From: David Ferris Subject: WWI Fighter game: Hostile Aircraft Darren "Pooh of Tao" Reid asks: > Isn't Taoist music something like everyone strapping on enormous bass > drums and wandering around not banging on them? No, that's called a "department head meeting". So last weekend we finally got around to trying Hostile Aircraft (HA), the set of miniatures rules from Goblintooth. HA covers aeroplane combat from about 1915 to 1920, using 1:300 (microarmour or "epic") scale miniature aircraft. Personally, I had some specific guidelines in mind for judging the game's historical accuracy. Specifically, was it just like when I was playing the old Red Baron game on the PC? Did I accidentally shoot at my own wingmate a lot? Did I run into the ground a lot? Did I run into other airplanes a lot? Did enemy planes make a "pffffft-POP!" sound when I shot them down? Sadly, Hostile Aircraft fails on all those counts. Aside from that, though, HA is a pretty good game. We started with a simple scenario: two Albatros V's (one flown by Rick, the other piloted by me) against two SE5a's (both flown by Robert). The game was quick (30 minutes? Perhaps 45?) and easy, and involved lots of swirling and climbing and diving. Despite the speed and ease of the game, it *felt* right. The author of the rules has obviously done extensive research on the subject; he thoughtfully put a many-paged bibliography in the back of the rules. The list of plane types in the game is the most extensive I've seen, certainly much more than you get with AH Richtoven's War, and more than I remember in Excalibre's reprint of Wings. I couldn't think of anything that was missing. The record sheets (one for each plane) look pretty daunting at first, but after a moment or two you realize there are only a couple of numbers on there you have to pay attention to. I think I went through the entire game without having to do anything at all on my record sheet, except mark a change in 1000-foot altitude band once. (Changes on 50 feet in altitude are indicated by the plane's position, held by alligator clip, on the markings on the altitude stand.) I'm no expert on flight or WWI fighters, aside from what I picked up building dozens of model WWI airplanes in my misspent youth. Bearing that in mind, I thought HA played out pretty well. It felt like a nice balance between simulation and quick'n'dirty game. Not knowing anything about the game mechanics (we relied on the old tried-and-true method of having one person, in this case Rick, study the rules and the rest of us just try to figure it out as we went along) I managed to get two kills, with neither me nor my wingman taking more than light damage. The highlight of the game, for me, was when I flew my Albatros headlong into both SE5a's. My wingman was off to the right, swinging around, trying to line up for a shot. I blazed away. The SE5a's held their fire, hoping for a better shot. I crippled one Britischer in that pass, but misjudged the difference in our altitudes, and ended up flying right over him, my landing gear rolling across the top of his wing. He attempted to shoot at me with his rail-mounted Lewis gun and I shouted rude things at him as I rolled by. The airplane models, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, look kinda sad in the little baggies, but once assembled and painted they look pretty sharp. Decals are available as well, and really make the models. Brass tubing, identical to the stuff provided for the altitude stands, is available dirt cheap in your local hobby store. I recommend buying a few feet of the brass tubing, both to reinforce the soft flex plastic pieces that form the "backbone" of the stands, and to periodically replace the little bits of tubing that go underneath the individual planes. I found I was accidentally gluing these tubes "shut" when assembling them to the planes, making the tubes worthless for attaching to the stands. The gap-filling CNA glues (Zap-a-Gap is my favourite brand) work very well for assembling the planes & stands, just mind you don't get it in the brass tubes or they *will* solidify. HA comes in a half-thickness, Squad Leader gamette-size box and runs about $25-$30 US as I recall. In that, you get the rulebook (about 40? pages, much of which is bibliography, designer's notes, historical background, and aircraft data lists), some game charts, two small 6-sided dice, two altitude stands for the single-seat fighters, and two planes: a Sopwith Camel and a Fokker DrI Triplane. That's pretty much all you need to play, aside from the usual stuff: rulers, photocopies of the plane record sheets. O' course you're going to want to get more planes, more stands, and more dice. DLF (who understands *very well* why they wouldn't let him be a real pilot when he joined the Air Force) ... So I'm working on this new set of wargame rules using Beanie Babies, but I had to spend three weeks working on the file format... _____________________________________________________________________ David Ferris Technical Account Manager dferris@research.att.com CGS Computer Associates/AT&T Labs Research Room B221, 973-360-8664 http://www.research.att.com/info/dferris