The Return of Ace of Aces!

Many moons ago (i.e., the 1980s) I was a fan of Ace of Aces, a World War I air combat game.  It eventually went out of print, I moved on to other games, and forgot about it for a few decades.  When I found out the Mr B Games launched a kickstarter to reissue the game, I jumped on board, and I have just received my copy of the new version of the game!

This game has a very neat concept.  Two players (German and Entente) each get a specific game book full of pages showing the view from the cockpit.  The books are paired so that a given page in the German book corresponds to the reciprocal view from the Entente cockpit.

At the bottom of each page, there's a series of arrows representing a variety of maneuvers that the pilot can select.  Each player chooses an arrow, and then gives the number under it to the other player.  Both players turn to that page number, cross reference their selected arrow, and go to the page number.  If no mistakes are made, both players should magically end up on the same page.  The game designers put a great deal of effort into making sure that it works.  It's all very clever and makes for a fun and fast paced game.

Back to the new edition - the original game had some nice black and white line drawings showing the view from the cockpit.  The new version has full colour, photorealistic images, immediately more immersive.  The game comes in a nice slipcover, which also has a drawer for a number of game aids.  Here you can see the slipcase, the two main books (the black books with silver print, one for each player), as well as the rulebook and a book of charts.

There's also a little drawer to hold a whole schwack of counters.  These include damage counters, ammunition counters, special counters to track when one of the pilots is tailing the other (gaining a tactical advantage) and some others that I am still to learn about as I progress to the advanced game.  There's even a pair of dice with national rondels in place of the '6'.  To be honest, I have never been a fan of this practice, I'd rather the 6 be a 6, so there's no question of what it represents.

This version of the game is called 'Powerhouse Series', and represents the German Fokker D.VII and the French SPAD XIII, with the idea that it could also represent similar aircraft including Albatros DIII or DVA, Pfalz DXII, SE5A, SPAD VII or more.  Mr B Games is working on followup series including the Rotary Series that will include the Sopwith Camel and the Fokker Dr.1 Triplane.

I'm looking forward to getting back to playing Ace of Aces again.