The "oops" plane

Something we sometimes use in the concept of the oops plane. Basically, if you're controlling one plane and are shot down really early in the game and are the first one to be shot down, you can come back, but at the extreme your edge of the table and in "last year's plane." For example, if you're balloon busting in an Albatross D.III and get shot down during your first pass, you can come back at the far end of the board from the balloon, but in a Halberstadt D.III. It prevents a player who's only controlling one plane from having to sit out most of the game.

(There's three of us who play, and it's typically 2 v. 2 planes. One side has both planes controlled by the same player, and the other side each player has one plane. The oops plane applies to the side with one plane per player.)

That is a good rule that we sometimes use too if we are down to 3 players. Another one we use is we either take out the boom cards or we have been saying they cause double damage. ie. if the target would have taken 1 damage card and the boom card comes up then we put that boom card to one side and he takes 2 damage cards. That is better than instant death and an early night.

Yah, we also removed all the boom cards from the A and B decks. (We left them in the C deck for the occasional collision.) A random damage card ending your plane is bad; it also removing the player from the game (if s/he had one plane from the beginning) is far worse. In our usual 2 on 2, once a side loses a plane, they normally fight on for a little bit to see if they can shoot one down quickly and even the odds, and if not or if they get heavily damaged they normally run. (i.e. game's over and other side wins; conceding defeat when you have very little chance of winning is much better than playing out an inevitable loss.)

We used to seed the booms lower in the deck so everyone got a few cards in before they needed to start sweating on it, however, the chaps liked the idea of the half starting damage (rounded up) boom card as found in the Giants rules and TnT, so we have adopted that for our games nights. Now we don't have to seed the deck as we can take half damage early on, now we just sweat on the smaller stuff all the time ! ;)

Sounds like a plan Dave.
I will give that a try.
Rob.

Have to admit, I tend to let the fates do their worst. I use double damage decks for all 4 categories and if it’s a boom it’s a boom (only using half damage on the Gothas and bigger planes).
Might be a little harsh but so much fun when it’s Tim, Neil or one of the other chaps on the receiving end. (However just as likely to be me)
I have always believed that one of the best lessons you can give kids is how to lose gracefully lol..