8th Air Force 2nd Edition

by

Fortress Games

 

 When viewing the newsreels and photos of what was left of Germany after the bombing campaign, it is hard to believe anyone was alive, let alone living in those wastelands. A few of the bombing missions against German cities had a much higher death toll than the atom bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Let us be honest though, the Germans were desperately working on aircraft and munitions that would do the same to us. London itself was bombed pretty badly during the blitz. The Allied aircrews who flew and fought over Germany had some of the highest rates of casualties on our side during the war. The flak from the German defenses filled the air around the bombers. The German fighter pilots who had to go up against the US bomber formations also had a short life span. Shooting down an Allied four engine bomber was worth four points, while shooting down an Allied fighter was worth only one (this was in their calculations that added up to their various medals). So, this game is about putting you in command of the 8th Air Force. You are tasked with destroying the German ability to manufacture weapons and move them. At times, you will also need to help the Allied ground formations in their battle toward Berlin. Historically, in the beginning of the daylight campaign, the Allied losses were staggering. Early in the campaign the fighter escorts that you have available have very short ranges. This changes as time goes by, with  the new fighter aircraft that will help you in your task. Might I suggest a watching/rewatching of the movie Twelve O'clock High before or during your game time.

Back of the box

 This is what comes with the game:

 The game comes with the 28″ x 22″ mounted gameboard, 2 player aids (the calendar/bombing campaigns aid shown below), 18-page rules manual loaded front to back with examples, 2 dice, and 290 laser-cut thick, sturdy game counters representing almost 150 USAAF and Luftwaffe Groups/Gruppen, plus plenty of reinforcing squadrons, and dozens of strategic and tactical targets.

 This is what Fortress Games says about the game:

"In 1943, the US Army Air Force (USAAF) began a strategic bombing campaign with a small but growing number of aircraft. By 1945 it had, for all practical purposes, swept the German air force (Luftwaffe) from the skies, and was bombing targets throughout the shrinking Third Reich almost with impunity. But getting to that point was no easy task…

You, as commander, 8th Air Force, have a very full plate! Early on, ensure victory in the Battle of the Atlantic by bombing submarine bases in western France, then support the eventual Allied invasion of occupied France by bombing railroads and river crossings throughout France and western Germany. Failure in these critical bombing campaigns is not acceptable. Long-term, you’ll need to pulverize Germany’s aircraft factories and oil facilities to reduce the Luftwaffe’s aircraft production and support and win the war by blasting Germany’s heavy industry. There will be more challenges along the way, from providing heavy support for the D-Day invasion and Normandy breakout, to suppressing the demoralizing V1 and V2 attacks on England, to assisting your Soviet ally by attacking German army staging areas in the east. In the meantime, the Luftwaffe is developing advanced jet and rocket technology that may tip the tide of the air war if you have not crippled their industrial capacity."

 

Mounted map board

  I was surprised to find that the game has a mounted map. It follows the gaming industry trend, but I was not expecting one from a new, smaller company. The map is somewhat different, as the view is from Great Britain south toward the European Continent. So, finding the different areas to bomb is a little confusing at first. It is an area movement map. As you can see, from above the map takes a minimalist approach instead of being arty (although there is a nice piece of artwork at the bottom). All in all, it is a nicely done map that once you get yourself oriented it is a breeze to play on. The Rulebook is nineteen pages long. It also is a bit different than normal. The front and back pages are not only card stock but also laminated. This gives them another point in the plus column. The Rulebook is in full color and the pages look like magazine pages, but they are definitely thicker than them. There are two single sided player aid cards that are in full color and are made of card stock. Most of the pages are very easy to read and well-spaced. The Calendar portion of one page is a bit busy, but the Rulebook explains exactly what you are looking at. Now we come to the counters. There is a small sheet that explains that these are laser cut and need to be cleaned off with a moist towel or rag. This allows them to be thicker and denser according to the sheet. They do seem to be. I have dealt with these counters before and take the time to clean them. It is definitely worth your while. There are roughly two and a half sheets of large 5/8" sized counters. The counters a very well done. They have a nice top-down view of all the different planes on them. The game management counters information is large enough to read in low light. The whole ensemble has great production values. My hat is off to Fortress Games.

Page from the Rulebook

 The game has you leading the entire daylight bombing campaign against Europe from Great Britain. So, this is from a strategic viewpoint instead of the single plane or squadron games we have seen recently. You have a chance to get some help from the RAF Lancasters night bombing each turn. 

 This is what Fortress Games has on the first page of the rules:

"This game is designed to be learned this way:

  1. Skim over the directions;

  2. Set up the game;

  3. Play, following "The Turn" section which walks you through the Turn phase by phase.

  4. Lots of examples throughout will help you"

 I find the above funny and excellent at the same time. A game company who knows how we actually learn a game and sets the rules up accordingly. Of course, this takes away the hour or so of complete stumbling that we do searching through rules. 

 So, how does it actually play, and does it live up to its designer's ideas? While it is not as immersive as some games can be it does have many good points. The rules look like they have been streamlined (it is, after all, the second edition). With this game the play is the thing and not a lengthy setup time or delving through rules to find the one you might have missed. The game also comes with some optional rules for people who like to bend history a bit. One allows the Germans to get a group of ME163 fighters. The other one, which is more plausible, is that the Germans get jet aircraft earlier in the war. This might seem like a game breaker, but you have a die roll to see if the USA's own jets make an early appearance. The rules are simple and so is the setup, but the game is far from easy or a 'light' wargame. There is a lot of thinking that has to go on in a player's mind. You have to figure out a way to hurt the German war effort without destroying your 8th Air Force in the process. The player is also given "Bombing Campaigns" which are orders from SHAEF to assist the ground war or take out the V1s for example. You have to decide on how to use your replacements (in this game called 'Refits' and 'manufactures'). Do not forget to assist in the Bombing Campaigns or you could find yourself out of a job. As an example of the game's depth, there are four ways to lose the game and only one way to win. Once you scratch the surface of this game you will find it much larger and deeper than the box it comes in. Everyone knows good things come in small packages and this game is a prime example. The game has been compared to AHs Luftwaffe which should make most grognards ears perk up. Unfortunately, I have to admit in 57 years of wargaming I never played it or owned it. I have heard it whispered about in hushed tones now and again. So, that is something to think about.

Missions detail

 Thank you, Fortress Games, for allowing me to review this game. While my own tastes go toward less abstracted games, this one plays well and gives you the feel of the bomber campaign. The added optional rules for adding more German and actual Allied jets puts a new spin on the historical campaign. To anyone who is interested in the 8th Air Force's bombing campaign or just wants a good solitaire gaming experience, I can highly recommend this game. They also have a game about the 20th Air Force and Superfortresses over Japan.

Robert

Fortress Games:

Fortress Games – The Art of Wargames (fortress-games.net)

8th Air Force:

8th Air Force, Second Edition! – Fortress Games (fortress-games.net)

Fortress Games Talks About Their Games and Themselves

 "Fortress Games was a product of two things: what I thought was a revolutionary board game combo, and…Covid, lol.

Sitting around the house or just walking around the block here in Florida during early 2020 while restaurants, stores, and just about everything else was closed, I decided to dedicate a bunch of time to developing a solitaire game about the 8^th Air Force’s bombing campaign against Germany in WW2. I’d always loved Avalon Hill’s “Luftwaffe” as a kid – preplanning your bombing missions and then executing them – but the game had several fatal (in my opinion) flaws: needing to chart out the missions with a pencil and pad each campaign turn, requiring all Luftwaffe planes of the same type to land at the same time (probably to save bookkeeping time on airborne German fighters), and other issues. There was for me a truly eureka moment on a walk around the block one day when I realized I had the solutions to all those issues and could build a great solitaire game. At the time, I assumed it would be another game for my and my friends’ entertainment.

A brief detour to disclose a little about me – I’ve designed games since I was a young kid. I definitely had a bit of a knack for it: when I was in college in the early 80s the war in El Salvador was in the news every day, so I designed a game about it and put it in the common area of my dorm. For the whole year you’d never walk in there without two kids playing it and others watching and commenting. Based on its success I designed a Vietnam game which was equally popular. With more titles in mind, we contemplated launching a game company to compete with Avalon Hill, SPI, etc. after we graduated but, upon doing a little research, realized that logistical work of starting a game company – lawyers for copyrights, trademarks; vetting artists; finding printers who could print all the game elements including printed and punched counters (good luck on that in 1983) – the whole thing was overwhelming for a bunch of 22 year olds, and we passed.

Fast forward to 2020 – all those things are easy (or easier) thanks to the internet! So, I had designed “8^th Air Force” for my own amusement. In the process, I designed “20^th Air Force” because it was a logical twin game. No one has done a game of the strategic bombing campaign against Japan that culminated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the “8^th Air Force” game system worked perfectly and the two campaigns were different enough that both games were unique. By the way, both games are seriously fun! I’ve designed dozens of games in my life, and I’ve enjoyed and developed them all to some extent or another, but I’d never designed a game as great as “8^th Air Force” (and “20^th Air Force”, but I give founders credit to “8^th Air Force” because it was the desire to recreate that campaign that created all the concepts). Talking to some friends about it one day I was told why don’t you publish them? After an evening of discussing it I realized that, in 2020, that might actually be doable!

We launched our Kickstarter campaign in September, 2020 and sold $8,700 worth of folio games. While dedicated to delivering quickly and with quality to our customers, I nevertheless considered this likely a hobby of sorts, not a business, but the games got GREAT play reviews. Next thing I knew we completely sold out our inventory, just weeks after the KS campaign was fulfilled! Our customers had to wait weeks for our second, much larger print, and it sold like crazy. I realized I had an actual business.

Our next offerings were “Save Afghanistan, Comrade!” and “Save South Vietnam!” – again twin solitaire folio games, in a Kickstarter campaign which started October, 2021. We learned a lot from our first publications and I would venture that the component quality (game board and counter art, game manual structure, etc.) of these games were leagues superior to our first two offerings. This time we sold $9,000 worth of games and, again, sold out our inventory after the KS – this time I was a little ahead of the game and had restocked my inventory with a handful of games left in stock. A little background on the games, because how could we develop and playtest, etc., two new games that fast? They were already completely done. I designed them, “Save Afghanistan, Comrade!” first, around 2001 and had been playing ever since. I chose these themes because in 2001 I wanted a game about the Soviet war in Afghanistan and there simply was none. Similar to 8^th AF & 20^th AF, when I had designed “Save Afghanistan, Comrade!” and was thoroughly enjoying it, I realized the system leant itself perfectly to the US adventure in Vietnam and designed that game probably in 2002. At that time, I never even considered publishing them for the same reasons my college friends and I never launched in 1983. But after the success of 8^th AF & 20^th AF, especially with what I learned publishing them, it was pretty easy to get a fully designed and play tested game system published. The work was in the art and writing the game manual, but it’s nice to start with a fully developed system.

Finally, the high quality of the artwork in the “Save” game series compared with the “Air Force” series made me a little embarrassed at our first publication. In our defense, we were new and inexperienced when we launched 8^th AF & 20^th AF, and the game play received GREAT reviews and required no errata, but the component quality of these two great games was no longer acceptable. So, our last Kickstarter (January, 2023) was a complete redo of those two games: in shrink-wrapped BOXES not folios, on MOUNTED game boards no cardstock, laser-cut super-high-quality counters, all new game board player aid and counter artwork, and completely redone rulebooks including countless illustrations and illustrated examples. While our first two KS campaigns did about $9k each, this one did $38k, and the sales have been pouring in ever since. By the way, I tried very hard to take care of the original KS backers of 8^th AF & 20^th AF – if you were an original backer you got both games for $59, or $29.50 each. We sell them post-KS from our website for $69 each, or $139 for both. I went over my philosophical approach to our original supporters in an interview I did with the “Lead Pursuit” podcast which I have a link to on our website (click “News”, scroll down to 3/1/2023).

We currently have two more twin solitaire games in the works, but while the first one is very well along (90%, including fully playtested), the second one has lots of work ahead, including lots of playtesting, so it’s hard for me to imagine publication before mid-late next year. Again, we’ll launch them on Kickstarter."

 Thank you very much for this look under the hood, so to speak.

Fortress Games: Fortress Games – The Art of Wargames (fortress-games.net)