I had a very good time in this event, even though I missed Frame 1 (Oktoberfest). The 190's, as a whole, had a very good event and a great time. As Spikes and Dragon have already mentioned, it was a lot of fun being in a butcher bird this month. The fighter action was very good as well. It felt balanced, maybe even in favor of the Axis. I feel that the advantage fell to the Axis slightly because of the inter-squadron communication and fluidity of our fighting. Also, the Axis were blessed with some very good pilots and, of course, FW 190's. However, this slight advantage was negated by the bomber match up and the difficulties of killing B-26's. This leads me into the negatives.
Again, I think there were too many options with too few players. There were a total of four target areas, not targets, for roughly 65 people. Three of these areas were 25 mi. x 25 mi. with a less than generous warning range (base flash). This made defending AND escorting an extremely difficult task. You either cannot field enough escorts or cannot field enough defenders. Because of this, attacking the wide area with NOE bombers is the most effective plan. The Axis were aware of this, as were the Allies. We chose not to defend because we wanted to dominate the fighters, which we did with relative ease. Luckily, the plan was designed for fun rather than success. Lastly, I feel that Pass/Fail scoring is faulty. Escorts should be rewarded for doing a good job by scoring points (i.e. bombers get a lot of points because of easy drops) and defenders should be rewarded for doing a good job (i.e. bombers do not gain many points because they did not destroy many targets). I would prefer a points per target style scoring to a Pass/Fail scoring; this is specific to bombers, obviously.
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