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Monday, July 21

Five-Second Richtofen's War

 Reviewing my old blog posts I wrote up on my play of Richtofen’s War, the venerable war game from the now defunct Avalon Hill. Specifically, the posts are a review of all the “variants” I tried which were printed in The General magazine, AH’s house paper which came out on a regular basis for like ever.

And many of the variants were good. They all attacked the problem in the game of circling each other trading shots on each other’s tail. And no fancy maneuvers to pull off, or so it appears, in the game rules. While yes, you can do fancy maneuvers with the base game, I don’t want to spend time on defending this position because it is not germane to today’s post.

No, this post is about the one variant I never tried, the 5-Second Game! I distinctly remember stating I wasn’t going to test this variant. From all the different variants I have read I concluded the 5-Second rules were going to be the least interesting.

And I was absolutely wrong! I have just started playing the campaign game again solo, and this 5-second variant really nails it. Brings the game out of some of its frustrating ahistorical events occurring on the game board. The 5-second variant cuts the time scale for a game turn in half, from 10 seconds to 5 seconds. What this does is limit the ability to swing back and forth shooting at each other’s tails. It is also more difficult to shake off an attacker with the reduced time scale. The net effect is it is harder to get on your opponent’s six, but once there it can be difficult for them to shake you off.

Here is a good picture of what I mean.


The photo/recon Allied plane is running hell-for-leather to get off the north edge of the board. Two d3’s barrel after it, closing distance and starting to do damage. Right after the Huns comes the two Nieport 17’s trying to defend their lightly-arm ed photo/recon plane. And in the rear is the last Albatross. Everybody is firing at everybody! Well, not quite. This photo shows an Albatross and Nieport 17 stacked on top of each other. But don't worry, these guys have been trading shots. A splendid fight I must say. 

And here is a photo of the whirling dogfight which erupted while the photo/recon plane took their photos of the road network. The development of the encounter felt much more satisfying, that proper coordination with a wing man, and overall squad tactics feel achievable with the 5-second time scale.


Deflection, you will want to use the Optional rule on Deflection. It is a simple -1 combat modifier, but it makes that six o'clock position all the more valuable. Combine this with the rules for a flying "Ace" and you get better dogfights. Basically use all the optional and tournament rules for the game. 

There is math you must do to convert the planes in the game to the new time scale. But fear not! There is a great sheet on board game geek which has all the stats written up. So, I am saying I was wrong, the best of the variants is the 5-Second Game. It came out in the General Volume 23, issue 1. And it makes Richtofen’s War a fun game to play again.

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