Author’s Note: Almost all of the inspiration for the little mission in this article came from the excellent book Battle of Britain Voices: 37 Fighter Pilots Tell Their Extraordinary Stories, by Jonathan Reeve (Amberly Publishing, 2015). The introduction provided helpful notes on chronology and tactics, and some of the first-hand accounts provided further ideas on which planes to pit against each other. Reading books like this can really help the mind’s eye paint vivid action scenes when playing Wild Blue Yonder.

The Wild Blue Yonder campaign rulebook can look daunting to the uninitiated. Like the dogfight rulebook, however, there are all sorts of campaign rules that are either optional or specific to certain types of aircraft, situations, or campaigns. You’ll need to learn all of it eventually if you want to play all the campaigns, but you won’t use all of it all the time. This article assumes that you are familiar with the dogfight rules and will guide you into reading a few campaign rules in order to play a short mission, with the hope that it will then be easier for you to continue reading through the rules on your own. If you are an old hand at this game, you may find the following mission a little dull; but perhaps you could use it to help teach the game to someone new.

So, in order to play the mission outlined below, you only need to read the following campaign rules sections:

• 3 through 17.3.7, which will introduce you to the concepts and mechanics of bombers flying in formation;
• 6, which introduces you to Sections (an Element of three aircraft, with the third plane being represented by a counter that modifies your wingman’s ratings);
• 0 through 20.5.5, which is a bit lengthy, but will tell you how to attack and defend bomber formations. If you are like me, these are the rules you will probably have to keep referencing for a while to figure out what to do.

The biggest thing to understand about playing with formation aircraft is that they do not behave at all like fighters. They don’t maneuver and they don’t take a turn. They respond with a mini-hand when they are attacked, but mostly act as an objective (one side must try to shoot them down while the other tries to defend them and get them to their target).

Once you have read the rules mentioned above, you are ready to fly a training mission set during the Battle of Britain. Note that I have not playtested this mission extensively, but I know that running through it a few times will help you understand and apply the rules for interacting with bombers, while learning some basic strategy concepts and (hopefully) having fun. It is not balanced for both sides; I designed it to be played solo by the British player, but you could play it with two people, especially if you run through it a few times and switch sides between games.

The premise of the mission is that your Section of Hurricanes is trying to intercept some German bombers before they can reach their target. The bombers are escorted by German BF109E fighters, but you have been ordered to avoid engaging fighters if possible and take down the bombers.

To set this mission up, get out the following planes:

• Two German Do17Z Medium Bombers
• A German Bf109E “Emil” and his wingman
• A British Hurricane Mk I and his wingman + a Section counter

Note: The cards pictured here do not necessarily match the ones discussed in the article. They are included to show the look of some of the plane cards in Wild Blue Yonder.

These planes will all start out at medium altitude. You will use the dogfight sequence of play printed on the back of the dogfight rulebook, and the British will have the first turn. Place the turn marker on the Campaign Mission Turn Track, on the Target-Bound 7. The British win if they can destroy the bombers before it is the German’s tun on the Over Target space.  Any other result is a loss.

When playing this solo, there are a few options for handling the German side’s Action cards. On one end of the spectrum you could just play against yourself to the best of your ability. On the other end, each time you look at the German cards, play the best card possible and then discard the rest and draw back up to the new number of cards that would have been left in the hand without looking at them. This way you won’t be able to anticipate the German’s moves, but you will burn through cards incredibly quickly. You could also do something in between these two options where you randomly discard part of the hand each time you look at it and redraw just that many. All these options work, and it depends on what type of play experience you want.

Whatever method you use to play the German cards, the German strategy is simple: the leader will always attack the British leader, and the wingman will first attempt to knock out the section aircraft, then pivot to attacking the leader. The German leader will always intervene in attacks against the bombers, if possible. If the German leader is tailing an enemy plane that changes altitude they will also change altitude as they are able. If they are advantaged and the enemy changes altitude, make a a best-judgment decision. If you are unsure what would be the best choice or the options seem equally good, draw an action card: red cards mean the Germans go on the offensive and follow the enemy plane, any other card means they relinquish their position and stay at the current altitude. When making the decisions for the Germans, keep in mind that they do not need to go on the offensive to win the game—their primary objective is to protect the bombers.

If you play this mission a few times and decide you want to add in more rules, you could try adding skilled pilots and/or an actual over-target phase for the bombers. You are also welcome to try any mix of fighters and bombers you choose, whether historical or otherwise, to see how that changes things up. Have fun!

Author: David Waldorf