Aces High A Blood Red Skies Plog by CommodoreRob

I have been working on my BRS stuff for a couple of months now. It is a fun manageable project. Squadrons are either 6 fighters or 3 Bombers (although the Bombers are essentially just objectives ATM)

Anyway what drew me in was it appealed to my younger inner airfix building self… The days before I discovered gaming.

So here I am going to wax lyrical about the game and what makes it for me.

So first up I wowi admit that I have only had a few basic games, so I am no expert yet.

However the rules are clean, they are fun and they capture my view of the feel of the period really well.

This is only the second Andy Chambers rule set I am aware of playing, the other being Dropfleet Commander… honestly BRS is far superior in design and enjoyment.

If you have an interest in WW2 air combat then you really should try and get a game of BRS in.

So you have seen these already, but I thought I would add a few words about these. In my opinion the models for this game hit the right spot, the only minor issue is a bit of warping, but that is easily fixed with some hot water.

Warlord have so far released two batches of models, the first batch Spitfires, Me 109s, P51’S, Zero’s and the Yaks. These are soft plastic and made by Warlord, they are very well detailed for the scale, they are not all 100% accurate, and the less said about the stickers the better.

The second batch are the reboxing of the Zvezda 1/200 bombers and transports these are near little snap together kits, with real decals, but do not have a great deal of detail. But at 1/200 scale it’s not too much of an issue.

They are due to release a next wave of planes soon. Which will hopefully include Hurricanes.

Ok so the thing any scale modeller will know about is decals. When it comes to historical gaming I have messed around with some decals from time to time, but nothing like I did in my days of building model planes. This BRS project has resurrected that part of the hobby. Why? Well when I first opened the BRS planes I found that they came with stickers, now I totally understand why Warlord chose to add stickers these are game pieces and not models, it’s quick to get them on the table with stickers. But the modeller in me was … Nope not having these. So for all my aircraft I have sourced appropriate decals.

So to attch decals you can dodit in a number of ways. Add to  water and slide off the paper stick on aircraft and leave to dry. This has a couple of issues: they do not always stick very well, they look like they are transfers and they have a ridge around them.

The next way is to use a two part solution like microsol and microset. Microsol helps to remove the decal from the paper and place it on the model. After which you add the Microset onto the model and this dissolves the tranftra onto the model catching the ridges etc so it looks like it is painted on.

Similar to this I use Humbrols Decalfix which is a one solution product. That both removes the transfer from the paper and then helps fix it to the model and dissolves it like the aforementioned Microset. I would always use this over the other products out there it’s so much less hassle and gives fantastic results.