Air support in TacWWII - part one

I was asked some time ago to do an air-support version of my post on artillery fire in TacWWII. I think I'll break it down into at least two posts. Note that this will be how I do it; not necessarily how it's written in the rules.

Let's start with the basics: how do you get air support in a TacWWII game and how does basic air-to-ground combat work?

Well, there are three basic approaches; your air support may be pre-planned, on-call, or determined randomly depending on the scenario. I tend to use the last of these except in longer games like Stary Boleslav where players had plenty of time to plot out their airstrikes using either or both of the other approaches.

Note that I'll refer below to "the aircraft" but we should remember that at TacWWII scale one model represents a flight of maybe three real aircraft.

Typically the random approach will be something like, "Roll a d10 at the start of every turn. On a 1 or 2 the Soviets get air support. A second d10 shows the available support: 1-3 a LaGG-3 fighter, 4-8 an Il-2 Sturmovik, 9-10 two Pe-2 light bombers."

Whichever of the approaches you use, you're going to need to specify the aircraft's altitude (low, medium or high) and its flightpath. 

For altitude it's player choice. As regards flightpath, if not pre-planned I'll usually ask the player to place the aircraft  model on their baseline facing in the direction of the straight-line path it will take across the table.

You'll also want to determine if the aircraft is to use fixed armament (guns or cannon) or dropped ordnance (bombs or rockets). In the case of pre-planned or on-call air support I'd allow the player to choose. In the case of random air support I usually roll a die and say, "Odds it's fixed armament, evens it's dropped ordnance". 

So let's work through an example.

Near Remagen, early 1945

Fritz, our German player, has rolled for random air support and got a flight of Arado Ar-234 jet bombers. The Americans have been caught with their pants down and there's no fighter cover or anti-aircraft support available. 

Fritz places the model (on a medium altitude stand) on his baseline pointing towards the American player's brigade headquarters. 

Tom, the US player, immediately queries such selective targetting and the umpire agrees, requiring that Fritz make an additional Tac roll to go for an HQ out of all the possible enemy targets. (This is typical of the kind of ad hoc use of the Tac roll that makes highly-trained forces more effective in TacWWII.) Fritz rolls a 10 and tries not to look smug.

Fritz moves the Ar-234 model up to menace the US HQ...

Tom again complains that he should get to make AA fire as there's an M-16 GMC modelled on the HQ base but the umpire points out that at Medium Altitude the Arado is too high for even a quad HMG to engage.

Fritz must now make a Tac roll (at +4 to the die roll) to determine if he's identified the right target. Our scenario states that Luftwaffe elements in this game have a Tac value of 6. To his horror, Fritz rolls a 1! 

He must now make another Tac roll, which he again fails, rolling a 4. A check of the table reveals that the closest friendly element is a Panzer IV platoon just the other side of Windmill Hill. He will attack this element in error!

The Arado has no fixed armament, relying on its speed to escape interception, so we're straight into dropped ordnance for the attack.

A medium bomber covers a beaten area equivalent to two artillery batteries. Centred on the Panzer IV platoon we see that the adjacent Tiger platoon is in trouble too!

First, though, Fritz has to check for deviation with yet another Tac roll (with a -2 modifier as he's bombing from Medium Altitude). Sadly this time he makes the roll and the bombs fall on target!

As we said, the Arado is a Medium Bomber so its Ground Attack factors are 5/3 (5 against soft targets, 3 against hard). The armour values for the Tiger and the Panzer IV are 3 and 2 respectively so the modified target numbers are 6 and 5. 

Finally, luck turns slightly in Fritz's direction as he rolls a 4 for the Tiger and a 5 for the Panzer IV. The Panzer IV platoon is Neutralised but things could have been a lot worse. A puff of dust marks the Neutralised platoon and an explosion marker reminds us that the end-of-turn morale test will be at -3 for "under air attack".

We'll call it a day at this point with Fritz pretty miffed. Next time we'll look at AA fire and maybe fighter cover.