Down in Flames

 Last year and this year I have been lucky enough to discover three wargames that have become firm favourites of mine. SAGA and X-Wing I have featured in recent blogposts, the third is Down in Flames which is a card game I got for Christmas last year.

It's a cracker, I played it exclusively for four months solid, it isn't a solo game but I can manage it with a few house rules.

There are several iterations of the system, this one is from 2008 and is simpler than some of the other versions. link I went to town with it a bit and bought a couple of expansions, I then photocopied cards and downloaded anything I could. In a dogfight game I like to use four cards for a "squadron" which is the sweet spot for me, six a side is too many to handle for me playing solo.

Some of the images I found only had the front "undamaged" side of the card so I printed off numbers and flame images and used a marker pen for smoke, see the Chaika on the left. The unofficial SB-2 I did digitally.

Here are two of my homemade Spitfires flanking the published card.

Finding images on t'internet let me expand the game and provided a lot of fun.

It wasn't all plain sailing though I don't know what caused the ghost image on the left, I had the same problem with some of my early SAGA dice images too.

I made a "Red Tails" P51 squadron.

I introduced Tank Busters and nightfighters.

I added some of my own pilots real and made up and gave them a chance to parachute to safety.

I added bomber crews to the game too.

There are campaigns included in the box and they're OK but I prefer setting up my own scenarios so I made target counters and cards for the bombing missions, I like to use a squadron of four to eight bombers with two or three escorts against a squadron or two of defending fighters.

Then I added some postwar jets.

Then off to Korea, I don't know how accurate my stats are but it's a bit of fun.

Great fun, the game is very abstract but the cardplay feels more like the cut and thrust of a dogfight than any other air wargame I have played.