Aces of Valor After Action Report – British Short Campaign – Mission 2

Sorry it’s been a couple of months since the first mission report from the new solo WWI aircraft game, Aces of Valor.

It’s not because I didn’t want to!

Things just got ahead of me.

Like other German fighter pilots!

How to play this very fine narrative game was detailed in my review of it, so I won’t go into much of that.

Just to recap from Mission #1, though, I chose the Short Campaign (8 missions) for the British, and this is Mission #2.

Would there be a Mission #3?

Let’s take a look.

(Don’t forget that you can click on the pictures to enlarge them)

After successfully bombing the local German HQ into oblivious, those guys wanted some revenge!

Mission #2 was a Scramble mission, with German bombers bearing down on our airfield attempting to knock us out!

You’d think we’d pissed them off or something.

I managed to roll a 3 for the number of fighters, meaning I could scramble 5 of my fighters each round (I only have 8).

Even better, the two German bombers ended up only being escorted by two German fighters!

They were Tier 3, but still…

In the first round, Albert, squadron leader Billy Baldric, Edward, Frank, and Tom took off in a hurry, seeing Carl and Oswald flying in protecting the two bombers.

Initiative was quickly rolled.

Carl quickly jumped into the lead with a 14 initiative. Meanwhile, Oswald, at 10 initiative, was fending off most of the British fighter force himself (remember that you can only attack somebody of lower initiative than you and you have to attack the next lowest. I can’t just go after the bombers).

It looked like the first bomber would be dropping his ordinance in the first round while the second bomber would be doing so in the second round.

That’s not good.

Carl flew in behind Albert but his machine gun bullets couldn’t find Albert’s wing canvas.

Evading Carl must have thrown off Albert’s aim a little, though. While he did do one hit to Oswald, it did no damage. Must have gone clean through.

Frank had even worse luck (or marksmanship) as he couldn’t even hit Oswald!

However, Edward made his way onto Oswald’s tail and pumped four bullets into him. Oswald’s D. VII fighter plummeted to the ground in flames!

Edward didn’t get any skill increase, but we already had one Mission Point.

Things were looking good!

The rest of the valiant British pilots could now target the Round 1 bomber.

Of course, the bombers do have a say in things since they have a rear gunner. Attacking bombers, you might get hit yourself.

Sure enough, good old Baldric did two hits to the bomber but couldn’t damage it (it has a structure rating of 7 so you need to do multiple hits to even have a chance to do any damage). However, the rear gunner had found his sights and not only hit Billy, but damaged him with one hit (that’s two damages in two missions for our leader…is that bad?).

Tom also attacked the bomber. They both exchanged hits but did no damage to the other.

The bomber let his load go. Six bombs! But only one hit. Amazing!

It did do 3 points of damage though (8 points blows the whole thing up).

Round 2 began. The Germans were down a fighter. One bomber had dropped its load but the other one would be doing so this round.

However, the rest of my squadron (Donald, John and Robert) managed to get off of the ground and engage as well.

Edward managed to get ahead of Carl. Even better, four of my fighters actually managed to get into position to try and take out that last bomber before it could let it loose.

Edward tried to take advantage of his positioning, but while he did two hits to Carl, no damage was done.

The same could not be said for Carl.

When two fighters are in the same box, you roll randomly to see which fighter the enemy attacks. I rolled the already-damaged Billy.

Carl took him down with a massive five hits! Somehow, our leader managed to avoid getting hit himself, but the plane was in ruins. He did manage to bring it in for a rough landing at the airfield (good thing we were right above it!) so he was unhurt.

Donald had to attack the bomber that had already unloaded. Some hits were done both ways but no noticeable damage. Albert also missed. The bomber then broke off.

I had four remaining fighters able to attack the bomber as it was starting its bombing run.

Incredibly, while some hits were done both ways, nobody took any damage. No fighters damaged but, more importantly, no bomber damage.

It unloaded its bombs…and did a massive 5 hits!

Our home airfield was gone.

Yes, Billy Baldric’s stamp collection burned in the conflagration.

Round 3, it was time to take revenge.

The Germans had other ideas, though.

While Carl broke off, the bomber was a sitting duck.

Ok, maybe not “sitting.”

Not only did nobody damage or destroy the bomber, but it managed to damage Albert and Edward!

Would the indignity never end?

The end result of the mission: -9 Mission Points (yes, that is a minus sign).

I spent a campaign VP to repair Billy’s fighter so our leader could join us in the next mission.

But we still had two damaged planes.

It was a good thing we brought Billy back into the fold, though.

He managed to enable us to choose our next assignment from some options!

I’m not sure how he managed that, since so far he’s done jack and squat.

But he does have a prominent family, so that might be it.

We ended the mission with 2 VP in the campaign so far.

Remember my question at the beginning of this post, where I said “will there be a mission 3?”

That was a trick question!

With the airfield knocked out, you skip a mission to repair it.

So no, there won’t be a mission 3.

Stay tuned for the Mission 4 report coming…soon.