First Flight, Tripods and Triplanes

A Headless Body Production
Location:  Regency at Providence Community Center, Phoenixville, Pa
Event:       Providence Gamer's Game Knight
Game:      Tripods & Triplanes
Scenario: Basic
Players:    Phil Gardocki running Baron von Richthofen in his classic Fokker DR1 Triplane. Bruce Potter running Navarre in a highly modified Nieuport. Joe Contegiacomo running Rickenbacker in a Spad XIII.
                  Steve Turn and Scott Landis running the evil and vile Martians

The Scenario:  Two Martian war machines are encountered during a training exercise where the top pilots of 3 nations were trying to figure out how to work together.  Shot down aircraft are replaced on the following turn.

Victory Conditions:
Destroy both tripods before they can shoot down 3 aircraft.

Deployment:
The Tripods start on one edge of the map, the planes fly in on the other.  There are four large facilities on the board that the Martians can convert into energy.

The Tripod figures are gorgeous and horrible at the same time.

Their detail is exquisite. 

The WWI aircraft are straight from the Wings of War collection. 

The scale is 1:144.  For the record All Quiet on the Martian Front is 1:100 (aka HO, aka 18mm, nee "heroic" 15mm)
So you can get away with the planes in AQMF, but the Tripods are way too small.

The Martians advance to the closest abandoned facilities.

The Red Baron appears to ignore the plan to gang up on one of the tripods and vectors in on one.  Rickenbacker and Navarre line up on the other.

One tripod farts out a cloud of black dust.

The black dust is a low grade area of effect weapon.  It's placement follows a template for positioning, but is still very flexible with targeting.  When a plane hits the cloud, it draws a hit card, but the cloud is dispersed.

The Baron is in long range range, and fires his machine guns.  The Martian fires his heat ray. 

Damage is in the form of drawn cards.  A machine gun shot causes the Martian to draw a card from pile 'A'.  The heat ran causes the Baron to draw a card from pile 'X'.  A's are the weakest cards.

The Baron lines up for a shot on the other tripod.

Movement is preplanned and simultaneous.  If the stands overlap, like the above, then they are too close and cannot shoot at each other.

However, that does not prevent the other tripod from shooting it's heat ray.  The card drawn was an explosion, and the Red Baron goes down in flames. 

The Nieuport and the Spad are both much faster than the Fokker Triplane, and their players are new to the game system, and have not been able to get any shots in.

One tripod farts another cloud of black dust.  Right in the path of Rickenbacker's Spad.

Rickenbacker avoids the cloud, while Navarre does an Immelmann turn.  Steve reported his Martian stomped the hell out of the triplane on the way by.

The tripod fires his heat ray, but Rickenbacker is way out of arc.

Each tripod has a number of energy points.  Firing their weapons expends energy, as does taking hits on their shielded sides, the sides and rear.  They can recover their energy by being stationary, or from the buildings below.  Also, their weapons have recharge rates, and cannot be fired in adjacent phases.

Navarre has been trying to get a shot in all game.  Here he is out of range.

Another Fokker arrives over the field.

The Spad is also having trouble lining up shots, or even staying on the board.

Finally, a shot!  Navarre's Nieuport has two packs of rockets, and fires them all!  The Martian draws 2 'D' cards.

D's are the best cards we have.
Another nuance is the players draw their damage cards, but do not have to reveal them except in specific circumstances.

When two planes over lap, one is represented by a card, the other a figure.  The Martian draws 4 'A' cards for damage as these are at short range.

I am thinking King Kong here.

Breaking off to set up another fly-by

Navarre catches a mouth full of black dust and goes down.

Things are looking grim.  Two live, albeit damaged tripods, but they only need to shoot down one more plane to win.

And they have decided to focus on the Fokker. 

Another respawn.  A Nieuport with rocket packs.

The Fokker pilot disperses a cloud of black dust.  The Nieuport lines up his rockets. 

The Fokker, with it's clockwise spinning rotary engines, could make astonishing tight right turns.  Two more 'A' damage cards for the tripod. 

The French Nieuport launches both rocket packs. 

Scratch one tripod!

We killed it twice.  It had taken it's 18 points of damage AND drew an explosion card.

3 on one, but all the planes are damaged, and the rockets, contrary to the counters you see, have been expended.

The Spad is trapped in the corner.

But manages to escape.  The Tri-plane gets too eager and too close for it's shots. 

Don't fire until you see the white of it's eye.

Too close, neither can shoot.

The tripod seems to be heading for friendly territory.  The planes all look like a good setup for the next set of strafing runs.

But the back of the tripod has "Shields"  As long as it has energy, it cannot be hurt from the rear unless he draws a very unlucky card from the damage deck.

Rickenbacker gets two 'A' hits, one with +1 damage.  But this is against the shields, so the Tripod loses what turns out to be one point of energy.

The tripod turns on his tormentors.  Receiving machine gun fire both front and back.  His energy is depleted, so all the shots count.  Rickenbacker tries another trick.  He throws an anchor and chain out the cockpit and tangles a leg! 

What does anchor and chain do?  If you meet all the conditions, and they are painful to work out, this:

This is for Bruce, who hasn't seen any Star Wars movies.

And a note to all my readers, I won't be doing that again.  I find gif's really annoying.

We didn't need the chain, as smoke started emitting from a half a thousand 7.92mm holes.

This is a fun game.  I look forward to playing it again.