From: Dave Townsend <davet@MAGNET.COM>
Subject: GMT's 8th Air Force sort-of review (long)

GMT's 8TH AIR FORCE arrived last week, and I finally got a chance to give it
a good look-over.  It's their 2nd module in the DOWN IN FLAMES series that
was launched by RISE OF THE LUFTWAFFE.

The system is a card game in the UP FRONT/NAVAL WAR vein.  It has almost as
much variety as the former, without it formidible rulebook -- this is a game
you really *could* play with your kids.  At the same time, it avoids the
 trivialization of history that you see in NAVAL WAR, with fleets of mixed
 nationality battling it out.  (There's a review of the system a la ROTL on
the grognard sites.)

To call 8AF a module is slightly misleading, as it contains more of just
about everything than ROTL.  It includes rewritten rules (numbered this
time), more counters (aces, bomb markers), more aircraft (German, British,
 American), more campaigns, and more player aids.  However, you do still need
ROTL to play.

There have been some changes to DIF system.  The biggest changes are that
there's no Wingman phase in the first player turn of the game, dive bombing
has been reworked, and there are two new altitudes.  Otherwise, the rules
have mostly been restructed, improving wording and organization.  Changes
from ROTL are marked in the basic rules, but strangely enough in the advanced
 game they are not.

New planes making their appearance are B-17, B-24, B-26, P-47s, P-51s, later
 model Spitfires and Hurricanes, tons of new British bombers, and enough new
Germans to make my deck of German planes nearly as large as the action deck.

The meat of the new rules involves additions to the system.  Aerial rockets,
heavy bombers, anti-tank guns, the Norden bombsight, turbochargers, rockets,
and jets are now integrated into the system.  Most of the changes are pretty
simple (heavy bombers fly in groups of 3, not 2 like medium bombers), and the
new player aid card summarizes campaign options and bombing procedures. There's
 not much extra memory load here.

How do the jets play?  There's a new action card -- Full Throttle -- which
are added to the ROTL action deck.  (These are the only new action cards in
8AF; all the other cards are aircraft.)  Jets get a certain number of Full
Throttle chits (which can be used as FT cards) each turn, depending on their
 thrust.  The Me-262 has a thrust of 1, and the Me-163 has a thrust of 2.

Since Full Throttle can also be used as a manuever when you are tailed or
disadvantaged, it looks like it'll be hard to keep a bead on the jets.  But
I haven't played with them enough to get a good feel for them.

Compared to the medium bombers of ROTL, the heavy bombers are really
impressive.  A group of 3 undamaged B-17s gets a mini-hand of 6 cards to
defend against attacks, and can take an incredible amount of damage -- it's
10 points just to flip them, and later models can take 15 points before
they're shot down.  Of course, the "Fuel Tank Hit; Aircraft Destroyed" still
works just fine against them.  When they get over a target, they draw 8 cards
to determine damage.  This is pretty powerful stuff when you're used to the
medium bombers, which draw only one or two cards when they bomb.

A welcome addition to the system is Operations, which represent specific
raids or campaigns during the war, as opposed to the more abstract campaigns
(e.g. Invasion of Poland) where the only relation between one mission and
the next is the available resources.  Their are four operations: Operation
Blue, The Relief of Stalingrad, The Schweinfurt Raids, and Dam Busting.

Unfortunately, the operations seem to be the least well tested part of the
 system.  I'm still not sure how Dam Busting is supposed to work (are there
three missions, one for each dam, or just one with three targets, or what?).
I encountered similar difficulties in understanding procedure on the
Stalingrad mission, and the # of B-17s to be used seems to be missing on one
of the other two operations.

So kudos for the idea but let's hope some more explanation is forthcoming.

The campaigns include generic late-war bombing scenarios, some of which use
an Operation as one of the possible missions.  There are special
night campaigns which are solitaire playable, which are better than the
solitaire Crete campaign from ROTL but still no substitute for a live
opponent.  Campaign options have been improved; there is no longer the
one-to-one correspondence between missions and options, which is a boon
to gameplay since choices are less predictable.

If you liked ROTL, I highly recommend 8AF.  If you haven't tried the system,
ROTL makes a good, cheap introduction, and there's not much "unlearning" to
do if you continue on to 8AF -- just more of a good thing.

If you pick up C3i issues #3 and #5, you'll have Russian, Polish, French,
 British, American, German, Italian, and Finnish planes (and associated
campaigns), all using a simple system with a tremendous variety of scenarios.
In terms of game play versus cost, its certainly been one of my best
 investments.

Anyone with a PBEM system?

--DaveT;
davet@magnet.com