For a while I’ve been thinking about getting into air warfare/dogfighting gaming with miniatures. I have collected a number of useful sources for rules and miniatures. More recently, I have also touched on the subject of 1/600 air gaming.
Rules
- Bag the Hun (Too Fat Lardies), WW II. They also have a WW I rules set, Algernon pulls it off.
- Check your 6! (Skirmish Campaigns), WW II.
- Mustangs, WW II. Available for free. Derived from Mustangs are Flying Circus (WW I), MiG Alley (Korea) and Phantoms (Vietnam-today). The Wasatch Front Historical Gaming Society has more stuff for Phantoms.
- Thunderbolt & Lightning (Raiden Miniatures). Free WW II rules for larger engagements.
- Sturmovik Commander, WW II. Free.
- Wings of War, WW I and WW II. Actually a boardgame, but I think it should be mentioned here. Great for smaller dogfights.
The free rule sets are a good way of getting started. Mustangs deserves special mentioning, as it is not only free, but has spawned several derivatives that together cover all areas of air warfare. Bag the Hun uses a card-based activation system to add fog of war, but games can apparently be quite long. Check your 6! seems to be a good fast-play rules set.
Miniatures
- GHQ. WW II, modern in 1/285 scale.
- Raiden Miniatures. WW II, modern in 1/285 scale.
- CinC. WW I, WW II, modern in 1/285 scale.
- Scotia Grendel. WW II, modern in 1/300 scale.
- Navwar. WW I, WW II, modern in 1/300 scale.
- Skytrex. WW I, WW II, modern in 1/300 scale.
- I-94 Enterprises sell decals.
- Dom’s Decals, another supplier of decals.
As you can see, there are two different scales: 1/285 and 1/300, resulting in a 5% scale difference. GHQ has a reputation of outstanding quality, but also being expensive. Skytrex apparently has poor quality. Raiden Miniatures is quite new and are busily expanding their line. My personal choice would be 1/285 scale as I would also use GHQ and CinC miniatures for ground warfare.