We've started work on next years WD Display Team (North) participation game.
Readers of a certain age will recall seeing this film at the cinema in the 1960s, and then endlessly repeated on TV in the 1970s. The film was based on the book of the same name, although it was moved to 1944 in the film from 1943. I saw it at the cinema when it came out with my parents, and my father (ex RAF) was very excited to see so many real Mosquitos in the air.
It features a plucky squadron of Mosquitos being tasked to attack a secret Nazi weapons factory in occupied Norway at the end of a steep and heavily defended fjord. The final attack run scenes down the fjord of course inspired the attack run sequence on the Death Star in Star Wars.
Anyway, from the fertile minds on Mark F and John B comes our offering for the forthcoming show season, a game of 633 Squadron! We'd set up a playtesting and development session to work on it.
While we waited for the assembled multitudes to...assemble, John entertained us with various recently repainted (but very, very old) 1/300th scale helicopters as well as his natty RAF cap.
The game was played on this sketch layout. Nine areas down a winding fjord, and nine Mosquitos in the squadron. John had converted this to Powerpoint so we could try it out. It is a solo game with the player commanding the squadron as they commence their run down the fjord.
Anything involving the RAF is an excuse to field a ridiculous array of headgear, Jim won with his proper leather flying helmet. I'm afraid I just had my Luftwaffe side cap on backwards! Wing Commander Luddite got to go first.
The squadron moves as a group down the fjord, using the tried and tested 'play your cards right' mechanism to successfully advance to each area. This is a combination of skill and luck as you have to guess if the next card in the deck is higher (or lower) than the current one. I hit on the bright idea of it being literally 'higher' (as in pull back on the stick) or 'lower' (as in dive).
Get it wrong and one of your planes is blasted out of the sky by Flak.
On this particular run the heroic pilots have made it all the way to area seven and only lost one plane! Typically you always lose a few.
Once you make it to the target, the surviving planes drop 'earthquake bombs' to try and dislodge the cliff face over the secret rocket base. The chance of success increases with each subsequent hit, but you generally need around four hits to drop the cliff.
After that the surviving planes attempt to escape, running the risk of being hit by Flak, intercepted by fighters or simply crashing into the vertiginous walls of the fjord. This bit was pretty lethal and I made a couple of suggestions on how to tone it down a bit without adding an extra mechanisms. In the film all the planes crash or are shot down but some of the crew survive. "You can't kill a squadron".
After we'd run it half a dozen times we had a chat about odds of various things happening and a few tweaks and how to go about modelling it. I suspect we won't be doing it with Airfix 1/24th scale Mosquitos, but between us we have a fair few Mosquitos already so I'm sure we can sort something suitable.
Just need to work on the props now and hopefully it will be ready for Partisan next year. Last weeks mountain building was part of my contribution.
Hello there Martin,
ReplyDeleteApparently George Lucas used 633 Squadron as the inspiration for the attack on the Death Star in Star Wars - but I suspect you knew that already! I remember gaming this using the old Battleline game Air Force (never took to the Avalon Hill version) and true to the film only a single Mosquito survived and was badly damaged at that.
I am disappointed though that you will not be using 1:24th scale Mosquitoes…… ;-)
All the best,
DC
Thanks Dave, yes George Lucas used much WW2 footage (both real and fictional) as inspiration for his space combat scenes. I remember by Dad spluttering about how the fighters were manouvering in space.
DeleteMartin -
ReplyDeleteThat there game looks like a lot of fun. I read the book '633 Squadron' as a kid - long, long before I ever saw the movie. Tell you what, Brian Dennehy (Canadian) would have made a fine Gillibrand!
I am reminded of a sort of crude 'flight simulator' set up at the Wigram Airforce museum just outside of Christchurch. This was about 30 years back. It was in effect a box (the pilot's cabin/cockpit) with a monitor and a joystick for steering and bomb release (I think). The graphics were pretty crude, and the sequence began with an approach flight against enemy shipping in a Norwegian fjord.
I say the graphics were pretty crude, and the 'aircraft' hard to control properly until one got a 'feel' for being in flight. Considering the crudity of the set-up and visuals, the thing was amazingly effective in inducing that sense of motion, and one became more conscious of what the aircraft could do.
Only problem: motion sickness. How do you get motion sickness from something that isn't moving at all? It just FELT like motion in flight.
Unfortunately, after five minutes of this, I staggered out of the thing feeling very green...
Happy days.
Best wished for Christmas and the New Year, Martin -
Cheers,
Ion
LOL! Oh dear, that sounds like fun and not fun all at the same time. I recall going on a very crude flight simulator in the late 70s - essentially just a screen and joystick in an aircraft cockpit, and for some reason it involved trying to land on a carrier. You have just reminded me of it. I cant recall what plane the cockpit was from, but presumably a Harrier or Buccaneer. Ark Royal was still in service then.
DeleteHappy Christmas and New Year to you too.