Simple Wings of War in 1/100 scale

My latest project has been for a young lad at our English school, who - after eighteen months of perseverence and three failed attempts - has succeeded in passing a pretty tough national English exam. He is only twelve years old, and after his having dedicated himself so completely to study for so long I thought that I'd try to find something playful that he could enjoy. In one of my classes with him I'd brought out a simplified version of Wings of War and used it for ten minutes or so (I was teaching... prepositions. Yeah, that was why I brought it out. It was to teach prepositions...). This he really enjoyed, so I decided a variant of Dawn of War (the WWII version) could be the way to go.

As it turns out, one of the local hobby shops carries a range of 1/100 pre-painted aircraft which had caught my eye on numerous occasions. I had stoically resisted buying these for my own purposes up to this point, but being a lazy fellow, and with these kits only requiring assembly, I thought these would be perfect. Two pairs of Spitfires and Messerschmitt BF 109s later, we had our beginnings. After a bit of experimentation with methods of mounting the things, I settled on 3mm thick clear plastic bases onto which a piece of matching plastic rod is fixed.

This is a shot of them on their stands (they slip on and off as needed):


1/100 needed everything scaled up, so I made up some movement cards and a measuring stick by hand, and put together a couple of combat results table to allow him to use dice to calculate damage. I also put together some profile cards for each plane (thanks Google images!)and used some cork circles as markers for speed and damage.

Here you can see the kits:

Finally, I found a box that was big enough to fit everything (see below)...

...and gave it to him today. He seemed pretty pleased, so I hope that over the next wee while we'll get to hear a few stories about air combat in his living room to balance out the all-Saturday study.