The rules

It's that simple

As a pilot, you try to shoot down your opponents. Each turn you fly three moves. For each move you choose which direction to fly — straight ahead, a turn, or a sideways move forward. You also get three shots per turn, freely divided over your moves: if you fire more than once in the same move, each shot has to go a different way — forward, left or right. Firing twice in the same direction in one move isn't allowed. That's it. You send in your orders, and after the deadline you see what everyone did. You don't need a rulebook to get started: your first turn takes just a few minutes to fill in.

What it is about

Six pilots fly over a hexagonal field. In each corner lies an airfield; yours carries the colour of your aircraft. You win by being the last one left. You are out of the fight once you have taken twelve damage points, or once you fly off the board.

A turn

Each turn you write down three moves, and for each move whether and where you fire. The moment you send your orders they are fixed: you cannot change them, so you never react to what anyone else does, only to what you expect them to do. Once all six have handed in, the moves are carried out: first every aircraft moves together, then they all fire together. Then comes the second move, and the third.

Every turn has a deadline of a few days; the exact length differs per game, and the game master can adjust it on request. Anyone who is late flies straight ahead automatically.

Manoeuvres

Every manoeuvre is one move, and you have three per turn.

Your nose always points at the side of a hex. Turning without moving is impossible: in a bank you turn first and are then obliged to fly one hex forward.

Taking off and landing

Every airfield has three runways. Taking off takes two moves: in the first you roll onto the runway, in the second you come off the ground. You may fire while taking off, but not manoeuvre. Taking off has to be finished in the same turn, so you cannot start it in your last move of the turn.

Landing is only possible on your own airfield, and it also takes two moves. First fly to the outer hex of one of your runways, with your nose towards your airfield; only when you are in that position does the order form offer the choice Land. In the first landing move you roll onto the runway, in the second you come to a stop on the field. The two moves follow each other directly, but may be spread over two turns: if you start in your last move of the turn, you finish in the first move of the next turn. Until you are standing on the field you still count as airborne.

Once you have landed you stay put for the rest of that turn and you cannot be touched (you cannot fire and nobody can fire at you). At the end of that turn your ammunition is full again. Damage is repaired more slowly: two damage points per whole turn on the ground, up to eight in the whole game; the turn in which you land does not count yet.

Firing

You start with sixteen bursts (a captain or higher has twenty) and may fire three per turn, spread over your three moves as you like. You fire ahead, diagonally left or diagonally right. If you fire more than one burst in the same move, each burst must go in a different direction; to fire twice the same way, spread them over two moves. Once your bursts are used up you cannot fire until you have landed on your own field, where your ammunition is filled up again.

Thunderclouds

Fly into a cloud and it costs one damage point per move. You cannot shoot into or through a cloud, though you may shoot out of one into the clear. When the wind blows, the clouds shift one hex at the end of the turn, all the same way. The first turn is always calm; after that the wind picks up, turns now and then and sometimes drops for a while (see the full rules). If the game master has set a game up calm, the clouds stay where they are for the whole game.

Points: every 20 you step up a notch

Every hit you score is worth one point. Shooting an aircraft down is worth extra points. Get shot down yourself and it costs you points. You'll find how much in the full rules. Your points carry over between games, and the higher you climb, the more your pilot can do. Every twenty points you get something extra. The first two steps:

You only earn points in the original game, with six real players. If even one computer pilot takes part, no points can be won or lost in that game and it does not count towards your career.

It keeps going from there: at 60 and 80 points two more special manoeuvres are added, and from 100 points you can trade points for a rank, each with its own advantages. Exactly how you earn and lose points, and every manoeuvre and rank in full, are in the full rules.

And beyond that

That is enough to get flying. What the order form looks like in detail, how radio chatter works, how balloons work, and the exact arithmetic behind the points are in the full rules.