Our Second Saturday club meetings have recently seen us play two games before breaking for a late lunch, and the second one for several months has often been a Tripods and Triplanes game. Yesterday saw this occur again, with us using six Jasta 11 triplanes against three Martian tripods (two MkI Locusts and a MkII Scarab). The objective for the Martians was a wonderful railroad line and a passenger train stuck on the line - 'flat' files printed off by Dan (camelbeagle) from the Forum's files section - great stuff, indeed. The Martians had to march the length of the table to reach the train, while the Earthlings started in a bit closer in front of the rail line.
I have been wanting to use altitude in the T&T games, so this game we tried it. At ALT 1 or 2 (i.e. one peg or two pegs), the Black Smoke will have an effect on planes, so at ALT 1 and 2, planes could fire at tripods using regular firing rules - 2 damage cards at Short range and 1 at Long. At ALT 3 and 4, BS has no effect, and so we allowed planes to fire at tripods at Short range with 1 card - Long range was 'out of range' of tripods. Tripods had no detriments firing at planes at any range. We also allowed planes to collide with tripods at ALT 1 and 2 - we house-rule collisions in our group, and so if a plane ended its movement with its peg or red dot on the tripod base, we counted it a collision. Both vehicles draw a card from the C deck - if the plane had collided with the shielded side of the Martian, it needed an 'energy hit' to do any damage; if the plane hit the unshielded side of the tripod, then points damage/special damage applied (just as in normal firing at the Martians).
After a couple of turns, the combatants were close enough to start firing at one another. Two of us were moving the Martians and had conferenced before beginning about our general plan to get to the train and destroy it, so when the triplanes got close enough we began firing. We had both used Black Smoke initially in an effort to 'protect' our flanks a bit. Here the Locust's Heat-Ray strikes a central triplane.
With energy expended and energy lost due to fire on shields, the Martians remained in place for a couple of turns, recharging (or attempting to...) and turning to try and present shielded sides to the Earthlings while doing damage with Heat-Rays and Black Smoke...
This picture gives a good idea of the triplanes' ability to stay close to their targets - they are much more nimble than the later-war planes we had used in Martian scenarios up to this point... We would have lots of cards-replacing-planes or tripods for several turns...
The first kill of the game was Lt. Weiss, who had been on the receiving end of several H-R strikes and went down in flames. He would respawn and come on again in a later turn...
Black Smoke is piling up on the battlefield, as flanks need protecting and triplanes don't cooperate by moving as the Martians hoped they would. To be honest, BS did cause substantial damage to the triplanes at various times during the game and proved more efficient at dealing out damage than the H-Rs did.
A good overhead shot of everyone swirling around one another - you can see rocket counters on several of the triplane bases. The Earthlings tried to get off rocket attacks, only to be thwarted by damage as they were trying to make their attack runs. Several collisions took place during this melee.
Here is the demise of the left-flank Locust - caused in part by collision (the 6 is a C deck card). With all the triplanes buzzing around the Martians, it was the rare movement phase where Martians weren't taking damage from both shielded and unshielded sides...
The remaining Martians decided to break out of the scrum and head for the rail line, and as time was beginning to run out on the scenario, they were moving toward it. The triplanes were in hot pursuit and would likely have caught the lead Locust before it could reach the train. Nominal victory to the Earthlings, barring any bizarre distribution of damage cards...
As to altitude, all things considered, we agreed the rules we used worked pretty well. In addition to triplanes colliding with tripods, there were also a couple of plane-on-plane collisions, but altitude also helped planes avoid colliding with one another. We will use the rules again next time we defend Earth from the invaders. I think triplanes are also very effective against tripods - their ability to stay close to the target and respond more effectively to Martians stopping/sitting still is quite a plus. We look forward to playing again and continuing to add aspects of the rules in to flummox the invaders -next time we plan to add terrain effects in to topple some tripods...
All the best,
Matt
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