Flying Aces of World War I

When I was a youngster (9? 10?), I read Gene Gurney's fantastic book, "Flying Aces of WW I".  It established a life long fascination with those magnificent young men and their flying machines - the aerialists of the various military forces in the Great War.  I should point out that the book is just as old as I am - we were both first unleashed on an unsuspecting world, back in 1965.

While on a trip, this past week, back to my old hometown (Newport News, Virginia), I met up with a few wargamers who used to belong to the grand old wargaming club of Newport News, ODMS.  Alas, ODMS exists no longer, but we got together anyway and played at World's Best Comics.  The game that we played? Wings of War.  John Snelling who hosted the game, is a member of the Friday Night wargaming group Wings of War Nouvelles du Nouveau Port ("Wings of War Newport News").

Wings of War (now Wings of Glory, due to the game transferring from one publisher to another) is a fantastic game, and is the inspirational basis for the Star Wars: X Wing Miniatures game and the new Star Trek: Attack Wing game, both with some changes from the original.  The game has been very well supported, with multiple versions of the base game available.  It is playable out of the box with very nice, full color counters for each plane, and decks of cards for maneuver and shooting, and measuring sticks for combat range.  In addition, a very large, and continuing to be supported, line of miniature aircraft (1:144 scale) are available.  Each aircraft comes with a maneuver deck, and a clear plastic stand the illustrates things like the firing arc, and the deck type the aircraft uses for maneuver and shooting.

In Wings of War (the title I came to know the game under, and the version that I own), you pilot individual aircraft, each with their own behavior characteristics, although a single player may actually control more than one aircraft.  The individual characteristics are these: Different gunnery ability (signified by a letter, which determines which deck of cards to draw from when shooting), different maneuver ability (signified by different decks of maneuver cards, each deck making different maneuvers available for a player to select from, when moving his aircraft; more nimble planes are reflected by having maneuvers that reflect such; more powerful planes have maneuvers that reflect moving further in the same period of time), and each type of aircraft is different by having a different amount of damage it can take.

Additional sets of planes and rules have been released under each version of the game, allowing for other types of air combatants, other than the typical (and iconic) single engine fighter (biplane, triplane, or monoplane).  Those additional units include bombers, exotic fighters, and even balloons.

The game is lightweight, but is extremely satisfying to play.  It scales very large (so you can have large groups of pilots flying in the same game, the only limit is getting gamers all piled up together to control their fighters in tight dogfights.  It gives you the basics that you need to play a dogfighting game - a simple (intuitive) way to move/maneuver, and a simple (intuitive) way to handle combat.  What makes this so satisfying is that - (1) being able to maneuver, with limited field of fire weapons, leads to actual dogfighting, where players are trying to out think and out maneuver each other, and (2) the ability to shoot at each other gives an immediate feedback as to how well the contest is going, because you can get a feel for how much damage (in this game, in terms of how many damage cards, even if you don't know the value of each) each other is taking.

This is a very successful mix, and gives enough for a fun game.  The interactions between the players, and any scenarios that are used to give structure to the basic game (fly and shoot), mean that there is an easy way to ensure re-playability.  But, really, this lowest common denominator (move and shoot) is enough for this sort of game.  It has been used in a bunch of other similar games, all very successful.

Those include Blue Max (from GDW; now released as Canvas Eagles), although Blue Max adds some more complication to the Shooting mechanism, by introducing multiple hit locations on the aircraft, rather than a simple damage total.

Other WWI flying games where it has been done are Richthofen's War (Avalon Hill), Dogfight (Milton Bradley), Red Baron (Wargamer magazine) and Knights of the Air (TSR). An argument can also be made that the flip book game, Ace of Aces (Flying Buffalo) is of this family of games.

Each of these games adds some minor variations to the basic Shoot and Move mix.  Some use dice, some use cards, Ace of Aces uses a clever, integrated system of looking up page numbers in a book, based on what existed conditions prevail when the decision to move is made.  Some use hexes, some use free movement.  One thing that gets added to each of these games, which I really don't believe is necessary, is the aspect of Altitude.  This is not necessary, in my opinion, for the basic fun mix of Shooting and Moving.  It tends to lengthen the game, and doesn't really add too much to the basic move/shoot mix.  The same thing was true of the old Superior Models' game Starfleet Wars.  The effort to implement altitude changes, and the ability to maneuver in the third dimension, as well as the changes to shooting - just ain't worth the hassle.

Now, to all of this, I would suggest that another game that falls into this niche (and there are many, many) is the game Car Wars.  It is a dogfighting game, especially when played in an arena, involving the ability to Move an Shoot.  Of course, it is not as simple as the games listed here, but in its basic form, it ALMOST is.  Good news for fans of Car Wars - once Steve Jackson Games is done with the new version of OGRE (getting it all shipped out, which should be finished, finally, in the Autumn of 2013), they are going to do a monster box version of Car Wars.  Hooray!

Veteran's Day, Remembrance Day, WWI and Wargaming

Yes, the fact that Veteran's Day (known under other names, such as Remembrance Day) is on November 11 is for a very real reason. The Armistice that ended WWI was signed in a Railway Car on November 11, in 1918. It was signed by the Allied commander in chief, Foch, and also by the German representative Erzberger. Although the signing took place at 5am, the effective time of the ceasefire between Western Front belligerents took place at 11am. So 11th hour, 11th day, 11th month of 1918. Okay, enough history (I had to write this because I recently saw an article on Remembrance Day comparing it Memorial Day in the US, and mentioned that by coincidence it was also Veteran's Day, but never mentioning why the date is important - one wonders if the author of that article knew what was important about 11/11).

Now, on to WWI wargaming.  This article focuses on Board Games, but I may do a similar treatment for Miniatures Rules.  There have been a lot. From some Avalon Hill standards like Guns of August and 1914 to more modern fare like Clash of Giants and Paths of Glory.  The magazine Command had two that were very appealing to me - 1914: Glory's End and 1918: Storm in the West.

There have been some wonderful boardgames on the Naval aspect of the war, again going back to the venerable Jutland from Avalon Hill, Dreadnought from SPI and the more recent Avalanche Press tour de force series, The Great War at Sea.  Once again, Command Magazine also had a great treatment - Jutland, the Duel of Dreadnoughts.  In fact if we limit our examination to just games with the name Jutland in the title (which is not surprising, since it was far and away the single more important naval engagement of the conflict), we uncover the two player card game Jutland from the prolific Lloyd Krassner of Warpspawn Games.

Moving on to the dan of warfare between aircraft, we see a number of titles - from the excellent Avalon Hill title Richthofen's War through GDW's Blue Max, the very clever Ace of Aces published by Nova Games, and in modern times the immensely successful Wings of War.

Finally, there are some very interesting grand scale games that attempt to show the entire war, at a highly aggregated level of detail, but one which gives a great overview. Amongst these, of course, is the revolutionary game Diplomacy, which is about the origins of the war.  But also in this category is the new First World War published by Mayfair and Phalanx.

Lots to pick from, and to make things even MORE interesting, within ODMS we have a new design for the battle of Tannenberg (the 1914 version) based on the excellent Napoleonic 20 series of games from Victory Point games.  At our Nov 11 meeting of the club, John Dent and I got to play the game a couple of times, and it is really enjoyable.  Look here for some interesting additions to the game, and some cool reuse of the same idea for other battles.

Tags: world war one, wargames, board games