Introduction and Overview

If you are new to Wild Blue Yonder, it might be hard for you to break past the wall of rules to get into the campaigns. This short series of articles will help you dive straight into the easiest campaign (Rommel Attacks), and you can read the pertinent rules as you go. You will need at least a basic familiarity with the dogfighting rules, as I won’t cover those. At some point you will still want to read the campaign rules, as I won’t be able to cover every nuance, but by the end of this article series you should have a solid start on the important parts.

So first, here’s a brief overview of what to expect in this campaign. It consists of three randomly selected missions, and each side can earn points based on how well their aircraft do while flying these missions. The random selection process also dictates which aircraft will be used, but each player will have a number of one-shot “resources” (aircraft and special abilities), and they will choose a different one to use on each mission. The missions themselves range from straight up dogfights to bombing and strafing runs on a variety of targets. At the end of all the missions you will compare the cumulative score difference to a chart to show how each side performed in reference to the historical outcomes.

Setup

Take out the Rommel Attacks campaign card. You will see a number of tables and charts on it—don’t worry about these, they play brief and very specific roles in the campaign and I will show you when and how to use them. Next, each player needs a Land Campaign Log, which you can print off from the game’s page on the GMT website. Get out the campaign rulebook, and turn to Section 24.3, “Land Campaign Sequence of Play”. This sequence of play will guide you through set-up and references the applicable rules sections in brackets. We have already done the first half of Part A in selecting the Rommel Attacks scenario; now we need to select the stage of the campaign that we are going to play. You can read about how to do that in 24.4, but the quick trick is to look at the Mission Table on the top right side of the campaign card. Here you will see that there are three stages, splitting up April 1941 into rough thirds. You can choose to play any stage you like; for this example, we’re playing Stage I.

Going back to the sequence of play in 24.3, we see that next you choose who will play for the Allies and who for the Axis. Then in part C, the first step is to figure out what your first mission will be and what aircraft are involved. You can read about how to do this in 24.5; it is simply drawing an action card and cross referencing it with the tables on the campaign card. The side listed first on the Campaign Performance chart on the campaign card (Axis in this case) draws a card from their action deck, and refers to the Mission Table on the campaign card. Say, for example, that the Axis player draws a BARREL ROLL card. Cross-referencing that on the Mission Table for the stage we are playing (Stage I) gives us the number 3. We then take that number down to the Mission Target Matrix table, where we read across line 3. The Target Location is for historical purpose and has no bearing on gameplay; what we’re after is the Mission Type, which in this case is an airfield on target card A3.

Continuing along line 3 of the Mission Target Matrix, we see the aircraft that are going to attack this airfield are an element (L/W = Leader and Wingman) of Hurricane I’s. The Allied player takes those aircraft cards from the box and sets them on the table. The next column shows that these aircraft get to start at the allied player’s chosen altitude, and the last column shows a pair of numbers that tells us how many turns the mission will last. We will circle back to these numbers in a moment.

Now we are up to 24.3.C.2 in the Sequence of Play, which instructs each player to secretly select and then simultaneously reveal one Resource. The details on how to do this are in 24.6; you look at the resources section (left side of the campaign card), and choose one of the numbered options available for the stage you are playing. Write this resource down on your campaign log in the Resources Used section, and reveal your choices simultaneously. In our example, the Allied player choice Resource 3, which is another Hurricane element with “Small Arms”—this indicates the player should look up “Small Arms” on the bi-fold Resource Card to see what additional advantages that resource gives. The Axis player chooses Resource 1, which is an element of Bf110C’s. Both players take the indicated aircraft cards from the box and place them on the table.

Moving on to 24.3.C.3 in the Sequence of Play, we next have to determine mission duration. This is where we go back to that last column in the Mission Target Matrix from the campaign card that we skipped earlier. The details of what the numbers in this column mean and how to modify them are in 23.1.1, but you are just going to take the two numbers (9/7 in our example), and subtract the speed of the slowest strike aircraft from each side of the slash. We only have fighters striking in this mission, and fighter speed is “6” [23.1.1.i], so that gives us 3/1. This means there will be 3 turns when the strike aircraft are heading for the target, and then after they attack there will be 1 home-bound turn. Get out the Campaign Display and place the First TB (Target-Bound) and Last HB (Home-Bound) markers as shown below.

Next [24.3.C.4] we see if there are any skilled pilots on these planes. The full rules for this are in 19.4. What you do is draw a number of action cards equal to the number of fighters/light bombers you are sending on the mission, and cross reference them against the Aircrew Selection Tables in the bi-fold Player Aid/Resource Card. For the Allied player, that would be four cards, since they are sending two elements of Hurricane I’s on the mission. Let’s say the Allied player draws two MANEUVER cards, one IN MY SIGHTS (2B) card, and a CLOUDS card. We open the bi-fold, find the Rommel Attacks section of the Aircrew Selection Table, look for the “British” line, and see if any of the cards drawn match the Skilled Pilot/Crew column (see image below). There is a match with CLOUDS, so we continue along the line and see that for Hurricanes there is the British pilot Goodman and two French pilots by the names of Denis and Littolf. We find those pilot counters (tip: air service symbols are shown in 19.1.1 if you need to reference them), and randomly select one of them. There are different names on both sides of the counters, and Dennis and Littolf are on the same counter. Let’s say we randomly select Goodman. On his counter he has certain skills, represented by the lettered boxes on the right. You can look up what the letters stand for in 19.2 and 19.3; in our case, Goodman is an ace pilot and a veteran, so we also take Ace and Veteran counters and put them with Goodman. When assigning skilled pilots to aircraft, they go to Leaders first, then Wingmen, so Goodman gets assigned to either of the Hurricane I leaders. The Germans draw next, and do not get any skilled pilots for this mission.

You are now all set up!  You just have to draw starting hands, select starting altitudes and determine turn order.  The last thing I want to point out before closing this article is the footnotes in the Mission Target Matrix. You don’t have to understand them now, as they will be explained later, but just make a mental note that they are there, as it is easy to forget them.

In the next article I’ll show some examples of play, including how to strafe and handle Flak. Meanwhile, peruse the rules if you like, or see if you can set up your own mission.

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Articles in this Series: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3