Return To Asran

Same planes, same scenarios, same incompetence, different rules; as we return to Asran and Area88 after a five year gap.

New rules from Paul. Now hexagon based but still played over a large floor area this time carpeted with hex sheets. Each players planes are selected at random from a wide collection of post war jets, with the pilot having just the one random skill level. Attack and Defense are now card based, the number of cards available being determined by plane quality and pilot skill. Both sides roll to see what their scenario objectives are in secret. A good turn out for the game, 5 vs 5, with a number of the players from last time, including Kieron.

From Furness Wargamers in the Air

Attack Ground Target vs Escort Transport

We manged to do over 2/3rd damage to the Airfield, mainly due to Dave S's heroic one way trip into enemy airspace, but getting the 120pts needed was a big ask especially as a number of missiles went in stopping the enemies objective and shooting down the transport.



This was not helped by me piloting an F117, with only two missiles, no gun and a max speed about half that of the others. After firing off both missiles in consecutive turns, one at the transport that turned out to be fatal, and one at the enemy airfield, there was nothing more for me to do but turn round and head back to base.

Combat seems a lot less deadly than before where one missile hit would almost guarantee a kill. Instead it required multiple hits to take down even a weak plane, so long as the plane has at least one reasonable defense card of each type. Given that players could swap their random allocation pre-sortie, this is almost always going to be the case.

Between scenarios surviving pilots had the chance to keep their plane or swap for a new random one. Given how little punch my F117 had I decided to risk a trade and gained an F16 as a replacement, with more speed, missiles and guns. I also managed to improve my pilot skill by one thanks to the kill on the transport.

Escort Transport vs Eliminate All

Now knowing that escorting the transport is a futile mission we decided on a secondary objective as a morale booster, namely shoot down Matt. Leaving Jim and his MIG to escort the transport, the rest of the flight concentrated on approaching the enemy. Somehow, despite the concentrated fire from four aircraft, Matt managed to survive and fled, at much reduced speed due to damage, towards the map edge. At first we ignored him, thinking someone else was going to take him down. When it became obvious no one was I took on the duty and finished him off with cannon fire.



With two planes ready to launch back into the air, and my craft at the opposite end of the terrain from the enemy, it was not possible for them to met their elimination objective in the time left, so this scenario was also declared a draw.
So no one won any of the scenarios, proving that mercenary warfare is futile
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