Well, I think it just grew too much for me - too large, too many minis, and too much bookkeeping. I found that I wanted a more streamlined version. Recently, I started playing around with some changes:
Smaller Board
The first thing I did was to shrink the game. For the full-scale version of the game I used a 16 x 30 square grid but I preferred a game that could fit into a pencil box. I wanted to squeeze onto an 8 x 10 grid. The movement rules of the original game were problematic, however. It is possible for some planes to move 8 squares in a turn. For the smaller grid, halving movement distances seemed like a good solution. I could effectively do this by doubling the movement cost of each maneuver but that left some maneuvers to expensive. In the end, I just upped the cost for each maneuver by 1 point. It seems to work fine.
Smaller Forces
In order to reduce the board I also had to reduce the size of the forces involved. I now use a single squadron of bombers + 2-4 fighters per side.
New Campaign Rules
The original rules involve a bit of bookkeeping (especially considering that I game solo) as you have to track the fate of 18 squadrons. I wanted to reduce the record keeping so I decided to follow the fortunes of a single fighter squadron. It dawned on me that a fighter squadron could do more than escort bombers, so I came up with additional missions. Eventually, a new set of campaign rules evolved.
Campaign Rules Overview
- The campaign follows the fortunes of a single squadron of 4 pilots/planes
- A campaign will consist of 5 missions. The squadron wins the campaign if it succeeds in 3 of the 5 missions.
- Possible missions are patrol (fighter vs. fighter dogfight) escort (defend your side’s bombers), intercept (stop an enemy bombing raid) and attack (strafing run on ground targets)
- To reduce the death rate, planes that get “shot down” get a chance to escape instead. Also, I gave the player characters a bonus when determining damage – there will be less chance of them getting shot down in a single hit.
During the Lucranian War (set in my 1930s-style imagi-nations), Capt. Devin Drake, veteran of multiple aerial campaigns, has been selected to lead a new squadron. Known as the Dragons, the squadron has been outfitted with the latest Peregrine fighters.
Drake has 3 pilots under him – the veteran Howell Green and two promising novices, Taylor Hicks and Ike Peters.
Notes:
- Player characters are rated as novice, veteran, or ace. The rating affects movement points, chance to hit, and chance to escape.
- I came up with the name Devin Drake on my own but the other names came from a name generator
Notes:
- The campaign rules call for a random roll to determine the mission type. I decided that I am just going to do one of each mission, then roll randomly for the last.
- I rolled randomly for the force make-up for each side. The Dragons start with 2 planes; I decided that Drake and Hicks will be the pilots. We’ll see what the Dragons will be up against.
Hello Keven,
ReplyDeleteInteresting idea to halve the dice for movement. I loosely used this mechanism last year to create some spaceship rules to play with a few ships on an 8x8 grid. Instead of 1 die for movement I used a number of dice with each 4-6 meaning one success, so have battleships moving 2d and fighters moving 4d. Went with this as all the other mechanisms are based on this dice rolling. I found on a 8x8 grid though the battle went really fast, even with short (0-2) ranges for weapons. But you post has made me go back and rejig then and give them another go so thanks (I think!).
Awesome. Hope it works out.
ReplyDelete