From: "W. Lee Dambis" Subject: Re: What is RAF? Dr Shades wrote: > > Is RAF a solitaire game? Who makes it? Is it worth buying? Yes, RAF is a completely solitaire game. It was published by West End Games in the mid-80s, and is my absolute favorite solitaire game. The game map divides southern England into various areas based on fighter squadron assignments of the time. Also shown are the cities, radar sites and airfields used as targets by the system-controlled Luftwaffe. To play the game, you assign your squadrons to patrol areas and then draw cards to determine Luftwaffe actions. The targets and contents of each raid are determined by these draws, and you have to decide whether to intercept and to what degree (how many eligible squadrons). There are several catches to this simple description, though. You may get a late warning of the raid, or information on raid composition may be vague. In the first case, fewer squadrons will be allowed to intercept. In the latter, you'll have to choose your interception force BEFORE you've seen what's coming at you. After interception you perform combat. This involves only a few tosses of the dice, which will result in (usually) some of the planes being destroyed or damaged. If German bombers remain, they then bomb the target. They key to the game from the player's side is fatigue. Damaged planes take two days to be fully repaired and ready, while planes that enter the Rest Box (too much flying) take a day off. In the meantime, the Luftwaffe keeps coming! The point of all this is to deny the Germans victory points for successful bombing. If they get enough, they launch Sea Lion and you lose the game. The game plays relatively fast (about three-four hours) unless you play the extended campaign (twice as long). I'd say compexity is about 4 on a 10 scale. Tension can get pretty high if the Luftwaffe is on maximum effort while a lot of your squadrons are unavailable, especially if they start bombing radar sites to deny you information. Lee Dambis