them at the wrong point, but it wouldn't have affected the outcome of the game, as the Soviets were unable to shoot down the final stuka in time.

Comments

Next time the Germans should have start with 4 Stukas since they are very vulnerable to any enemy fighters (no surprises there).

The German players were not very experienced in escorting bombers and tended to hang back while the Soviets fired at the Stukas. In the end, 3 Stukas and one Me109 were lost for the cost of one Lagg3.