Ace of Aces

 

Ace of Aces

Company: Nova Game Designs; Type: Ameristyle; Players: 2;  Time: 20 minutes; Genre: Dogfight; Rating: 💥💥💥💥💥 I love it!

Ace of Aces is a simple, elegant game. (But must be fiendishly complex in its manufacture and design!) You are a pilot in a single-seated fighter airplane engaged in a 1:1 duel with your opposite number. The beauty of this game is that you see exactly what your pilot would see from their cockpit. The actual mechanic is the picking of maneuvers and then cross-referencing them to end up on the same result page.

Gameplay is actually quite simple and fast:

Both players start on the same page: There is a default page to start the game or to re-start it if you have lost each other and wish to re-engage. Otherwise, it's the result page you share in common from the turn before.

Pick a maneuver You will pick a maneuver from the suite of maneuvers listed at the bottom of the page. Each maneuver has a page number printed below it. When you pick your maneuver, you call out the page number to your opponent. You each go to your assigned interim page.

Cross-reference your maneuvers: On your new, interim page, look up your maneuver and find the page number printed below it. Go to that page.

Players end on a new, common page: You should always land on the same final page number. If you don't, you've done something wrong. Apply the results you visually find. Scoring your hits and starting to tail, if so indicated.

Rinse and repeat.

Some of the strategy of the game is to visualize the maneuvers in your head and figure out "if I do X and they do Y, then we should end up with situation Z" and so on. It's simple, fast and very addictive. And portable -- you can play it while waiting in line, in the backseat of a car, while waiting on friends, etc. There are rules for more advanced and campaign play, but we never really used them, since we had Dawn Patrol for that.

We mainly played the Rotary Series and some Powerhouse. There were also books for the early pusher planes Flying Machines, but we never really had much chance to play it.