Fighter Duel - Rules Walk Through

Sometimes it takes to tango and get your head round a set of rules, something about more than one person reading the same paragraph makes more sense out of it. "Fighter Duel" is a set of rules from Phil Sabin, a 'time and motion' study of fighter combat (each game segment is 3 seconds) and the game plays around three minutes of actual combat. He ran this at the Connections 2018 Games Fair this year. Using his original research it was combined from several separate board game components [Mustangs, Spitfire, Angels One High] but I was interested in translating it to 1/144 model aircraft for a demonstration game at a local show. To aid us in our understanding we are going through a "slow walk" of the rules. First we lined up a few combat sequences and performed them over a coffee and fire side chat (see below, lining up a killing shot as a Vet RAF pilot in a Spitfire comes out of the sun to bounce a Me 109E distracted in the process of shooting another plane):

Given that this was the "best ever" position the combat odds could be in, it is "anything but a 1" to hit and my compatriot rolled a 10, a spectacular hit. For every 2 over the required score an additional hit is accrued which means a massive "four hits" - the Me 109E only has four points of damage so he goes down in quick fashion (see below, nice shooting Sailor Malan):

A dramatic explosion is deemed necessary (see below). Working through the sequence, replacing the Vet RAF pilot with a rookie (two weeks of training "special"), this time shooting from two hexes (200 yards) away, and the Luftwaffe pilot was not distracted would reduce the hit chance from 90% to 10%. If a ten had still been rolled this time only one hit would have been inflicted and the Me 109E would still be "in the fight" (slightly damaged but to no obvious effect). This seems quite historical (see below, I far prefer the model visuals of the model to counters):

The beauty of the combat system is a magic grid that converts the historic gun factors of the plane adjusted by the circumstance factors to give the hit probability. The next stage is to master the flying dynamics. Interesting as the key elements of "energy" and "turn capability" are modelled. Nothing is a given, a turn may be attempted but not necessarily made. Given the three second tome span you get another go soon, provided you are not in the sights of an enemy. Being hex based it does have the advantage of keeping the planes locked into a specific place (that can be reconstructed or remembered), so an accidental knock does not subtly overwrite the "billimeter" positioning.