From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: WW1 Air Rules? Richtofen's War Recollections I played Richtofen's War a lot back in HS, but have since sold it. Here are my scanty recollections, for what they're worth: The Hex & Counter paradigm doesn't do air combat real well, but RW may be about as good a compromise between playability and what we call simulation as you're going to find. Bookkeeping isn't too bad but there are record sheets. The I-go-U-go problem is evident, but the game still works. Works great with three or four players. Physically the game is nice. Map and counters are durable and attractive. The road-map style fold-out rules are easy to read and understand, and I seem to remember a lot of cool real world statistics and plane diagrams, probably in a booklet. The various planes do act quite differently in play, a key flavor element in the game. The record sheets are uninspired but not annoying. Damage levels and turn modes are entered before the game for easy reference. There are only a few numbers per plane, so if you really wanted to do large battles or PBEM it wouldn't be hard. There's usually a handful of aircraft, perhaps four to eight, per side. Altitude is an optional rule and only covers Lo-Med-High, not the same scale as horizontal. There are campaign rules I never used that include bombing, photo recon, etc. Turns are I-Go-U-Go, and when you may move as many as seven hexes that's a pretty serious drawback: someone in front of you can get behind you and turn towards your tail, thus becoming advantaged, forcing you to move first and thus maintaining the tail. Generally planes are moving around four hexes a turn and can barely manage one or two turns per move, so its not a complete nightmare, but basically it plays like you're making moves on a board, not like you're flying along with your prey, trying to out-turn them. You do a lot of counting hexes to see where you could end up. Any board game simulating air-to-air combat will have to make compromises to playability, and when you make enough of them to make it fun there will be loopholes that create ahistorical behaviors. Personally, I just ordered GMT's Rise of the Luftwaffe from their Winter Specials. It seems to be highly regarded around the network as a lot of fun, and I'm beginning to think the cunning and uncertainty of a card game may better recreate the moment to moment striving tension of air-to-air combat, as I (pretend to) understand it. They're supposed to be working on a WW1 edition, but their lead times are ages. What I'll always remember most is my intention to combine RW with Yaquinto's Swashbuckler as the air-to-air component of a semi-RPG in a mountainous world of biplanes and swordplay. But that's another story. I can't compare it to the alternatives, but if you really wanted to play a board game of WW1 air to air combat RW is probably worthwhile: 1) it works, 2) the maps, counters and rules are all attractive and very amenable to tinkering, and 3) I think it generally goes pretty cheap anyway. Hope this is helpful, Andrew Walters Last games played: Up Front! - Dixie - Victory - Settlers of Catan - Cults Across America At 7:56 AM -0800 2/16/99, Jim Mason wrote: >Dave wrote: > >> Anyone out there doing WW1 air minis? If so, what set of >> rules are you using? >> >> I recently tried a game using the Red Baron rules, from >> the Emperor's Press. They seemed OK, but not great, >> so I'm open to other ideas. Unfortunately, I haven't seen >> much out there. Ability to handle 1/72 scale well is a plus. > >Speaking of this, can anyone give me a paragraph or two about AH's >Richtofen's War? What's it like, how it plays, etc? I've been >thinking about picking up a copy on the ebay or elsewhere . . . > >Jim > >Jim Mason, Director of Development >Graduate School of Education, Univ. of Utah >mason_j@gse.utah.edu >(801)581-8221 >http://members.tripod.com/~Charlemagne64/medieval.html