The Duchess - a kickstarter gaming table 48 hours left

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

OK!  Here's Duel in the Dark with the Baby Blitz expansion. We did a one-night scenario.  I played the RAF.  The game uses secret planning for the bombers and V1s and there are options for combined raids, spoofs, delayed starts, formation splitting, and other stuff.  I usually try to get too clever with split raids and Window and Mosquito decoys and I always get spanked for it so this time, I went pretty straightforward.  I launched the main force (Lancasters) against Munich while a spoof raid (Halifax) went against Lubeck.  Both took off at the same time and flew more or less direct routes to the targets, trying to stay in clouds as much as possible.  I sent one group of Mosquitoes with the spoof raid, hoping to lure some fighters away from the main force while the other Mossie group stayed back to defend England from the buzz bombs and Griffons. 


The Germans were the ones to try and play it all sneaky.  They delayed sending their bombers and their rockets for several turns, hoping I'd get bored and move off.  They ended up sending all three V1s to London while their He177 bombing raid hit Bristol via a circuitous route over the Irish Sea.

Things went fairly well for me.  My use of the Mossie decoys with the spoof raid worked reasonably well and drew off 1 Me110 Gruppe, 1 Do-17 Gruppe, and the He-219 Uhu nightfighter while the remaining 2 Me-110 gruppes went after the main force.  I got lucky with the weather as there was a lot of cloud cover, no moon, and a nice tail wind for me/headwind for the Germans.  The spoof raid took some losses but managed to hit Lubeck hard enough that I made more points than I lost in bombers.

The main force slipped through the German defences with only a few losses and managed to hammer Munich for a tonne of points but they got ripped to pieces on the homeward leg and I actually ended up losing more points than I gained.  Fortunately, my Mosquitoes managed to knock down quite a few nightfighters which helped to offset the points losses.

London took a beating from the V1s and I wasn't really able to do much to stop them as my Mossie was tied up with the Griffons and my AAA didn't amount to much. 

My Mossie that was harassing the He177s earned me a lot of points.  I was able to crater the bomber's airfield before they took off so they lost a few to accidents.  Then I dogged them over the Irish Sea, to Bristol, and back home again and, while they did hit their target, their losses were so severe that it swung the points total well over in my favour.  Score ended up being +8 for the RAF  (My high point was right after hitting Munich when I got up to +19 and the low point was just as the Lancasters crossed the Channel when the Germans were up +7)

Good times!  (so much so that I forgot to take and photos after turn 3)