Nightfighter - GMT Games Conversion (Part 2)

Spirit Games in the UK had GMT Nightfighter through the door this morning in under 24 hours from ordering :).  We played Scenario 3 (Wellingtons against JU-88) this evening after a quick read through of the rules.
Initial impressions that it is very slick and very quick which is good for keeping the interest up.

Scenario 3 is a Normal level scenario which means the Nightfighter should have a good chance of achieving the victory conditions.  My youngest took no time at all to work out how to triangulate (yes with two radars) the single contact on the board and had the aircraft shepherded between a Freya and  Wurzburg while bringing in the Ju-88 to intercept.  He took a while to spot the bomber but once he had the bomber didn't survive the contact.  By the time he had gained the first victory the other two bombers were on the map and racing for the end and he let them go.

Playing for "real" so to speak meant we could discuss options for playing this with Minis at various points.
2" Hexes are probably the smallest we will use for Minis (at 1/600th) but even then the table size was only 4'6" long (27 hexes) and is only 19 Hexes wide (allowing for Nav Beacons) which is a reasonable playing area.
We started off with the Defending Nightfighter on the board on a level 2 height stand (Bombers are on level 1) to indicate height advantage and drop down to a 1 height stand when ready to attack. Once at that level it can't be regained so that means we don't have to worry about variable heights etc.

From a bomber model perspective it is one of four states:

• It is completely undetected and so only appears on the umpire map.
• It has appeared as a contact on a radar screen and could just use a simple marker.
• It has been fixed by AI or Searchlight in which case I thought about using a black painted model
• It has been Tallied by an opponent in which case it is a fully painted model on the table.

This means that we only really need two types of model. One to indicate a Fix and one that has been visually spotted.

I think we will keep the umpire blind screen running as normal as that keeps play honest rather than go for the solitaire version. For multiplayer games I think it would be possible to use one Nighfighter per player and enforce the deconfliction rule.