Tail-End Charlie Playtest pt 1

This is a playtest run through of Tail-End Charlie. The story of Albert Green, the first downtime and mission.

Setup

I’m going to play Albert Green, a 19 year old cockney lad from London. He is joining the Lancaster L for London, which the crew have christened the “Lady Jane”

Crew

Position	Person
Pilot	Walter Appleby
Navigator	Harry Roberts
Bomb Aimer	Sidney Smith
Wireless Operator	“Sparks” McCloud, a Scot.
Flight Engineer	Patrice Delacroix, a Frenchman.
Upper Turret	Alan Knight

Downtime 1

Cards Drawn

Recreation: 2♦️, 7♦️, Q♦️, K♦️
Romance: Q❤️

I spent some of my time overseeing maintenance of the “Lady Jane”. Our first mission is coming up and it is important that I know how everything works - not just my turret at the back! I was doing this with our flight engineer, Patrice Delacroix. He’s a Frenchman, and a devil for the ladies with that accent of his. Glad to have him with us though - and he’s glad to be striking back at those who’ve taken over his country!

We all went to a great variety show put on by ENSA (Every Night Something Awful). We laughed like loons! Then we went out to the pub and got smashed. Harry got roaring drunk and I hope he clears his head before we set off. We don’t want a hung-over navigator!

I don’t mind admitting I’m a bit nervous, so I went to see padre Brown, our chaplain. They say that there are no atheists in a foxhole, and I’m pretty committed to a little foxhole at the tail-end of Lady Jane. I think I’ll be sending up a prayer or two.

Thinking about praying, I must mention my own little angel. I had a wonderful slow dance with a girl called Vera Jones. She was warm and witty and clever, and we swapped addresses at the end. I think we are officially dating now after that dance. Ma would be amazed!

Anyway, that’s enough for now. Tomorrow is the briefing and then tomorrow night the op. I hope it goes well.

Character changes: Albert now has a relationship status of 2 (dating Vera Jones)

Mission 1

Cards Drawn

Operation: 2♣️, 9♣️, K♣️
Danger: J♠️, K♠️

It’s clear weather for the op, and I thought that was a good thing both for Harry our navigator and for my role in spotting bandits. We were lucky to catch the target completely unwares, and there was barely any flak as we reached them. But as our bombs started landing all hell broke loose up here too. We were turning for home when our neighbouring bomber, S for Sugar was raked by cannon fire and exploded in a ball of flame. I was dreadfully shaken, and as the plane plummeted down I could see tiny flaming figures tumbling from the wreckage.

Blinking tears from my eyes, I was aware of several Messerschmitt 110’s closing fast. I caught one of them with my quad machine guns and he peeled off pouring smoke, but another raked our fuselage with cannon fire. There was confused shouting over the tannoy as the skipper threw the Lady Jane about to keep us safe. I was on automatic myself - see a plane, shoot a plane, see a plane shoot a plane. I was a deadly sting in our tail and downed three bandits before we escaped from them and headed home across the North Sea. I learned later that I would be mentioned in dispatches for my actions today.

My jubilation was short-lived, as I discovered what the tannoy chatter had been about. That cannon that hit our fuselage took out “Sparks”. I’d barely known him and now he was gone. I might have had an angel on my shoulder but poor old McCloud hadn’t. He was only 20. With that and the loss of S for Sugar with all hands I found my guts clenched with fear. I was going to have to do this all over again. This was just the start.

Character changes: Albert has been Mentioned in Dispatches, but he also now has a stress of 4 (Dread). He is close to being barred from flying.

This sounds great, when can I play it?

Well, it's coming to kickstarter on February 11th. You can find the 'coming soon' page with more details here:

It would be really helpful if you could sign up to be notified of it's launch, and spread the news about Tail-End Charlie.

If you think this sounds really exciting, and you'd like to participate in the alpha playtest, drop me a line on email (alex on this domain) or on Bluesky, and I'll sort you out with a copy of the playtest draft!

• zinequest