Blood Red Skies: Flying Mig Alley Alone

Back in the days when I was playing a lot of board war games. I played a lot of air games  from time to time but I think in many ways I liked the information the games had more than the actual play. The games I played seemed to have so much detail that a lot of the feel of high speed maneuver seemed to be lost but I spent a lot of time comparing the data cards of different planes and in the days of Air Superiority / Air Strike I was always happy to get the latest issue of the newsletter so I could take a look at new planes.

The play of these games was a lot of work so I wasn't to upset to leave them in the past. I played some of David Redpath's games at Cangames and those seemed to work well and I played a few games of Wings of Glory and allied games and thought they were ok but not enough to get me to buy into them.

Some at the club years ago ran a few games of Bag the Hun which I enjoyed but it had a weird mix of abstraction and detail that didn't quite work for me.

Then when Blood Red Skies was released a few years ago I was tempted but always had enough on the go that I wasn't sure I wanted to bother with something new and wasn't sure if it would be for me and wasn't sure if I wanted to invest in the 1/200 planes -- I thought the planes were a really good size but it was a Warlord only scale and I wasn't sure how well they would support the game.

Just as things were shutting down with the Coronavirus, I did a panic buy of paint and Black Seas ships and decided to get Blood Red Skies -- All I could get in the shop I was ordering the paint from was the rulebook  the Mig Alley box set and a box of  Yak-7s.

The jets painted up well and quickly and even the decals went on relatively painlessly. After posting my solo Black Seas game I decided to do the same with Blood Red Skies.

First of we generate the pilots for each side.

The Soviet MiG-15s get very lucky with 2 Aces. I have to add an ace card for each plane to the action deck and just select these two at random from the cards I have

The American F-86E Sabres are very unlucky with two rather poor pilots

The initiative roll was a tie and I decided the Americans needed a bit of a break so I had the Soviets set up first with the American planes behind them.

After the planes are placed the advantage level is determined. The Soviets roll  Neutral Advantage but they have the theater card for "Radar Support" which allows them to make a maneuver check to gain advantage and both succeed

The American bad luck continues with one plane rolling to be Disadvantaged and one Neutral.


In each turn the planes move in order of advantage and then pilot skill and speed to break ties. In each planes turn there are 4 phases -- (1) Shooting (2) Burn Advantage [optionally drop one level of advantage to maneuver or add 6" of speed in the move phase] (3) Move 1/2 to full speed and turn up to 45 degrees (4) Action Phase [one of Shoot, Outmaneuver, Climb]

The first Soviet plane opts to burn advantage to maneuver and ends up facing the disadvantaged Sabre head on. Because it has neutral advantage now it can shoot at the disadvantaged Sabre. There  is some risk to this because the target can shoot back in a head on attack but the MiG pilot is feeling confident.

The Soviet pilot gets 2 dice for it cannons and 5 dice for the pilot. If there is more than one success (as here) it counts as a critical hit and is harder to dodge. The American gets 2 dice for cannons and 2 dice for the pilot and still manages to get one hit. Both pilots will get to dodge but they still take one "Boom" chit for being hit

The dodge roll is similar, the MiG gets 2 dice for agility and 5 for the pilot and the Sabre gets 2 dice for agility and 2 for the pilot and loses 1 because it is dodging a critical hit.


The Sabre is shot down so the American side gets one more "Boom" chit. This takes them to 2 which is 1 more than the number of remaining planes so the Americans will flee ending the scenario. I decide to play a few more turns just to see how movement works.  One thing I have learned so far is that with Jets the starting separation needs to be greater. The scenario calls for 18" but with a movement of 13" the MiG can (as we have seen) get a turn 1 shot.

The second MiG did the same maneuver but had no shot because both it and the Sabre were neutral so choose to outmaneuver the Sabre forcing it to Disadvantge.

Because it is disadvantaged the Sabre can't dive or maneuver in its turn and moves level and turns 45 degrees. It moved less than a full move to stay within 9" of the MiGs so they wouldn't get a free climb for advantage at the beginning of the turn (all jets have this ability) and then climbed to get Neutral advantage (this it turns out is wrong, you can't climb within 9" of an enemy Jet unless you are a later generation Jet).

There were a fewer more turns of the MiGs getting on the tail of the Sabre but not having enough advantage to shoot (and I missed another rule that will give disadvantage to any aircraft that is being tailed) and eventually one of the MiGs got a shot bringing the final Sabre down.

The scenario itself was a bit of a disaster but the choices for maneuver were interesting and engaging (at least as much as is possible when I am playing both sides). I think the game needs more planes -- I am not sure if I will get another MiG alley box but I have since ordered the Battle of Britain box and and box of Hurricanes and a box of Bf110s. I am pretty keen to paint those (though disappointingly they don't come with the decals other than basic insignia) so maybe there will be another solo game not so far away.