Tried our first game of AI the other week- two Thunderbolts are flying a patrol over a Squat mining camp after a landing by a Local ork warlord, intent on booty. His air is also patrolling out from his landing site seeking out the enemy strength- 3 fightas.

First turn my orkish opponents do a series of wing overs and half loops, and end facing their own table edge (Braveheart style kilt up scenario claims orc mania). My imperials fly straight on momentarily non-plussed.

Second turn my planes still close straight and true while the orks breakleft, barrel straight back up the centre and break right. The sliding back orks are still facing their table edge at the end. My wing leader (with blue tack on the tail to distinguish it) trades shots with the brave but unsupported central Ork and despite having him in optimum range we trade damage points.

Third turn my planes drop onto my leftmost ork (he is going to have to barrel back to avoid leaving the table) and catch him with one T-Bolt medium range but wrong altitide and just score the 1 hit.

Turn 4 my planes pincer the orkish pilot from the centre who has lined up my number 2 plane for a head on pass. He missed and I did not- scratch an ork.

Photo shows all 5 planes manouvering - my number 2 about to trade fire with his ex plane. In the background the other two orkish planes are zipping by in formation.

Looks fun. We did the same thing with dice for Alt and Spd before we got flying stands. Simple and effective. The only downside is not having the firing arcs and having to guess them.

D.

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Epic:Armageddon... Like Apocalypse but for grown-ups.

[b]Bearded Dice[/b]: [url]http://bearded-dice.co.uk[/url]

Yes sad to say my Ai bases are on order and so we have dice for speed and altitude.

Turn 5 my fighters break right to follow his fightas and each side passes high or wide.

Turn 6 my planes just try and cover one of his fightas and number 2 gets a medium range head on pass, with initiative, which knocks the aklready damaged ork out of the sky with a pair of lascannon hits.

With 2-1 up, but with 1 plane nearly out of ammo and damaged and the last orkl undamaged and starting to get the hang of things I power dive away to the nearest board edge (from alitide five and rolled a 3 on the d3- hadn't realised that it worked d3+1 that way and fortunately I'd aimed off from the trees...

The ork had half looped back assuming I'd stick around and so was too far behind to catch up. To cries of run sneaky imperials and such like my boys speed low for home.

A short game which my opponent found harder with less exprience of dig fighting style games (though most of mine has been Full thrust stuff so the 3rd dimension threw me too). The mark of our mutual inexperience was that no-one got a tailing shot all game...

Anyways with the skies cleared (well thinnned at least) of orks, my Squats were free to deploy their Overlord in the upcoming 2000 point net epic skirmish over the same terrain.

Overall I like the idea of the game. It is just that it does not scale very well IMHO. Played a few games against the Orks and when their planes are so cheap they can get a quite a few planes in the air the mechanics break down and you are having to wait on your opponent to finish assigning manoeuvres before you can begin the turn.

We are considering introducing flights, grouping 2-3 planes together and giving them the same manoeuvre, providing extra coverage and helping speed the game up.

I think that AI really has the scale for providing a hook in campaigns - play an AI game to affect the next game in the campaign, bombing a leman russ squadron on the road to a battle, trying to get an Inquisitor off-site before the bombers arrive etc.

Or it may just be me being anxious to get blowing Orks out of the skies and my opponents being cautious...

D.

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Epic:Armageddon... Like Apocalypse but for grown-ups.

[b]Bearded Dice[/b]: [url]http://bearded-dice.co.uk[/url]

Agreed.

Am hoping to have planes built into the emerging campaign.

Something like win an air battle and then you can bring planes next ground combat. Or may choose a recce and then have the opponent's army revealed before you pick your own. Or feed results of a ground attack mission into next ground game (add choice unit as target of a GA mission).

Next Ai game will be a follow up to our last ground game- Imperials trying to attack bridges lost to orks in the last game...

Thanks for the report.

I have also found in games in which one player has much cheaper plabes than the other they have a massive advantae.  My Chaos wings swamp the skies with dozens of blades and they always move as in squdrons of 2 to three and can out gun any enemy.

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Tyranid air marshal

This is a great idea for campaigns. I like this kind of thinking beyond the set rules. I have never tried AI but I like the idea of it... especially after the novel Double Eagle.

Thanks for posting.

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My head is full of War...

[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

Thanks Warhead.

I'd ideally like to integrate BFg into a campaign too- for detrmining arrival of replacements/reinforcements and supply. Am toying with a points based supply- i.e. ship a thousand points of supply and you get a thousand active points for a battle, be they titan, tank or las rifle. So very abstracted but making it a key condition of making planetary offensives/key driver of repeated space encounters...

As for AI I've not played it enough (i.e. just once!) to judge on the cheap planes versus more expensive variety. But perhaps if the better races could swap a sustained burst for a multiple burst. E.g. Thunderbolt gets a line of sight to two Chaos planes and passes skill test, then can split fire? With just 1 hit for a kill it might even things up ?

Anyways just an idea.

rgds

m