Learn to Play Storm Above the Reich: Get Rinsed in a Brawl at Staffel Haus

I like the dramatic proposition that learning Storm Above the Reich has put before me. What I don’t know yet is whether the action and story payoff is equal to the administrative burden of running it.

Of course, I’ve done this the hard way: Randomly selecting a mission to learn on and drawing a scenario in which 27 B-24J Liberators—shadowed by a complement of hungry P-51 Mustangs—are inbound to a German target. Since the scenario’s set in 1945, all my Focke-Wulf Fw 190 pilots are about 14 years old.

I didn’t want to try attacking from every angle on my first run, so I rushed everything I had at the tail of the formation, luckily avoiding collisions with my own craft. The Me-163s and FW109s succeeded in knocking the tail bomber out of formation and inflicting three damage on another.

I’ve run three turns of the first mission: Ahrens is shot down and wounded. Clausen has taken a heavy hit to his engine. Doppler and Ehlers? Heavy hits to the cockpit and fuselage, respectively. An Me-163 sustained a fuel tank hit, so I’m going to go ahead and assume this guy is going to be a comet of burning fuel in about .03 seconds.

Some Me163 experimental jet jockeys pitched in, but one’s out with a fuel tank hit and the others have been scattered to the four winds. That leaves two other FW109 kiddies whose planes aren’t shot up, but they got intercepted on their approach and pulled into a dogfight by two Mustangs. I’m not sanguine about their chances.

I think picking this Storm Above the Reich 1945 scenario to learn on was the equivalent of walking right up to the most crowded table of meanest dudes at a Waffle House after the bars get out and just spitting on their table.

Look for deeper impressions—and hopefully a semblance of air command competence—in a future episode of Breakup Gaming Society.