Advanced Level Richthofen's War

 Promises simultaneous movement and combat. I hope it doesn't bust the game's simple mechanics. One of the strong points of RW is fast set up and fast play.This variant from David A. Bottger gets high praise from the editor at the General, Avalon Hill’s house organ for their line of classic wargames. The main feature of this variant is simultaneous movement and firing. The game turn changes from an IGO-UGO

move and fire schedule so a game turn is only 1 segment instead of 2 segments per RAW. What this gives a pilot in the game is an edge to the one who knows their plane the best. In ariel combat absolute understanding of your plane’s capabilities is an essential ingredient for survival. To me this means the variant is off to a very promising start. 

The other feature is “Tailing”. This returns the real-life advantage of being on your enemy’s 6 to anticipate their move and line up your shot for the kill. Awesome. The tailing mechanic is a target number set by position, range, and the two plane’s maneuver schedules. Degree of success determines the percentage of the tailed plane’s plotted movement which must be revealed to the tailing pilot. This information should be limited to the players/pilots involved because WWI craft had no radios. From my first read through of the variant I do not believe there is a limit to the number of planes which can tail a target and the tailer can be jumped and tailed by other enemy craft at the same time. Getting even better!

Take note, the field of fire is no longer limited to a straight line out from the front of your plane. It has been increased to a 60 degree front-facing arc. This is to compensate for the difficulty of getting directly in line for your shot when there is guess work in where you and your opponent is going to end up at the end of the movement phase. I do not know if this is necessary, but we will go with it for now. I anticipate much more shooting in this variant then regular play.

Unexpected Maneuvers are expected to be used. But unlike Flying Lessons the author gives very clear instructions on their use. I am now going to set up the first scenario again and run through some turns to reach a verdict on this variant. Does it enhance, does it detract, does it play with little or no ambiguity? I set the pieces on the board differently than the previous game, but it does not change the start of the game much. The planes are shooting at each other in the first turn! I messed around with different throttle settings in the previous game to see the effect. I came to the conclusion speed is king. All planes in this start come out full throttle with no intention of letting up. The Sopwith Camel has a top throttle speed of 10 and the Fokker Dr 1 is 9. The Fokker can climb and dive farther than the Sopwith in a turn, but all in all these two planes are an even match. I see the Fokkers climbing and diving in this match up much more than the previous run.

But not for the first two turns. I plot movement and resolve. Everybody is eager to shoot someone down so almost all the aircraft are currently at 3,000m. The combatants blow by each other spitting hot lead and turn around and do it again. With the increased arc of fire there are many more shots being fired, and hits! 7 damage points are spread among two of the Sopwiths while one of the Fokkers takes 6 points of damage. This first clash sees the Sops getting the better of it. They have 12 damage points compared to the Fokkers 10. With only 4 points left the stricken German is going to scoot out of the engagement real soon.

Top of turn 3 and we are looking at our first tailing opportunity. Sop2 forgoes shooting at the Baron who is right close and picks a Fokker farther out flying away from the Sops ten o’clock as its target. With the increased distance the Sop is increasing its chances of a successful tail. The fire resolution is a miss and reading the tailing rules closely I find the Allied plane is too far away to force the tailing rules on its opponent. Everybody plots their moves in secret!

Turns 4-8 see the Sop3 spraying most of the ammo. It got one good shot on Fok3 reducing it to 4 pts of damage. This is over 50% of the triplanes hit points so its climb and speed have been reduced. With his plane holding together by the merest strips of canvas the Fok 3 heads to the deck and bugs out. The rest of the planes circle, maneuver, pull special maneuvers- all trying to get behind their enemy close enough to tail. Interesting. Both the Sops and the two remaining Fokkers find themselves shooting at the limits of their range and always just one hex away from being close enough to tail. Everyone is just keeping that 50m cushion putting this advantage out of reach of their opponent.  Shots are traded, but we are now scoring 1 or 2 hits of damage an attack. The Baron did drop right in behind Capt. Brown, but the altitude difference was too great to achieve tailing.

The rules are all working fine with little to no ambiguities. It is easy to see how and when you can perform a special maneuver. There are easy to assess attack modifiers which consider angle of attack, speed, Ace status and the like. The tailing rules make a great substitute for the RAW spotting rules. Side-Slips and Barrel Rolls and Loops keep the action tight. 

And I don’t like it as much as the “Flying Lessons” variant. What is up with that?  It is the ease of maneuver, which is also present in RAW, the planes can produce. The previous variant locks you in to a left, right or straight flight path for your entire movement. But if you start receiving a hail of bullets the variant asks you to bust out the Unexpected Maneuvers schedule or pull extreme Gs to roll out of a certain death tailing situation. I may be frustrated with the holes, the vagueness in the rule interpretations for the Flying variant, but pulling the stick and shifting the rudder to set up my attack run was more fun. I didn’t notice a difference in firing chances either, which you would expect because “Advanced” increases the arc of fire. The Flying Lessons variant remains true to the RAW, your firing arc is directly ahead. While the Advanced must add an additional rule to shooting your guns to cover the flexible maneuver abilities, the Flying variant forces you to target more carefully. But I had just as many firing chances during the session. Go figure. 

The Day the Baron Died Wargame Report

The line up for Scenario #1 is Richthofen vs. Brown, an attempt to simulate the Red Baron's last engagement on the morning of April 21, 1918. This is also the only scenario I ever remember playing as kid, and it was only ever the Basic Level, just two planes involved, the Captain and the Baron. We are going advanced level which gives each side a couple of wingmen, six planes engaged in all! 

Just to reiterate, I am using the "Flying Lesson" variant with the the "Unexpected Manuevers" variant bolted on. The two evenly matched squads close quickly and manuever to get a killing shot. Side note, I wouldn't have been able to keep track of all the details without some sort of log to record the manuever choices at the begining of each turn. Once again the Board Game Geek website is your go to for fan-created play aids. I downloaded the log and start recording turn actions. 

First three turns have been run through and it appears as if the first clash is a high-speed fly by. Capt. Brown was able to get a shot at the Baron but missed. The Baron, being shot at has the option of pulling a maneuver and goes for a 2-hex loop (costs 6 MP). Capt. Brown can react but will not know what the Baron picked. Both have advantage so it cancels out. Brown picks a Loop maneuver as well but blows the roll to because of the close 2-hex range. Even as an Ace, by rolling a 6 (6-3=3). I move the Sopwith Camel 6 hexes forward straight as it blows by the looping Baron.

This is where mashing two variants gets tricky. There are intersections of the rules which leave for vague interpretation. Here is how I’m playing it. The Baron is pulling a Loop so sets his controls appropriately. This will be the maneuver the bright red, triple-winged Fokker will take for it’s the upcoming game turn. The opposing Sopwith, not knowing what the Baron is planning climbs hard, banking right. 

The Sopwith on the Captains wing shoots at his target at a range of 5, scoring a single hit. The Fokker elects to choose an Unexpected maneuver, a Nose Dive! The Sopwith makes their roll to follow and makes a Barrel Roll right in reaction. I’m going to see if the Allied fighter can “sit” on top of the diving Fokker. Who knows, he may get a great view of the Fokker’s wings rip off as it takes this hazardous maneuver! With the conclusion of the 1^st game turn (yes, clashes out of the gate!) the pilots set their controls for turn 2. Two of the Fokkers have committed to their move. The third decides to fly straight through the scrum and looks to jump on his commanders wing next turn.

The Fokker pulling the nose dive makes their Overdive roll and successfully drops 500m. The baron completes his loop and takes the last movement point straight ahead because he has to. The Sop which started on the east side of the board has been flying straight at full throttle to catch up with his mates flies right past the Baron. Brown has turned his plane around and looking to get on the Baron’s six. Good luck with that!

Turn 3 and the Baron is going to lose altitude to 2700m and bank left towards Brown. Fokker #2 is going to climb and bank left. Fokker #3 maintains altitude of 3300m, opens up the throttle to top speed and turns right. This puts the German on Sopwith 3’s tail! Twin Vickers are depressed and a stream of bullets flash out of the muzzles. The Sopwith Camel takes 2 points of damage. The Fokker is only two hexes away, but due to the altitude difference the attack is at a range of 4. None of the allied planes have a target for defensive fire so we go for another unexpected maneuver. Sop #3 needs to shake the tri-plane on his tail. He is going to abort to a 4 MP Loop. The Fokker is going to try and follow. It needs a 4 or less to be successful. 5-2=3 (for the plane’s maneuver schedule). Success. The German knows the Allied plane is going for a Loop so can adjust his controls accordingly for the upcoming turn. Now here the rules are really not meshing. I have no idea when or how the Fokker is supposed to follow its prey. Does all these special maneuver happen now in the Sops defensive fire phase? I’m assuming the Sop just gets the opportunity to choose an unexpected maneuver for its upcoming move?

Turn 3 Allied move. Sop 3 pulls the Loop. This effectively leaves the plane in its same spot. Moves 1 back for the loop and with 1 MP left must move 1 forward, back where he started! I have know idea if this is going to helpful or not. Allied Ace Brown pulls his plane around and is flying head on at two Fokkers 6 or 7 hexes distance. Sop #2 going flat out banks sharply left ending up at the same altitude as Fok #3 one hex away on the German’s 11 o’clock. The Sop fires. The roll is shit, causing 1 point of damage. Focker #3 opts for an U.M. for turn 4. A Barrel Roll Right.

Turn plays out and Sop3 ends up with Fok3 still on its tail. The German is two hexes back and altitude difference add 3 to the range for a final of 5. Two points of damage to the Camel. Sop3 commits to an Immelmann Turn for Turn 5. The German sees what the Sop is trying to do so picks the same manuever.

Turn 5 Germans make their maneuvers. Fok2 ends up on Brown’s seven one hex away, same altitude and fires. Brown is an Ace so the Fok2 suffers a minus 1 to the roll. 2 points of damage.

Turn 5 for Sop3 is going to suck. The pilot, in a panic, opened up the throttle when making this Immelmann Turn and ends up in Fok3’s 12 o’clock again. But wait, Capt. Brown has maneuvered up on Fok3. If he can shoot the German down before the German gets defensive fire he may save one of his men. Sop2 is able to get on Fok2’s tail so let us see if we can bring some planes down! Brown is at a range of 2 and gets a +1 for Ace status. 10, the Fokker is lit up for 5 points of damage! Sop2 has a range of two as well. Rolling a 10 we know what that is, 5 points to the German plane! Now for the German defensive fire, an 11 for 4 points damage. At the conclusion of Turn 5 we have two Fok’s down to 4 damage points left, same for Sop3. Hard to tell which side is getting the better of it, a couple more turns though may decide this engagement.

I have to call it here because the variants together, while giving exactly what I want, a whirling dog-fight with fast, desperate maneuvering, are not clear on how they mesh. This is obviously because each is written by a different person. But Mike has the burden of making it work because he is adding the Unexpected Maneuvers to his flight control variant. Players will have to come to a consensus how to play before the start. My verdict is, while an attractive combination, Flying Lesson’s with the Baron needs to be played by itself. The features of this variant being locking in your flight controls at the start of the turn and positioning for advantage so your opponent has to show you what they are setting their controls at for the next turn. This creates a situation where it is harder to get an enemy off your tail than the RAW.

The additional counters on the ASP to set flight controls is a BIG leap up on the fun factor. If I can get sorted on how to correctly apply the UM variant the game certainly has climbed measurably in enjoyment.

 

Richthoen's War and the Baron's Flying Lessons

I played this Avalon Hill classic with my cousin Jeff like one bajillion times one summer, but always we each only had one plane and all we had was the RAW. Now I don't know why we played it so much. He was playing a ton of Panzer Leader with his friends back in Vermont and it must have seemed much cooler. Cause even at the tender age of 11 I could tell something was missing. Where was the Barrel Roll? The Immelmann, the Falling Leaf?  Why does this promising game suck so much? And so, after the summer of '79 faded from memory I dove back into DnD and Gamma World and RW was never thought of again...

Getting my hands on PanzerBlitz recently and fooling around with it made me think of this game again. Knowing the fanatics on Board Game Geek come up with all sorts of variants I went in pursuit of a reason to buy this game again. Not only were there multiple variants, they all came through the pages of the General. I felt this meant they were solid variants because Avalon Hill wouldn't let any shoddy, balance-breaking rule changes be considered "official" content. These variants came out soon after the original game was released so seasoned grognards felt the same as I did when I played it. Even if I stumbled across these variants then I'm sure I wouldn't have known what to do with them. But I'm all grown up now and I want at these exciting looking upgrades. 

Same as the PanzerBlitz solo play I completed, I am going to play the game RAW, but use a variant and experience the change! Flying Lessons from the Baron I must try first. Written by Michael Anchors, this variant adds two counters onto your AFP (Aircraft Status Pad) which represent your flight controls. Yes, now I am going to be pulling on the stick, kicking hard rudder and pushing ailerons! The mechanical effect to game play is, at the start of the game turn, all pilots must set their controls to execute changes in direction and altitude and these controls will be “set” for the duration of the turn. The writer has also changed “Speed” to “Throttle”. This is descriptive only but is thematically enhancing.

After the plane has finished moving its controls can be reset. Now, what is the point of all this besides giving you something more that you have to diddle with. ADVANTAGE! A player can see the ASP of an enemy aircraft at other times if they have any of their planes with an advantage. This is when the enemy aircraft is within your forward 120^o arc, seven-hex range and within 250mm in altitude. A player must set his controls and move before they can see any of the enemy’s ASPs. This puts a premium on keeping the enemy in front of you. Knowing what they are going to do before you set your controls is, well, and advantage. This is all when and good, but I am playing solo so the wow factor of surprising your opponent is going to be erased.

Fortunately, Michael has gone far enough to incorporate another popular variant, Unexpected Maneuvers. Unexpected Maneuvers are an additional schedule of 9 turns and elevation changes which simulate all those awesome moves which this game has always lacked. Here we have the Side-Slip, Tight Circle, Loop, all the hits. Not to get far off the track here with another variant, Unexpected Maneuvers, but it is based, mechanically, on a card draw. And you can play the game with this variant and make no changes to the Unexpected Maneuvers procedure. But do not do that. Mike has given you a schedule of “positions” to put your flight controls for each listed maneuver. Set the controls for the heart of the sun! Would you rather make a Vertical Spin by drawing a card or pulling the throttle way back and jam your peddles way forward in a desperate attempt to shake your attacker? This is done by the defender, if attacked (shot at) may change their controls to one of the unexpected maneuvers during a special “Maneuver Phase” that would follow the Defensive Fire Phase. We are going to get into the weeds of this in my next post where I take us through a vicious dogfight between a flight of Sopwith Camels and Fokker DR1s!

PanzerBlitz RAW Wrap-Up

 We are now at the top of Turn 4, the dispersed German units were flipped back over to indicate they are 100% still in the fight, and the Russian Combat Phase is up.

Turn 4

The Russian decides to open up on the town again with his armor. All on the Engineer unit.

One of the Russian armor units opens up on the mixed stack in town, this is a selectec attack (one unit firing on one unit) at (12)2 = 24 AF’s. The Russian actually has to fire on the total stack of three because of the town hex. There is the usual +1 added to the attacker’s die roll per the TEC (Terrain Effect Chart. The German situation hasn’t changed much. Their defensive posture nets 10 DF. The odds break down 2.4:1, final 2:1 when the rounding factor is completed. Roll 3+1=4, the stack of Germans are cowering again under more rubble. The 4 nets a D (Dispersed) and the three German units are turned over to reflect this. If the Russians want to force this fight they will have to bring in more firepower. This comes in the T-34 plt.s rumbling into town to crush all who oppose them. There is no more attacks for the Russian and the moves are now completed.

20mm howitzers and 50mm armor piercing shells are hurled at the enemy from the only combat-ready troops in town. Their combined AF is 12, but the anti-tank gun gets to double its attack value because of the close range. Let us see how I am supposed to calculate values with a “mixed” stack. In the open a mixed stack would be determined by the “type” of units in the stack. Whatever is more is the target type. Ties and the attacker has to take the least favorable target for the attack. But this is combat in town so we can throw that all out.  This is where I might be getting my first rules interpretation wrong, but I double the AT gun from 8 to 16, and add the howitzers at their normal value for 20 AFs. Maybe the factors are combined before doubling, but this doesn’t seem right to me. Somewhere in the rules I will come across the rules for this. The Russian armor DFs are doubled for a total DF of 36 for a 1:1.8 odds ratio. Defender favor on round offs and the Germans are struggling with a 1:2 odds on attack. There is the +1 for fighting in the city. Total of 4 yields no effect.

Let’s take a look at the Russian submachine gun coy. In the woods south of town. Could the Germans in the town hex to the north, the ones which fired on the T-34s in town, has LOS on the Russian infantry. If there is line of sight those units wood be a “soft” target and may have had better odds? Brief look at the rules and the answer is no. I can trace a line of sight through an open hex and a town hex at the same distance to the target, line of sight is blocked. Then there is the nail in the coffin, the rule that bugs the shit out of everybody,  the Spotting Rules! When a defender is in a Woods or Town hex he may not be fired upon by units which are not directly adjacent. I’m going to give the designers the benefit of the doubt here. The spotting rules close in the battlefield. If there is a bunch of shit blocking your LOS this means you are going to have to get closer to your target. There are no grand tactical maneuvers to be made in this game. It is purely grab ‘em by the throat and kick their balls in till their eyes bleed!

I’m sending the security unit from the 88 in the woods and I have them running across the open ground to reinforce the fortification. This is really like not a good idea. If the Russian can get at them in the open they are smoked. I don’t think they can with a quick glance over the board. A German submachine gun plt. is moved out of the woods in the north and scurries under the nearby fortifications. The dispersed units are flipped back to normal and German turn 4 is done.

Turn 5-6 see Russians greasing boogies with the guts of their enemies. That is what I wanted to see! The battle heats up with a massive combined attack. 48 times 2?! 4 tanks all shooting at 24 AFs? This is 96 AFs versus 10 DFs. 9 to 1 on the attack is what I see. This is balanced out by the fact the CRT only goes to 4-1. The other attack factors are wasted. But check this out, 4-1 odds are all X’s, total kills. The tank coy.s on their right flank are looking at similar results. 4-1 odds means dead Germans.

I’m now at the  top of Turn 7 and have cavalry units charging over the clear ground at the German fortification, supported by the T-34s in town. I need to stop and read up now on fortifications to calculate accurate CRT odds.

The Germans are holding on to a tactical victory here in turn 7 but that should evaporate quickly. The Germans win by not losing units and the Russians win by destroying German units. The Russians have crushed 5 Germans at this point. But the sands of time are winding down. I think the game is playing as it should so far. If the Germans can figure a way to stall Russian attacks with successful dispersel they can get out with a marginal win. More than likely though, the Russians are going to bag 3-4 Germans before time runs out. For the Germans to win this one the player is going to have to give up on the idea of stopping the Russian advance and figure a way to suppress the Russian firepower as it approaches. Less shots means less deaths.

 I’ll stop here because I am satisfied the game is playing out as the designer intended. Further, I can see the scenario is well balanced. Each side can win this one and it won’t be determined until the last turn! The game turns must move pretty swiftly between players who have been playing it 4-5 times. If the variants mess with this fast, bloody play I hope it is giving something back in return. Any game is a system of compromises so I am undeterred from busting this game out with a friend who enjoys tactical war games and play RAW.