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I've been listening to a great podcast doing daily news reports covering the Battle of Britain (75 years ago this summer) and I've gotten the bug to put together my own collection of Hurricanes, Spitfires, bf109's and JU88's And any other relevant aircraft.

The question is where can I find good minis and is there a good game on the market that covers the battle of Britain?

Battle of Britain was primarily a strategic battle in which the campaign is best followed using a map-based game such as RAF.

http://www.amazon.com/RAF-The-Battle-Britain-1940/dp/B002IMU9RC

For playing miniatures games Wings Of War is a good set where you buy pre-painted models and rules, or else you could buy models in various scales ranging from 1/600 to 1/72 and build them, then play using off the shelf rules for dogfights.

1/600 scale is more realistic, cheaper and easier to put together, but of course lacks the "wow factor" that you would get from larger models.

I too would recomend Wings of War [only playedn the GW version but WW2 will be similar]. Ares has a decent line of pre-done planes in 1/144 whilst Revell and Zvezda have some unbuilt plastic kits in the same scale.

Those minis are cool for Wings of War, but the game to play is Check Your 6! . You can use smaller scale to for the bigger battles and they even have a scenario book for Battle of Britain. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30958/check-your-6

Pedant moment: Wings of Glory WW2 is in 1/200 scale, not 1/144 like the WW1 version.

It works well with one or two planes per player, but for a larger battle, you'd want multiple players otherwise it gets a bit slow and overwhelming.

I've also heard/seen a lot a good thing said about Check Your 6!

Better yet. there's even a scenario box for the Battle of Britain:



You get 6 pre-painted 1/300 scale aircraft (3 Spitfire Mk I, 3 ME-109E), 6 flight stands/magnets, aircraft decals, and 2 hex maps.

If you already have a hex map, try 'Bag the Hun', decently quick to play if you're not after a massive game. Playing here with 1:600 scale aircraft which cost next to nothing.

1/600 is simply just a terrible, terrible, terrible scale for model planes whatever you want to use them for. Downsize to 1/700 instead, it's one of the two preferred scales for ships which usually have planes on them so good plastic aircraft kits are basically ten a penny in the scale.

Started with 1/700, have to say I can hardly tell them apart. Went to 1/600 as I could get the planes I wanted, the 1/700 stuff seemed to be wonderful for carrier planes and naval battles though.

Using them with 1/2400 ships here in GHQ as well as BtH, 1/600 to 1/700 makes no odds really.

Sooooo wish I had space for a 1/700 ship collection

If you hold an advanced STEM degree, are a glutton for punishment (I guess thats a redundant statement), and are willing to put a lot of elbow grease into building models and jigs, look for Mustangs & Messerschmitts. If you've never heard of it, all you need to know is that the designers of the game were MIT grads and some of them ended up doing some pretty serious research for the USAF. The "game" is really more of a simulation based on real world flight mechanics and aerodynamics with some little abstraction where it simply wasnt possible or feasible to capture that level of detail. Its intended to be played w/ 1/200 scale models IIRC, attached via alligator clip to a piece of piano wire or brass rod marked at every 1-2" with an altitude level to represent increments of 100 feet (IIRC). The rod/wire is attached to a jig which is a trapezoidal (IIRC) piece of wood on casters with some relevant gameplay markings/measurement tools on it as well as the equipment necessary to setting a fixed rate of turn, etc. Its the type of game meant for a palyer to control only a single plane at a time. You can do 2 per player, but thats really stretching it and it WILL get stressful quickly, anything more than that and your brain WILL explode. Oh, and you also need like a basketball court or other large open hard floored space to play... The game scales, in terms of number of players, decently well. I've played 1v1 and have heard stories (from one of the developers) of games as large as 30v30 played on the floor of the MIT basketball courts.

Mustangs & Messerschmitts is actually based upon a precursor from the 1970s, from Lou Zocchi:

Advanced Fighter Combat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Zocchi

Lou was a Technical Sergeant in the USAF, and knew a LOT about aerodynamics, and WWII fighters (as well as Korean and Vietnamese Air Combat - he had another game based upon both Korean and Vietnamese Air Wars).

Advanced Fighter Combat

The game was the VERY FIRST Fighter game to be played with 1/72 scale fighters, which used 4' tall poles to mount the aircraft on a stick from its tail (around which it could roll).

The game was very precise, with the players determining roll, pitch, and yaw of their aircraft, in an attempt to line up on an enemy (There were no "arcs of fire" other than for turreted weapons. You fired directly to the front of an aircraft, and there were even rules for "leading the target").

So, you did not just point your aircraft directly at an enemy, you had to fly to line up to lead the enemy correctly. There was included a slight amount of "wiggle-room" for the players, as moving miniatures or large counters around on the floor did not allow quite the same intuitive grasp of aerial combat that one has when flying an actual aircraft (when one can anticipate a move - the game did have rules for tailing that were deadly).

And the game demonstrated why you flew with a wingman...

Ah! Nostalgia...

I recommend it. I think that there is a company that still makes the flight stands for 1/72 scale WWII aircraft.

MB

Thanks folks, I picked up some 1/300 aircraft on the cheap and I'm pretty happy with the scale for cost and as a painting project so I'll maybe go with Check your 6! to fit the scale. Can't seem to find a UK supplier for that sweet little BoB starter set but I can get the rule book and scenarios no problem.

I'm going a bit mad obsessing over WWII aircraft and their paint and markings. It's great!

Actually what I have right now is mainly bombers so I hope check your 6! isn't all fighter combat.