Peg Flight

[puddingwrestler]

Gentlemen, on the morrow, the great and epic might of Herr Doktor Professer Pudinsch Von Restlier will be brought to bear on the crucial question: What If I give my mate's four year old girl some pegs and say 'We're going to make fighter planes out of them and then battle with each other in the clear blue skies over the living room floor.'
And before you ask, here are the rules required to take part in such combats.
Further such battles shall occur at Coal Creek, Korumburra on the 10th of April, proving once and for all that South Gippsland Shire has the most epic school holiday program in Victoria. (And incidentally giving some indication of where I have been all this time)

[Captain Canada]

Sounds interesting ! I'll have to give the rules another read tho....for a 'simple' game it's rather complicated ! It would be fun to play with some of the neighbourhood kids.

[pyro-manic]

That sounds like an awesome game! Simple, fast, fun! Did you write the rules? The only real issue I can see with them is the need for obscure dice - I think that might be a big stumbling block for most people. Perhaps simplify by saying just use D6, 2D6, or D6x2 etc? Sounds like you'll have a blast though.

[puddingwrestler]

Yes I wrote the rules.
Obscure dice are important - they flick better. A D6 (common, six sided die) doesn't roll very well, were as something like a D12, which is much rounder rolls a fair way after hitting the ground. Using a D6 as a bomb would also be a problem, as you could drop them 'flat' and they'd most likely not roll, just land with the '6' upwards.
Getting the dice is not hard - one of my students actually got a full set of polyhedral dice (D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20, D100) from a country newsagents, and any games shop will have them.

As to the complexity of the rules - this is ver0.2. I have not cleaned it up and written it out as clearly as possible. This is slightly more complex than the Pirate's Treassure rules I used over summer, but we had four and six year olds playing that no problems (apart from not being very good at flicking dice). The way to approach it is to go with the 'basic' game and 'advanced' game - for the first game, play the Dog Fight scenario, and just use three light fighters each. That way all planes behave exactly the same. When you have the hang of that, start to introduce other planes slowly, before building to play the full game. It's all fairly easy and intuitive, you just need to get a fair amount of stuff in your head first.

[pyro-manic]

I understand about the rolling better thing. It's just that most people won't have D12s at home already, whereas they'll likely have a bundle of D6s kicking around or that can be scavenged from boardgames etc. and so can instantly jump into a game.

Regardless, it sounds great. Can we expect a full battle report?

[puddingwrestler]

You can.
You can also expect to see some cleaning up of concepts and the writing of section 12.1 on how to choose a squadron through the magic of Google Docs!
You should also go check out The Campaigner magazine, wherein lurks the rules for Task Force, a naval combat floor game which provided inspiration for this and Pirate's Treassure. I think it's in issue 4. (also issues 6+7 contain articles I wrote for them)

[puddingwrestler]

Behold the awesome might of Peg Flight!

The prototype Peg Plane (the float plane) flanked by a biplane bomber and a P-26 Peashooter inspired light fighter.

Further P-26 style planes (one with rockets) and a light bomber under construction at the Juzzyplex yesterday.

My mate Justin's daughter with three of her peg planes (one is not painted yet)

Said peg planes in close up.

We did not get a chance to play the game. Things like dinner and baths kept getting in the way. Damn adults and their need to stop us kids having fun.

[puddingwrestler]

Sirs, kindly look upon the unspeakable magnificence of Peg Flight!
Incidentally, the extra planes where built so I can run the squadron from the 'how to make a squadron list' bit of the rules, which calls for two Light Fighters with rockets (okay, I know, I need to add rockets to one of them), a heavy fighter and a heavy bomber.


The First Demonstration Squadron (minus the Smedley D-27 Dragonfly light bomber which i forgot about)

The Crumhorn D-7 Aardvark Heavy Fighter - usually I'd have the fuselages vertical since it is a fighter, but it's the only twin-boom design, so it's fairly obvious.

The Roland RS-26A Bison Special heavy bomber. It's no bigger than a fighter 'cause I only have one size of big peg, but it DOES have four engines. So it must be heavy.

A Trio of Crumhorn D-5 Avengers. The one at the back is the prototype. Later models have two guns. the example on the right is a D-5A Rocket Avenger, fitted with a deadly set of rockets.

You can ALSO look at the Air Pirates participation game photos and comments (which used a simplified variant of Peg Flight in that we all just used heavy fighters)
Further testing will be occuring tomorrow (hopefully) when I will fight for mastery of the skies with a four-and-a-half year old girl. And her dad.

[puddingwrestler]

Just designing the ground targets and finalising the rules documents before posting the whole lot. Stand by for awesome.

[puddingwrestler]

Behold the PDF! Behold it I say!

[kerick]

So who was having the most fun with this project?

[ericr]

the twin-boom is just lovely! 
(I hope Tophe saw it?)

on he whole, isn't this lacking just a little bit of ... seaplanes?   

[Tophe]

Congratulations, yes!

[perttime]

on he whole, isn't this lacking just a little bit of ... seaplanes?   

Seaplanes are mentioned in the PDF.

I suppose areas of water could also be marked somehow.

[puddingwrestler]

I have built a seaplane. It was the very first model. I realise that the peg planes are in San Tortan colours, but it takes twice as many pegs to build a seaplane, so I was trying to economise. I'm working up a fictional country now for my planes. Then I will develop an opponent coutry, and make detailed instructions on how to build the fighters of both sides.
Besides - seaplanes have exactly the same rules as land planes. The game doesn't go into THAT much detail.