"Check Your Six!" air combat rules going digital!

I am delighted to report that the "Check Your Six!" rules for WWII and post-WWII air combat games are going digital. The Lordz Games Studio will be "bringing the current range of CY6 rules and scenario books to a wide variety of gaming platforms". See press release here.

"But Chris," I hear you ask, "Why do you care?" And you would be forgiven for asking that, given my repeated assertions that I am not into skirmish-level stuff and that when it comes to wargames, I want to be a field-marshal, not a colonel / captain / corporal. My thing is big land battles, and preferably C19 or WWII battles where the holy trinity of movement-firepower-protection is in healthy balance, and where command and control issues are a major part of the game. So you could reasonably assume that air combat actions involving maybe a dozen planes a side are not a big interest of mine.

And you would be right. However, for a few years I was very interested in WWII air combat. This was all the fault of Scott at SkirmishCampaigns. He felt there was a gap in the market for a WWII air game that was both playable and realistic. Because we had collaborated on a couple of projects before, he roped me in on the development of "Check Your Six!". You'll see I get a namecheck in the introduction. I learned a lot about planes and about air battles, and we really had a great time exploring the beauty of mathematics, and trying to create game mechanisms that accurately simulated the catastrophic nature of air combat, and the speed/energy equations, and to do so in a way that still let the game be quick and fun. CY6 won the Origins award for best historical miniatures wargame of 2007 and deservedly so. I don't get to play CY6 much these days but when I do it is always a blast.

Apart from the intellectual exercise and the mathematical epiphanies, I also dug into the history. Specifically, I collaborated with noted aviation historian Csaba Becze to write the "Aces over Hungary" campaign supplement for CY6, which includes 22 scenarios for the Royal Hungarian Air Force's battles against the US and Soviet air forces over Hungary in 1944-1945.

So I am really happy that CY6 is going digital and that this great game will be made accessible to more players all around the world - including me, as I am looking forward to getting to fly against far-flung friends who I don't often get to see face to face. If you're at all interested in WWII or modern air combat, take a look at CY6, and watch out for the digital version when Lordz release it.