by Marc M, 12 September 2024
I never played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid back in the 80s. I probably missed a lot of good times with my friends, but while they were role playing, I was learning to love wargaming, and Randall C. Reed’s Richthofen’s War: The Air War 1916-1918 was an early part of that education. It was one of the first wargames I bought myself, more than likely from a small-town family drugstore that had a surprising selection of Avalon Hill games back in the day.
In the past few years, I’ve rekindled my interest in wargames and am on a very slow mission to reacquire some of those favorites I played in the 80s. Richthofen’s War is the first. Recently I picked up a “partially unpunched” copy of the game.
click images to enlarge
What Was in the Box?
Published by Avalon Hill in 1972, Richthofen’s War shipped with
Three mounted game boards that create a 22- by 24-inch map: Compared to some very functional maps from other games of the time the map is beautiful. Terrain doesn’t matter here, but it’s an attractive backdrop for the counters.
A pad of tear-off aircraft status sheets: As you may guess from a tear-off pad, there’s some prep work and upkeep. Once you fill it out, a sheet functions as a sort of control panel for the associated plane.
A target damage table and two six-sided dice: The table includes standard information of damage based on a roll of a couple of six-sided dice, but factors in firing aircraft type and range. There’s also a critical damage table that applies for some rolls.
The manual and a briefing booklet: The manual is a multifold sheet with basic rules to start flying and shooting quickly and more advanced tournament rules. There’s also a campaign game where you build a pilot roster and track experience (and survival) from mission to mission. The manual is folded so you can sort of flip through it, but it’s a bit of a chore to manage if you’re hunting for something specific. The briefing booklet is full of information on the game’s namesake, background on fighter development and general specs for each aircraft type. There’s also a collection of tables for setting up the campaign game.
Unit and marker counters: Unit counters represent German and Allied aircraft, observation balloons and air-to-ground guns. Each one-sided aircraft counter features a top-down line drawing of the aircraft it represents, as well as a notation of the aircraft type. Marker counters keep track of the speed and altitude of the aircraft on the status sheets.
Seven scenario cards: Seven scenarios don’t sound like a lot, but each has a basic version and an advanced option that includes more aircraft. And the campaign game offers additional, dynamic play options.
Playing the Game Today
It’s hard to believe that this game is over 50 years old. Sure, when you compare the packaging and components, the printing, even the typeface of the manual, you see signs of the age (the hand-painted look of the board is still really cool though). But the gameplay remains impressively solid.
I must’ve mainly used the basic rules as a kid, because honestly, I can’t remember having to refer to the rules as much as I have in these recent playthroughs. Factoring altitude difference into range, rolling for jammed guns, having to keep your target in your field of fire for several hexes before attacking, and modifying combat rolls based on a deflection angle…I have no memory of these, but they add nice touches of realism to the gameplay.
I admit I’ve gotten spoiled with indexed, cross-referenced manuals and PDF formats that make searching for these types of rules easier. But all that aside, the rules make for a decently detailed aerial combat game that I still enjoy today.
The game has some overhead. Before a mission you fill out the aircraft status sheets with maximum speed and altitude, dive speed, ammo, turn costs, etc., and during the game you adjust markers on the sheets to indicate speed and altitude and tick off hits and ammo expended for each aircraft. It can be a lot of fun or a lot of work, depending on your feelings about upkeep, especially if you’re controlling more than a couple of aircraft. More aircraft means more tablespace for the sheets as well. I max my space out with six sheets – three for each side. Which is fine, because honestly, playing solo as I am, I don’t think I can manage more and still have fun. I’m guessing I played a lot of one-on-one engagements as a kid.
A fighter-on-fighter engagement is where I start. The first scenario pits German ace Richthofen and two other German pilots in Foker Dr.1 triplanes against a flight of three Sopwith Camels, led by allied ace Roy Brown. It’s fun. Using the aircraft-specific turn rates adds flavor as you calculate the best way to spend your movement points and get a good angle of attack. However, it can quickly become a repetitive turn-and-fire, exercise. When I had the game as a kid, I eagerly sent away for the official mail-order maneuver cards that let you perform loops to put you on an opponent’s tail, Immelmann maneuvers to quickly make 180-degree turns in place and more. I think a deck of these cards is a necessity to keep the game entertaining, and I’ll have to find one to go with my current copy.
The reconnaissance mission was more interesting since the planes have a very clear objective to navigate toward and rear guns to fend off pursuers. And it’s an interesting challenge planning your moves to cover roads that aren’t dead-on straight while keeping out of a fighter’s field of fire. I haven’t played a bombing or anti-balloon mission yet, but my experience with the reconnaissance suggests they’ll be enjoyable.
Does It Hold Up?
All in all, Randall C. Reed’s Richthofen’s War has held up well for me and I’m glad I picked it up again. It’s not going to be my go-to wargame and it’s going to soon give way to newer games I want to try, but it’s still fun to play and I’ll set it up again. I’m interested in trying the campaign game…middle school me didn’t stick with it. World War I aviation has long been an interest of mine, and, after more than half a century, Richthofen’s War remains a credible but approachable game.
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That year, 1972, I made an acquaintance with a kid who had some remnants of ‘Richthofen’s War’ lying about in his room. There were just one or two sections of the map board and maybe a couple of counters.
I was intrigued by the map, specifically the hex pattern, as I had never seen anything like it before. When I asked him what it was, and perhaps where the rest of the game was, he just shrugged, said that he had lost the many pieces and that it was a crappy game and not worth the time.
In hindsight, years later, he wasn’t the type to play hex-and-counter wargames anyway. Maybe ‘Battleship’, but nothing more complicated. Not calling him stupid, he was just not a wargaming type of person. Hardly anyone is, actually.
(As an aside, and completely off topic, his family were outdoor-sy people, Pennsylvania deer hunters. One of their cars was a grey Toyota Jeep, they rode snowmobiles and went ice fishing on Lake Wallenpaupack and reloaded their own shotgun shells, among other similar activities. Nothing wrong with any of that, just typical Pennsylvanians is what I’m trying to say.
Their father ran a plumbing business and made good money. He eventually got his private pilot’s license, bought a Cessna and once a year flew to Flin Flon, Manitoba, in the northern reaches of Canada, to go hunting.
Their house, on the other hand, always seemed to be a somewhat chaotic place. The location was north-eastern Pennsylvania, two hours outside New York City, where my father had just bought an old farm house not far away on the other side of the woods.
Theirs was a beautiful house, a 1950’s split level with a stone masonry foundation, raised living room with fireplace and wet bar (with guns displayed on the wall behind the bar, including a real German WW2 Schmeisser), and sunken den with a pool table, although there were never more than three of four balls to be found anywhere and all the cue’s seemed to have their tips broken off, if they were even to be found. As well, the pool table was always piled full of all manner of junk.
It was a loving family though, with my friend being the youngest sibling, age 12 like me, with an older brother and sister, the latter just starting college.
My friend’s upstairs bedroom, which he shared with his older brother, was always an unbelievable mess. I can understand not making your bed and perhaps leaving clothes hung over a chair, but this place was always a proverbial pigsty. You literally couldn’t walk anywhere without stepping over piles of clothes, sleeping bags, fishing gear, hunting jackets and who knows what. Somehere hidden among that mess he also kept a pet hamster, the poor thing.
I always loved visiting those folks, but at the same time was disappointed at the haphazardness of that household, and the seeming waste of the amenities they could have enjoyed. Well, they had their priorities, I guess.
They did take good care of their swimming pool, which I got to take a dip in a couple of times.
Oh, and no one ever locked the doors – day or night, ever.
One weekend in October 1973, I got to sleep over – in a tent way back on their property, along with my friend. He kept a transistor radio on all night when at one point during the night we started hearing non-stop news reports of the war that had just broken out in the Middle East.)
Anyway, getting back to ‘Richthofen’s War’, in the years since I’ve mostly read that the game isn’t that good, so I probably did not miss out on anything in 1972, when I wasn’t even a teenager yet. Considering it’s apparent dullness, I can say with some certainty that it probably would have turned me away from this genre of gaming.
It wasn’t until years later, even years after I had been playing hex-and-counter games, that it dawned on me that those remnants I saw in 1972 were from ‘Richthofen’s War’.
Okay, who gave me that silly avatar? I didn’t choose that thing… 😉
that’s a whole lotta memories flooding back there!
It wasn’t a bad read, though, was it? 😉
Sorry about the two or three spelling errors – can’t edit.