Recently, Bruce Geryk posted a detailed and well illustrated After Action Report of the 1942 Campaign of Skies Above the Reich on a Grognard Wargamer thread. We are presenting that AAR here as a series of articles with Bruce’s permission so readers can easily reference it in the future. Parts 1 and 2 of this series can be found here and here. Enjoy! -Rachel

The Fighters Break Away

The Break Away Step is where the fighters swing around or over or under the formation after their attack has been completed. I love the way the designers do this, and you can imagine the fighters swinging away and being engaged by the rest of the bomber formation. This is why the Pass Through movement is so important: because the lethality of the spaces goes up as you get deeper into the formation, you need to plan your attacks very carefully. Depending on your Maneuver, a big Pass Through result can take you clear of the formation and to the edge where the defensive fire is minimal.

We do the Break Away Step for each fighter in order, so we start at the top with Clade. I draw a Continuing Fire card (separate deck from the Nose, Oblique, and Tail decks) and reference the space’s Lethality, along with any special instructions on the card.

Lethality 1 and Determined Mode should yield no hits, but the Slow Climb condition increases the Lethality by +1 as I am in a Climb/Roll. That’s enough to put a hit on me. It also has me Break Away to the tail position, frustrating my plan to come out of the sun next turn. My pilot and his jammed guns end up in the Tail High Return Box with a hit on him, which will be resolved in next turn’s Recovery Phase. Until then, in the confusion of combat, I don’t know exactly what has happened to Pilot Clade’s Me-109.

Bauer is next.

Although he is in a Lethality 1 space and thus would not have taken a hit, he also gets the protection of climbing into the sun, which cancels all Continuing Fire for him anyway. That’s a nice touch and a good thing to know for further planning. And an incentive to use what I imagine were effective historical tactics.

Bauer ends up in the Oblique High Return Box, and will be coming out of the sun next time.

We still have two more pilots to resolve. Pilot Ademeit got a Pss Through of 2, and ends up in a Lethality 1 space on the edge of the bomber formation. Unfortunately, the card I draw for Continuing Fire damages any plane in any Lethality space, even 0, if they are in Determined Mode …

… unless they are Dive Rolling! Which this pilot is. I skip Continuing Fire for Adameit, and he ends up in the Oblique Low Return Box. Note that there are two separate Oblique positions: Bauer broke left and ended up Oblique (2 o’clock to 4 o’clock) while Adameit is at Oblique (8 o’clock to 10 o’clock). Just opposite sides of the board. Oh, and Bauer is High because he climbed, and Adameit is Low because he dove.

One more pilot to go. Dahl was also Dive Rolling right.

The short story is that in his Lethality space 1 he took no hits, and the Debris event ended up with an even roll (shown) and thus I placed a Damage marker on the nearest bomber. The Damage marker got flipped to a 2. Dahl joins Adameit in the Oblique Low Return Box. He has taken a hit, while Adameit’s guns are jammed.

Turn 4

Turn 4 is going to be a short turn. Because of the sequence of play, the Move Phase comes before the Return Phase. Fighters in Return Boxes cannot move. They can only Return, which moves them from the Return Box to their adjacent altitude box. If any of my pilots had been in Evasive Mode, they would have broken away to the Evasive Return Box, and effectively spent another turn out of the action as their first Return Phase would have been spent “returning” from Evasive Return Box -> Return Box. But everyone was Determined, so they move to their respective altitude boxes. There are no escorts so the Escort Phase is skipped (as it has been and will be all game long). That brings us to the Recovery Phase, where I check the hits on my fighters. Clade has Wing/3 and Dahl has Wing/7. I roll one die for each Hit Marker. Less than the number means a serious hit. Otherwise it is trivial and goes back in the cup with no further effect. I roll a 4 for Clade and a 7 for Dahl, so they are both unscathed. Then come the Flak and Cohesion Phases.

For Flak, I roll a 9, which corresponds to no hits on the bombers and a nice joke in the Situation Manual. (The fighters canniot be hit because none of them are in an Approach Box.)

Then comes Cohesion. The rule for Cohesion is that I roll a die for every “marker” in an element. There are currently nine markers in the element: a Fallen -1 marker, two Collision markers, and six Damage markers.

If I roll less than nine, the element’s Cohesion will become degraded. If I roll equal to or greater than nine, the element’s Cohesion will improve, although it actually cannot improve any further as it is still in Good Order as it was at the beginning of the game. So it can only degrade, and has an 80% chance of doing so. It only fails on a 9 or 10.

I roll a 3. The element gets a Loose Formation -1 placed on it, which reduces the Lethality of ALL spaces in the element by 1. The bomber formation starts to break up, and the fighters see their chance. Unfortunately for them – and fortunately for the Fortresses – there are only two turns left.

NEXT: Turn 5

Articles in this Series: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4

Author: Bruce Geryk