WWI air has always been a really strong passion of mine that goes all the way back to Dawn Patrol a board game of yore.
Now days 1/144 WWI airplanes can be found a plenty. With Battlefront dipping into WWI I do wonder if they won’t add an air component at some point especially given the use of air to spot artillery both from planes as well as from observation balloons. There was also some amount of bombing and strafing of targets on the ground.
O pretty pictures. Right 🙂
Some of my holdings.
Anyway the best rules I like to use is Red Baron by Emporer’s Press. You can find them here. Seriously buy a set, you’ll be glad you did!
What does a game of Red Baron look like and what makes it fun? Â First you select your plane, in this game I had an French Nieuport 17 and an Italian Ansaldo going up against a couple of Austrian planes a Phoenix D I and an Oeffeg DIII.
The planes are mounted on sticks with each inch representing a 100′ of game altitude. You plot a turn at a time for your plane and then move. So if you’re moving at say 100 mph, you have 10 boxes of movement to pre-plot where of course you can climb, dive, bank, turn, etc etc through that turn depending on the capabilities of your airplane.
Of course you want to end up on someones tail (if you can) and fire bursts. Depending on the attitude between the two respective aircraft determines if you have pluses or minuses to apply. Range also figures into it. Drop a percentage roll and hope for the best!
To work through an example, first you see if your target is in cone. (You can see the cone in  picture above on the table). Next you measure distance to your target in inches. Let’s say 8″ in this example. Next you check the angle between you and your target with the wheel for attitude. (It’s the wheel again on the table) So an attitude with an attack from the rear is a +3.
Next you roll for bursts, let’s say a long burst from the lewis gun and the Vickers, you roll a d10 for each gun. If you score above the length of the burst, that’s how much of a burst you get off. Roll below and your guns jam. A 3 is the minimum number and a 2 for a lewis gun, let’s say I’m successful, so that combines for a 5.
How we add in the attitude, the bursts, and subtract the distance, so for this example that’s 5 (bursts), +3 (attitude), – 8, and multiply by 10… so we’re at a zero. You roll percentage dice and add/subtract the previous result and that gives you a value that you look up on a table. If you get a 100+, your target automatically goes down. Lower it’ll be some amount of damage that they mark on their sheet.
It’s a mighty fun and challenging game. In the past our gaming group has had whole air campaigns where as new aircraft would become available the balance of power would shift back and forth.