Down in Flames Dogfight Stories

[Kozure]

Well, since all the beta testers are probably chatting amongst themselves in the beta forum, I'll share some of my stories of Down in Flames - the card game version - Zero!

Some of my favourite match-ups are A6M2 Zeroes vs. anything the Brits or Yanks put up. The Zekes are nimble, but they come apart like paper kites when they get lit up by Allied fire. It usually makes for an interesting game.

We usually play a match game, where one side plays the Allies and the other plays Axis (well, Japanese, since I only currently have the Zero! set), then we switch sides for the second game.

A recent game had an element of P40Cs and an element of P40Es vs. two elements of A6M2s.

In the game where a partner and I played the Yanks and our opponents played the Japanese, we opened with both our P40 elements at medium alt, and theirs were spread out at low and high alt. We both dove on the poor low Zekes, hoping to get a quick kill before the other element managed to get down to us.

We tangled with the two Zekes at low, who then dove to very low. At low alt he had an even better horsepower, but so did we. He put up a good fight, but with four on two, it was pretty hopeless. I downed one at the cost of one of my P40Cs being damaged, but the other player pulled a fuel tank explosion and brought down the second of the two-plane element. At this point, the high Zekes dove down, and with all the extra energy they got from diving so many levels, they managed to mix it up fairly well for a turn or two before our numbers advantage got the better of him. Unfortunately, my partner drew the fuel tank explosion a second time after the discard pile was reshuffled, and dinged the first of the second element of Zekes.

Our opponents had lost three planes while only managing to damage one, so the last Zeke started climbing out of the fight as the game ended on the sixth turn.

First time I've ever seen two kills to fuel tank explosions in the same game by the same player.