Success

The new rules for 1/144 scale fighter combat I wrote, Angle of Deflection, was tested Saturday. I'm happy to report that the rules worked wonderfully, and we had a great time playing them!
As is normal, I suck at the game, but it's still fun to play. I seem to have a knack for writing games I can't win. Ah, well.
The photo here is obviously photo shopped. I removed the flight poles and extended the ground out to cover the table, but that is all. The positions of the fighters is an actual in game shot. I couldn't have purposely posed anything better, and the fact that this is a real game shot just makes it awesome.
That's Hans going down there, the cotton smoke denoting that he's falling and not just diving. Dieter is in the center German plane and he's about to be slapped down by John the pilot of the approaching P47, who is also responsible for the current condition of Hans.
Unfortunately, that German on the left is about to end John's career by igniting his fuel tank. I forget who that German pilot was, Wolfgang I think.
Hans successfully bailed out and lived to torment the Americans in the next game. Dieter went into a fatal spin and rode his plane all the way down.
We played with a sort of campaign in mind. The pilots names and kills kept track of so it formed a long kind of story. The Germans played twice, once against the British, once against the Americans. They lost to the U.S..
Then we switched and played the Pacific, Japan and America. The Americans lost, which was me of course, but I blame the crappy planes. And the heat and humidity of the South Pacific. (which was fabulously recreated in the basement by virtue of a broken furnace blower).

Overall it went very well. It was fun, it wasn't difficult, and I'm looking forward to playing again which is always a good sign. Those Jerries are going to answer for John!

The game itself didn't prove nearly as complex as I had feared it would. It seems to have a learning curve that hits a plateau quickly. We spent only a few minutes grasping the rules, then a few turns figuring out how turns and such translate into reality, and then it was fine. Meaning that it's one thing to know I can make a three point turn moving five inches between points, it's another thing to see how it really plays out in the table.
After those first few turns things went by very quickly.