The rules

What it is about

Six pilots fly over a hexagonal field ten hexes to a side. 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 and leave the playing area.

A turn

Each turn you write down three moves, and for each move whether and where you fire. Your orders are fixed the moment you send them; you cannot react to what anyone else does. Once everyone has handed in, the moves are worked through one at a time: first every aircraft moves together, then they all fire together. Then comes the second move, and the third.

Orders once sent are final. You cannot change them and you cannot withdraw them. If it dawns on you halfway that it was a poor plan, you still have to fly it out. So check your moves before you press the button.

Every turn has a deadline; how long it is differs per game and is shown on your own page. The outcome is published at twelve noon. Anyone who fails to send orders in time flies straight ahead; anyone who was on the ground takes off along runway β. That is called an NMR, after the play-by-mail games of old: no move received.

Miss four turns in a row and you are out of the game. That counts the same as flying off the board: you lose points according to the table further down, and five points go to whoever eventually wins the game. The others can then carry on without waiting out the full deadline for you every time. From the first missed turn there is a warning on your own page. The game master can also take someone out earlier, for instance when they say themselves that they are stopping.

Manoeuvres

Every manoeuvre is one move. You have three per turn, and never more than one at a time.

Your nose always points at the side of a hex, never at a corner. Turning without moving is impossible: in a bank you turn first and are then obliged to fly one hex forward.

About holding. It is not allowed in the first move of a turn — so you always begin by moving. From the second move on it is allowed. If you hold in the second move you also hold in the third; you cannot get going again halfway through a turn. Holding is therefore a decision to give up the rest of your turn.

Taking off and landing

Every airfield has three runways two hexes long: α to the left, β in the middle and γ to the right, seen from your cockpit as you are about to take off. Runway β points towards the centre of the board; α and γ run along the edge of the field, so turn inward in good time after you get airborne.

Taking off takes two moves. In the first you pick a runway and roll onto its first hex; in the second you come off the ground. While taking off you may fire but not manoeuvre: you go straight until you are in the air. Taking off has to be finished within the same turn, so you cannot start it in your last move. If you start in your first move, the third move is free again.

You land by lining up on the outer hex of your own runway with your nose towards your airfield; only then does the order form offer the choice Land. You then roll out for two moves: in the first you roll onto the runway, in the second you come to a stop on the airfield. 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. In between you are on the runway and still count as airborne. Only after the second landing move do you lose the rest of that turn. Once you have landed you stay put for the rest of that turn. As soon as you are standing still on your own field you cannot be touched: you cannot fire and nobody can fire at you. Your ammunition is full again, and for every whole turn on the ground you repair two damage points, up to eight in the whole game; the turn in which you land does not count yet.

Note: you only count as landed once you are standing still on the corner hex of your own airfield. If you are still flying through it — on the runway hexes before that, during your approach or your first landing move — you still count as airborne, and the usual cloud damage applies.

Firing

You carry sixteen bursts and may fire three per turn, spread over the 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.

A burst strikes everything along that line, so two aircraft one behind the other both get their share. You cannot hit anyone in your own hex. Two aircraft are perfectly free to occupy the same hex, by the way; collisions do not exist in this game.

Thunderclouds

Clouds lie in fields of three to five connected hexes. There is one wind across the whole field. When it blows, all clouds shift one hex at the end of the turn, all the same way. When it is calm, they stay put. The weather of each turn is stated with the report. Whatever drifts over the edge is gone, and while the wind blows a new cloud comes up from the other side now and then. At the start the clouds are laid out so that no airfield is much better or worse off: never right next to a runway, and about the same amount of cloud near each airfield.

How the wind goes. The first turn is always calm. That way everyone starts level: the clouds are laid out fairly at the start, and no airfield has a cloud blown towards it or away from it in the first turn. After that, chance decides the weather after every turn:

• When it is calm, the wind picks up with a chance of one in two, from a random direction. That holds after the first turn, and also later when the wind has dropped again. So it is usually blowing again within a turn or two.
• When the wind blows, each turn there is a chance of one in eight that the weather changes. Then the wind turns one step of 60 degrees to the left, one step to the right, or drops; those three are equally likely. The other seven times it keeps blowing from the same quarter.

So count on a cloud holding its course, but you can never be sure. A calm turn comes up now and then but rarely lasts: after the first few turns, on average fewer than one turn in ten is calm. Such a turn works as in a calm game: nothing shifts and no new clouds come in. The game master can also fix a wind direction or calm for a single turn. (Games that were already running before version 4.3.8 keep the old rule: always wind, turning one step about once in eight turns.)

The game master can also set a whole game up calm. Then there is no wind: the clouds stay exactly where they lie for the whole game, no new ones appear, and nothing slides over you. Only flying through a cloud still costs a damage point per move. The report then says it was calm.

Fly into a cloud and it costs you a damage point per move, and so does a cloud sliding over you at the end of a turn. You cannot shoot into or through a cloud. If you are inside one yourself, you may fire outwards.

Writing your orders

This is the screen you fill in each turn. It is shown below by way of illustration; clicking does nothing here. For each move you pick one manoeuvre and tick whether you fire and in which direction.

The list of manoeuvres differs per move and per pilot. In the first move, holding and the ace manoeuvres are absent, because they are not allowed there; from the second move they appear, provided you have the points for them. Pick holding and the next move offers nothing but holding. If you are at the airfield, taking off is added in place of banks; fly into a hex from which you can land, and landing is added.

Meanwhile the board shows you with arrowheads where your route takes you and which way your nose points after each move. Pick a different manoeuvre in move 1 and the choices for moves 2 and 3 update at once. The moment you send, your orders are final.

Radio chatter

Underneath your orders you can leave a few lines of comment. Each line is a message of its own, so you can address several pilots with it. Whether you threaten, mock or simply talk big is up to you; you cannot enforce anything with it. Six lines is the maximum and short beats long.

Your comment is published together with the report of that turn and is visible to everyone, including people who are only watching. You can still change it until the turn is run. This belonged to the play-by-mail game, where it was called the press, and it has remained one of the pleasures of it.

Your pilot name

On your first turn you invent the name of your pilot yourself. Your points and your rank hang on that name, and they carry over from game to game. Each name can be used by one pilot only: if it is taken, you have to choose something else. Even after a game has ended the name stays yours, so nobody can go flying with it later.

Ranks from the game may not be worked into your name: words such as ace, lieutenant, captain, major, colonel and general are refused. Those are earned with points, and otherwise the ring around your aircraft means nothing.

Capitals, spaces and accents are ignored when comparing. Someone called Tailshot need not fear a TAILSHOT or a Tail Shot.

Points and ranks

Only with real players. The points system exists only in the original game, with six real players. As soon as even one computer pilot takes part, nobody can win or lose anything: no points for hits, kills or balloons, no points lost for being shot down or crashing, no pot for the winner, and the game does not count towards the career. That applies to the whole game, even if the game master later replaces a computer with a human. Hits and kills remain visible in the report. A computer pilot does not build a career himself. A duel does not count towards your career anyway.

What earns points. Every hit you score is one point. Not per damage point, but per aircraft you hit: shoot two aircraft to pieces with a single burst because they are lined up one behind the other, and that is two points. How hard it landed makes no difference — a hit from four hexes away counts the same as one from close in. Downing a balloon is five points; damaging one earns nothing.

Points carry over from game to game. You build a career with them, and at certain totals you gain manoeuvres the others cannot fly.

The other count. There is a second way of counting, from the advanced rules, and the game master chooses per game which of the two applies. In that one, not every hit is worth a point; every damage point you inflict is. A hit from one hex is then worth four points, from two hexes three, from three hexes two and from four hexes one — the same scale as the damage table above. The extra damage point from twin machine guns counts as well. Your points mount two to three times as fast, and it pays to get in close instead of plucking away from a distance. Every other figure on this page stays the same.

Downing an aircraft earns more, and how much depends on how high your victim himself stands. It always costs him more than it earns you. That way the top stays within reach of those below it.

This table runs on: every twenty points higher costs your victim five more, and every forty points higher earns you five more as well. Above two hundred points you carry on reckoning the same way.

If several pilots scored hits on the same aircraft in the same move, they can all claim the victory and the amount is divided among them, rounded up.

Rank counts too. A pilot who has traded his points for a rank stands low on the counter, but has not thereby become a novice. For every rank he holds, being shot down costs him ten points extra and earns his attacker five extra. A colonel with five promotions standing at five points is therefore worth not five but thirty points, and loses fifty-five.

What points cost. Being shot down costs you the amount in the right-hand column. What you had already earned in that game simply stands: score four hits and then get shot down, and you come out at four minus five, so one point in the red.

If you crash without anyone hitting you — by leaving the playing area, through cloud damage or through the flak around a balloon — you lose exactly as much as if you had been shot down. But because nobody can claim that victory, only five points go into a pot for whoever wins the game in the end. If three pilots crash, there is fifteen in that pot. If nobody is left, it lapses. That is straight from the original rules: every crash counts as a victory for the winner, however it came about. The thinking behind it is that you can beat an opponent without firing a shot: drive him into a corner against the edge and he may have no move left but to leave the field.

Nobody receives the surcharge for his rank when he crashes: that is there for whoever brings him down, and in this case nobody did. He loses it all the same. Flying off to dodge a kill therefore saves you nothing; you merely deny your pursuer the prize, and you are out of the fight into the bargain.

When it is counted. During a game your points rise and fall, but your standing only changes once the game has ended. Your ace advantages and your rank are therefore fixed at the standing you began that game with; you never become an ace halfway through a fight. You cannot drop below zero.

The Immelmann turn is named after Max Immelmann. You fly one hex forward and then turn 180 degrees, so your nose points back the way you came. You have changed position and you are looking the other way — handy for diving straight back onto your pursuer after an attack. Like any other manoeuvre it costs one move, and the same goes for the Split-S and the loop. None of those three may be used in the first move of a turn.

The lieutenant colonel's fast aircraft needs explaining. Normally all six aircraft move together and then fire together. Not you: within each move you go first. You move and shoot while the others are still on their old spots, and only then do they move and fire back from their new positions. So you shoot at where they were, and they at where you have got to. In a chase that is a considerable advantage.

What a promotion costs. You hand in a hundred points for it, and with them go the manoeuvres that hung on those points. Stand at a hundred and take the promotion and you are back at zero: no twin machine guns, no Immelmann turn, nothing. You do keep your rank and everything it gives you, and that stays yours, even if your total later falls away.

That is why it pays to save on. Wait until a hundred and eighty points and then take the promotion, and you keep eighty and fly on at once with your Split-S and your loop. The risk is that you are shot down in the meantime and lose a good part of your stock. You may therefore refuse a promotion, and that is a choice between banking safely and playing on for a richer start.

Balloons

If the game is played with observation balloons, they stand still on the board and take twelve damage points. Downing one earns five points; damaging one earns nothing. Fly into a balloon hex yourself and the flak brings you down.

Ordinary rule. A balloon stops your burst. If there is an aircraft behind it, that aircraft is out of reach and all the damage goes to the balloon. Anyone wanting to hit him has to fly around the balloon first.

Extended rule. The game master can allow, per game, that you shoot straight through. You note that with your order using the box marked "through the balloon". The balloon takes half the damage and the rest carries on to the aircraft behind it. Without that note your burst simply lodges in the balloon, even in a game where it is allowed.

Which of the two applies in your game you can see from the order form: if the box "through the balloon" is not there, a balloon stops your burst.

Where it comes from

This game is based on the board game about First World War air combat that David Dyer designed in 1978. This site is an independent reconstruction and is not connected to him.