I wanted to share the FAST PLAY rule book I put together for our recent campaign in North Africa. The Fast Play rules incorporate the majority of advanced rules with these exceptions.
Plan one card/ play one card. A lot of discussion on this one and how it affects play. Playing only one card out, makes it easier to tail and engage, in theory speeding the damage and destruction. It makes it tough to shake a tailing plane. Overall makes the game easier for beginners, as well.
Climb and dive at will. Again, a lot of conversation on this.... I noticed in previous battles, that altitude was very hard to collect or recover, making a key element of dog-fighting, almost missing from the game. By eliminating the requirement to play a straight between each climb or dive, altitude had a stronger role in planning and fighting.
Bombing was simplified, eliminating the need to "fly bombs". Making bombing runs more affective and easier for beginners. This also tended to speed the battle along.
And, we consider climb counters in both range and collisions. Making collisions less frequent and range more specific to actual altitude.
We also added a loop maneuver that was not previously defined.
The FAST PLAY rules are also intended to be a quick reference for airplane climb rates and payload capacity.
I also included the Bomb/Torpedo chips as well as AA used in the North Africa campaign. Both these elements added substantial "play" and realism to the battle.
We play for points, as we found that battles usually ended in the wee hours of the morning with no clear victor. When points are tallied, a winner can be determined.
I'd love to hear feed-back as this is a hot topic.
Thanks,
Joe
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