For my first article I find it fitting to cover the topic which has basically consumed my hobby life in a short period of time. However, if you knew me well you would not be surprised that WW2 dogfighting games have dominated me so quickly. In fact you might even ask: “what took so long?” So first you should know aviation is a passion of mine; its a hobby, career, and it’s even in the fabric of my immediate family. My wife asked me recently “don’t you ever get tired of airplane stuff?” The answer is no, not usually. My other big hobby is of course wargaming which stemmed out of a hobby building scale model airplanes. Inevitably these two interests were bound to intersect.

Flash back to sometime this past summer (of 2022). Our very own Ben was already hard at work campaigning to draw me into historical gaming (Did I mention I love history too? Another “what took so long?” topic). For me the trouble with historical gaming has always been a lack of people to game with. A solid 90% of my wargaming is with a small group of guys which historically has been Games Workshop-centric. We all started down the wargame path together with Age of Sigmar in 2016. This didn’t deter Ben though, who kept on influencing me with his psy-op of cool bat reps, hobby images, etc. Cue a sale on Too Fat Lardies, I decided why not pick up Bag the Hun and Chain of Command core rulebooks. I’d been eyeing them both. After a read through Bag the Hun became a “need to” play. Unfortunately I didn’t have any of the requisite supplies, but I began hunting for them.

By December Ben had convinced me to make a USMC platoon for Chain of Command, and now also Bolt Action. Meanwhile, I mentioned Bag the Hun and Blood Red Skies (it was inevitable) to a friend of mine. Then comes the idea between Ben and I: Adepticon 2023 Bolt Action doubles. The problem: late war USMC don’t fit the event’s early war theme. This started me down a project path Ben and I will be covering in other articles. Finally, when meeting up with my friend around Christmas he surprised me with a gift, the Blood Red Skies Battle of Midway starter set.

For those of you not familiar with Blood Red Skies it is a 1/200th scale WW2 dogfighting game. It has some mechanics for bombing and ground attack missions as well, but the heart of it is plane on plane action. The models are great, large enough for good details, but small enough for quick painting. The Battle of Midway starter has twelve planes in the box: 6x USN (United States Navy) F4F Wildcats and 6x IJNAS (Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service) A6M2 “Zeros”. It also includes the cards needed to play, an abundance of tokens, 12x flight stands, and a rules booklet. It also includes five missions for you to play your way through the pivotal battle for which the box set is named.

Looking in the rules booklet I saw that it called for 4 types of naval bombers which were in action at the Battle of Midway. Luckily they provide you with 6x double sided tokens in the box to represent these planes… If you’re not me. I however, hopped on to Kick-Ass Mail Order and got myself a box each of Japanese and US bombers on the way. In short order these arrived and now I had 3x of each USN Douglas SBD Dauntless, Douglas TBD Devastators, IJNAS Aichi Type 99 “Vals” and Nakajima B5N2 “Kates”. Yet the scenarios called for 6x of a single type in some places………….Well anyways I have a 3d printer and had recently found the awesome Plane Printer Patreon, which I joined at the $10 level. Once I joined I also received access to the entire back catalog of STLs as well. Naturally the iconic four plane types I needed extra models for had been covered by Plane Printer’s designs, so I printed out the extra 12 planes in excitement. I then looked at my hobby desk and muttered “What have I done?” In short order I had gone from no tiny planes, to 36 of them…………. but it gets worse.

Remember Bag the Hun? I mentioned it earlier. Well, now that I had miniature planes I decided to plunge a little deeper. I procured the materials to make a large 8’ x 4’ hex grid map, as the game is hex map based (vs the free-moving and measuring Blood Red Skies). Bag the Hun has a lot of nifty room to incorporate things like bombers. Then I saw how large a 1/200 bomber was. See, I had mapped it out for a 1.5″ hex grid as that seems to be a common hex size for aerial combat games. Yet a B-17 at 1/200 would see a wingspan of over 6″, let alone a box formation of them. That means taking up 4 hexes across on a board where you can end up one hex away as all planes take up a single hex regardless of size. I quickly realized that even large twin engine fighters would be overhanging a 1.5″ hex space, making formations etc more difficult. Armed with the Plane Printer files I decided to opt for 1/300 as my main aerial scale, while also doing some squadrons for BRS in their standard 1/200.

In the end, within about 3 weeks I went from no planes, to 36 planes in 1/200 and a good number of 1/300 planes coming off the printer as test prints (I haven’t counted yet, not sure I want to). I’m invested in two different rulesets, and I’d be lying if I say other aerial combat eras and rules haven’t whispered in my ears. I’ve hit pause for printing at the moment as I move my printer setup around a bit at home and I’ve begun painting the 1/200 planes for BRS: Midway. Once I get a few issues resolved with my setups (air compressor died, and my gaming table is a tool bench at the moment) I’ll dive deeper into gameplay with some painted models. Expect that to generate some additional articles, as I plan for this to be a regular topic for myself. Oh, and I’m working on a solo campaign for Bag the Hun, but more on that next time. -Evan