Game Title : Battle of Britain
Publisher : TSR
Game Designer : Ken Sommerfield, Tom Hoffman
Game Thema : Yes, Battle of Britain in 1940 summer.
Game Components
Plastic airplanes and their bases, game map,
RAF displays, RAF squadron cards, Luftwaffe squadron cards, Mission cards, rulebook, white RAF dice, black Luftwaffe dice
Game Sequences
This game is played by game turns.
Each turn, players must complete the sequence below.
1. Mission Assignment
2. Squadron Alert
3. Mission stage
And in Mission stage players repeat the sequence below until the end of turn.
1. German movement
2. RAF movement
3. dogfight
4. bombing
The game turn end when either of below condition is met.
A: There’s no German airplane still in flight.
B: If at the end of 5th mission stage.
At that time, German player must check if the airplane still on the sky can return safely or not.
This is a simpler game of Battle of Britain.
Each turn, German player get 4 mission cards from the deck and assign one card each to Luftflotte 2 and 3. It determines the target of this turn and how many bombing hits required eliminating the targets.
Then, German player get the airplanes by distributing squadron cards for each box on each Luftflotte cards.
On the other hand, British player get the airplanes by distributing squadron cards for each box on each RAF displays.
Now, the mission starts. German moves first, British moves second, then resolve dogfight in areas where both squadron coexist. If German squadron including bombers is in the target area, then conduct bombing. This sequence is repeated 5 times. I think this reflects the limitation of German aircrafts’ range.
I really love these simple game rules.
But, based on my plays, I feel the game is heavily favored to RAF.
1) the difficulty of bombing city target is too high. It needs 6 to 7 hits to destroy. But, in usual cases, Luftwaffe doesn’t have enough amounts of bombers.
2) German player must complete 4 missions to end the game. But, due to the fact 1), it is difficult to end the game.
3) RAF can earn 2 VPs from each failed mission, and earn another 2 VPs if they can survive one turn. In other words, if German player unfortunately draw 4 city bombing missions and must assign 2 city bombing missions to his squadrons, it will result 6 VPs for RAF. And maybe RAF will earn more by shooting German squadrons during dogfight.
In my private opinion, the number of city targets in mission deck must be reduced and the remaining city targets should have lower criteria to complete. I think even 5 hits is difficult enough for Luftwaffe based on current rule.
I like to have the London target in mission cards, but based on its difficulty ( 7 hits ), it should end the game immediately if achieved. I think this is not an unreal condition, because it is London.
I would like to repeat that I like this game because of its simpler system and plastic airplanes. The only problem is a balance of the game. I think this can be resolved with several local rules. I’m now really thinking of making modified mission cards.
