1/72 diecast WWI biplanes are available at hobbylinc.com/prods/vag.htm There's a problem. Diecasts are heavy. Our gang plays Airdrome on a Battlemasters mat with 5" hexes. (We plan to try out Blue Max wunna theze daze.) Our stands are telescoping radio antennas screwed/glued into 5" plexiglass bases, the same size as a hex. The planes attach to the stands with rare-earth magnets. This type of stand is heavy and stable enough that tipping isn't a problem. And if one does tip over, the diecast airplane bounces instead of shattering! (A boon to klutz gamers everywhere!) The antennas can take the weight. The stress does tend to make the antenna separate from the base - so we're using more glue. I play Mustangs with WWII diecasts. For that system, I mount the planes on low, one-piece flight stands, usually the stand that came with the airplane. Many airwar gamers like to move their airplanes up and down on adjustable stands to physically model altitude relationships, and I'm not opposed to doing that. But I noticed that the Mustangs boardgame did no such thing, and seemed to play just fine, logging altitude and speed for flat counters on a flat surface. For practical purposes, you can't accurately model spatial relationships in an airwar game, you can only suggest them and let the gamer's mind's eye do the rest. Using low, non-adjustable flight stands requires a little more suspension of disbelief, but it greatly simplifies the engineering of the game. While we log aircraft altitude and speed, I also display these on the table, on a pair of six-sided dice next to each toy airplane, so we can play without constantly consulting each others' log sheets. White dice for altitude, colored dice for speed. To date we've used only early war aircraft, so D6s get the job done. When we introduce Me-262s, I'll have to extend the system somehow. There are photos of one of my Mustangs games in a photo album labeled 'Irv's Pix' on the Air-Pirates Yahoo group site. The Air-Pirates are nominally devoted to miniature wargaming using the Mustangs rules, but devotees of other airwar systems are welcome. You might take a look at the group, if you're not already a member. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 3 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com