LONDON'S BURNING: A Quick AAR/Example of Play

[BanzaiCat]

I recently acquired a copy of Avalon Hill's 1995 title, London's Burning, much to my delight. I never gave this game much of a look until recently and felt dumbfounded that it is a solo game, and not anything like TSR's Battle of Britain, which I used to own but recently sold off. In any case, I have rectified this by playing it a few times and it's highly enjoyable.

This will just be a quick demonstration of the game to give you an idea of how it plays out.

You control two RAF aircraft tasked to intercept and shoot down as many Luftwaffe attackers as possible. These come at southeastern England via chit draws, which indicate the number of potential raiders in each Raid. You then secretly draw the Luftwaffe aircraft from a cup, and won't know their true composition until you either (a) intercept the Raid, or (b) the Raid finds a target and starts its bomb run.

The Raid moves randomly, which might put people off, but it's actually quite enjoyable. You need to position your two fighters as best you can, estimating whether or not they should be on Patrol or moved to a different Satellite Airfield, so it's guesswork on your part as to where the Jerries will pop in. You need to be careful to maneuver close to a Raid, but not so close as they might enter your aircraft's hex - in which case they are the interceptors and any German fighters in that Raid get first crack at your fighters. Otherwise, if you enter the hex first, you're the interceptor instead.

There's a few set up steps, but one of the first is drawing your initial RAF pilots. This also determines whether you're getting a Spitfire or Hurricane; each Pilot is essentially 'married' to an aircraft type. My first draw is Richey, a rookie Spitfire pilot.



Next, I draw (luckily, I might add) Kowalski, an Ace Hurricane pilot. He's the only Ace in the RAF mix, so this was a good draw. It puts his aircraft on par with the Spitfire; were he a rookie Hurricane pilot, it wouldn't perform as well.



I also have to select a Base, which is the 'main' location where the fighters will be located. This impacts a few in-game events, such as Fatigue. There's only a handful to choose from, as you need to select a Sector Airfield; they're all around London. In this case, I chose Hornchurch as our Base.



The first day, August 13th, 1940, dawns clear and bright. You can select to either go by the historical weather, which is either Clear or Rain, and is imprinted on the Turn track. Or, you can choose a random weather generator system instead. I'm going with the historical weather.

There's five Phases per day - four time phases (0700, 1000, 1400, and 1700), and one Night phase. In each of the time phases, you first decide if your pilots are going to sit at their base, or relocate to a Satellite Airfield, or Patrol. Patrolling will put them in the air at a location of your choice, making them much more able to intercept incoming Raids, but this raises their Fatigue a level. And it can be a pain if you do this and then there's no Raid in this time phase; they return to base if not, and keep that Fatigue level.

In this case, for the 0700 phase, I'm relocating them to Hawkinge. This is very close to the edge of the map (at image bottom in the below pic), which is where the enemy Raids enter the map.



I now draw the Raid chit for this 0700 time phase.



And the result is...



Four Raiders will attack this phase. So, I draw them from an opaque cup; fortunately these are cut well so you can tell from touch exactly which side is which. They're drawn in secret, so you won't know the Raid's composition until the time comes.

The Raid is reported at Angels 10 - 10,000 feet altitude. This may change when we actually intercept.



Next, I determine the Raid is entering in Area 3. I will need to scramble quickly as that's quite close.



We're able to climb two Altitude levels at the cost of 1 movement point each. We get 4 movement points, so we can move two hexes as well, swinging around to face the Raid.



I also mark the RAF fighter's altitude of Angels 10 on each of their boards. (This image erroneously shows Angels 5; I've fixed this.)



The Raid moves, as mentioned, via die rolls. The various pathways they will take depending on the roll are printed helpfully on the board. This time I roll a 1, so it moves straight ahead and is now two hexes away from my fighters. I can't really maneuver to come in from out of the sun unless I want to wait another turn, but that increases the risk that they will find a target before I can get the fighters to them.



So, I just move in, two spaces away, and use a third movement point to climb one more level, to Angels 15. We now successfully intercept the Raid.



However, we'll now need to determine the Raid's true altitude, then we'll flip those Luftwaffe aircraft over and see what we're dealing with. If there's fighters, they might move to one level higher, providing a top cover to the bombers they're escorting. Of course, there's a chance all of these Luftwaffe aircraft could be fighters, too.

[BanzaiCat]

First, though, I need to see if the Raid is truly at Angels 10. I roll a 5, which you can see from the table to the right of the dice, says 'No change' - the Raid is at Angels 10.

The 'None' reference further to the right is an indicator to see if any enemy fighters are flying top cover. If there are any fighters, they are not, and will remain at 10,000 feet.



This is perfect, as it lets both of my fighters dive down one level onto the enemy raid...which is revealed as...



Four bombers! One of each, pretty much, though there's also Me-110s and Me-109s that can be drawn. We got lucky on this draw.

As mentioned, both fighters dive one level. You can also climb one level. However, you cannot climb nor dive more than one level.

Further, when diving, you get a bonus on your Performance roll (more on this in a bit). When you climb, though, you get a penalty.

I've decided to send the rookie Spitfire pilot against the easiest target - the Ju-87 Stuka (easiest here because it has a big fat zero as its Performance rating - that's the number highlighted in red). I send the Ace Hurricane pilot against the He-111.

[Hethwill]

Lovely presentation !

Maybe I'm not interested to own the game ( rather hunt for a Burning Blue copy for that theme ) but one of those titles i'm more than happy to read a good AAR.

Thank you.

[bob48]

That looks very good, BC 

[bbmike]

Well, except for those hairy counters.

[bob48]

Indeed so. I really dislike counters that are joined at the edge rather than the corners.

[BanzaiCat]

That doesn't bother me nearly as much as hairy corners, but I see what you're saying. I might trim them eventually. I've already taken all the pics for this so they're gonna have nibs on them.

[BanzaiCat]

Continuing...

First, I'll resolve the Hurricane's intercept of the He-111. For this, you roll 1d6 for each aircraft, then add their Performance rating (the number in the red box) to their die roll (e.g., the RAF roll is added to the RAF fighter's Performance rating).



I rolled a 4 for the Heinkel, and a 3 for the Hurricane.

The Heinkel's Performance rating is 1, so that makes his outcome 5.

The Hurricane's Performance rating is 6 (normally it's a 5 for non-Ace pilots), so this is added to that die roll, for a total of 9. Then, one more is added since the Hurricane dived on the Heinkel. (There would have been an additional +1 if I could have finagled a dive while coming out of the sun, but still, this is pretty dominant.)

The result is 5 (for the Heinkel) versus 10 (for the Hurricane). The difference is in the RAF's favor, and that difference equals the number of Bursts the Hurricane can fire. Each RAF fighter has a total of five bursts it can fire before it is out of ammo.

This is part of the fun of the game - when you DO manage to get an angle on an enemy aircraft, it's a tough call to see how much you'll expend. There's no guarantee the fire will connect.

In this case, I go with two bursts. Three may be too much, while one is too little. You'll see why more here in a moment.

For each burst, I roll 1d6 for each number in the yellow circle in the upper right corner of the counter. In this case, the Hurricane has two 5s, so I roll 2d6 for each burst.



The '5' rating is excellent; I just need to roll a 5 or less to hit. And with 4d6 being chucked, I get four hits on this bomber.



For each hit, I re-roll a d6, and look at that particular aircraft, printed on the board. Each d6 result corresponds to a part of the aircraft.

I rolled a 1, two 4s, and a 5. This equates to a hit on Engine 1, two hits on its Gunner (which fires to the rear), and one hit on the Frame (5) space. Two hits destroy something, while just one damages it.

The two hits on the Gunner means he's dead, but he still gets to fire back, as combat is considered simultaneous. I rolled a 5, so he missed.

The damage to the engine means it has to Break Off. It will lose one level of altitude for every two hexes away from the entry side of the map that it is, and since it's so close to where it started from, it unfortunately



I've marked this Hurricane as having expended two Ammo (for the two bursts it fired). Note that the award should be down in the zero space (this doesn't really matter for Ace pilots anyway), and the Fatigue marker should have been advanced 1 space up because of the interception.

Now, I move to the rookie in the Spitfire, to see how he does against the Stuka.



The final result is 3 for the Stuka and 10 for the Spitfire. I decide to unload two bursts into the Stuka.



Next, I roll to see if he hits the Stuka. With a 1 and three 3s, he hits with all four shots.



So, I roll all four d6s that hit, and get results all over the place. One Engine hit, one hit on the Pilot, one hit on the rear Gunner, and one hit on the Frame. None of it is enough to shoot it down, but it's enough to force it to Break Off and escape, unfortunately.

This still leaves two more Luftwaffe bombers, though. However, to see if combat continues, I need to roll 1d6. If in this first round I roll a 1, combat ends. In round 2, rolling a 1-2 means combat ends. And so on. We can fight four rounds total.

It's also my understanding that once an RAF fighter breaks off from combat, whether through damage or being out of ammo, it cannot re-intercept the same Raid. I've not found this reference in the rules but someone on BGG said it is there. So this makes sense to me from a game perspective, and I'll adhere to that.

I rolled a 3 for combat continuing, so we go to round 2.

There's plenty of ammo and two more bombers to go after...

[mcguire]

Neat! Looks like a good game---abstract enough that the usual complaints about tactical aircraft games don't bother me.

What's the deal on the clear plastic scissor lifts for the counters on the map?

[bayonetbrant]

Stealth fighter counters

[BanzaiCat]

What's the deal on the clear plastic scissor lifts for the counters on the map?

Those are my additions - LITKO flight stands. I tried to find some decent ones and these were the best, I thought.

[BanzaiCat]

Man, I had a mini heart attack - I thought I lost the manual. It disappeared from my game table and I tore my office apart looking for it. Come to find it was under a notepad, so perfectly set that it was invisible. 

Anyway.

We have two more Luftwaffe bombers to deal with.

I'm going to pit the Spitfire against the Dornier, and the Hurricane against the Junkers.



The rolls are 2 for the Germans and 3 for the RAF. That equates to a 3 for the Germans (not a 4; 2 + 1 = 3, oops) and a 9 for the RAF (3 + 6 = 9). That's a max of 6 bursts the Spitfire could put into his target - technically.



Since the Spitfire doesn't have that much ammo, I'm going to go ahead and empty his guns to hopefully ensure this target gets taken down.



Four of the six shots hit the bomber.

Of those four, two hit the Frame, one hits the Pilot, and one hits Engine 2.



The Pilot hit is enough to make this bomber Break Off, but the two hits on the Frame destroys that aircraft!



This rookie pilot just scored his first kill, and this is recorded on his fighter log.

[mcguire]

My man! Go Richey!

[Hethwill]

Jolly good !!!

[BanzaiCat]

As you saw, our rookie pilot got lucky and downed a Jerry bomber. This bomber goes into the Destroyed Aircraft box, face down. It goes face down in case there are three or more Luftwaffe aircraft shot down during this day; as part of the Night Phase, the Luftwaffe get to return two aircraft from this box to their draw cup. Keeping them face down means anonymity as to what aircraft are returned to that draw cup.

Also, we score 1 VP for that downed bomber.



Now it's the Ace's turn in the Hurricane.



Unfortunately, the bomber rolls a 5 and the Hurricane, a 1. Both sides score a 7, which means the Hurricane could not get a bead on the bomber...but only just barely.

Normally, after the RAF aircraft have a go, and then Luftwaffe fighters get to try, too. But as there are no German fighters in this fight, we ignore this. Though, the German bomber does get a single d6 roll for its rear guns; I roll a 5, so it misses (it needs a 1 to score a hit).

We now need to proceed to a new combat round, as I don't want the Hurricane to break off just yet. I roll a 4, so combat continues; it would have ended on a roll of 1-2. We're now in the third round of combat.



Since the RAF are the interceptors, they go first again (not that there's a difference as there's no German fighters present). The rookie in the Spitfire must break off, however, as he has no more ammunition.