1BoB is The First Battle of Britain: The Air War Over England, 1917–1918 (hereafter 1BoB), which sounds like a book but is actually a wargame. I bought my copy back in April 2009, not long after I submitted my PhD, at which point I noted that 'I try to avoid buying wargames because I never seem to actually play them'. It took me nearly 16 years, but over the end-of-year break I finally got around to having a crack at 1BoB! My rather thin reasoning was that I should be writing the 1917 chapter of Home Fires Burning later this year, so playing it out as a game might give me some insight into the operational dynamics of the Gotha raids. I mean, it could also be fun, that's a sufficient reason too, I guess?
I won't go too much into the game itself here; the 1BoB page at BoardGameGeek has reviews and discussions as well as images of the game components, if you'd like a better idea of what it's actually like to play. It was fun (even played solitaire), and there's a lot I appreciate as a historian of the raids about the design of 1BoB and the thinking behind it. For example, morale (both civilian and military) is a key concept: the accumulation of morale points (MP) is important for determining victory, but also for enabling the expansion of forces and infrastructure. (If London gets a big raid, that's good for Germany's chance of winning the game, but it also allows the British to build up its air defences in response to public outrage.) Both sides start out with relatively minimal forces, but they can be expanded in a number of directions according to different strategic choices. (Civil defence and early warning are both modelled, along with air units and AA. Or the British player can build up a bomber force in Flanders and try a counterforce strategy - they can even bring an aircraft carrier into operation, if they want to try and Tondern the German aerodromes.) Aircraft are rated for speed, pursuit, combat, bombardment/strafing and endurance ability; the map extends from Aldershot to Ghent. So a lot of research and thought has gone into 1BoB. (The accompanying article – it's a game-in-a-magazine – lists Cole and Cheesman, Fredette, and Morris, among its sources.) This is almost the only game to model the Gotha raids; luckily it's a pretty good one.1
However! As I began to play (as documented in a very messy Bluesky thread), I did come across rules and gameplay which were at variance with my understanding of how the air war over Britain unfolded in 1917 and 1918. So I started thinking about how 1BoB could be adapted to make it more historically, and soon I had a bunch of rule modifications that I'm, rather arrogantly, calling 1BoB+. I mainly used game mechanics and concepts which are already in the game, and I tried to avoid making the game unplayable. But I haven't tested it extensively (or much at all...), and it's very unlikely unbalanced now. Nevertheless, here are the notes explaining my suggested changes. The changes themselves are in a separate PDF (see the link at the bottom of the post). Caveat emptor and all that. They won't make much sense without a copy of 1BoB itself, but the rules are online if you're interesting in digging into that level of detail.
First, though, while my comments below are often framed as criticisms of 1BoB, one thing I learned in this process is that game design is actually very hard! It's one thing to come up with a 'more historical' rule; it's another thing altogether to figure out how that change interacts with the other rules, let alone how it affects gameplay. I continually dithered over to whether to make this change or that change, decisively deciding one way before completely changing my mind a few minutes later. (In fact, I've kept tinkering with 1BoB+ even while writing this post…) And I had the advantage of having something to work with – creating a whole game from scratch would be far harder! More philosophically, I had to think about whether I wanted to merely allow historical behaviour or outcomes, or encourage them, or actually enforce them. It turns out that sometimes one approach is best, while sometimes another provides a better balance. One example is fighter escorts. 1BoB allows fighters to accompany bomber groups; if I've done my sums right, the Albatros D.1s in the game can (just) escort all the way to Woolwich on the eastern edge of London. The Germans absolutely did not use fighter escorts over Britain during the First World War. So should I ban this somehow? Well, in terms of contemporary capabilities, it does seem that it was technically possible, even allowing a fuel margin for combat. So why didn't it happen? James Kightly rightly warned that we shouldn't project backwards what we think was obvious based on later experience; Dreadnought Holiday pointed to problems in coordinating fighters and bombers flying together over a long distance, especially given the lack of W/T. I'd agree with both, but I also note that in game terms, a D.1 is no better in defensive air-to-air combat than a Gotha (though it is slightly superior to a Giant); and there is a limit to how many aircraft can be stacked together. So the German player can include fighter escorts if they want, but it would only provide a marginal increase in combat survivability, and would come at a substantial drop in bombardment power. It's up to them which way they want to go. Details aside, this allows and even encourages historical behaviour, but it doesn't enforce it. It allows experimentation and deviation from what did happen which, after all, is part of the point of turning a war into a game. Props to Joseph Miranda for a fundamentally solid design!
Movement
The biggest issue I have with 1BoB is the way that command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) is handled. 1BoB was not 2BoB: you didn't have radar stations informing HQ of incoming raids which then passed the information to local operation rooms which then vectored fighter squadrons into the enemy. Actually, you did have a surprisingly good approximation of much of that, but the key point here is that very few home defence aircraft had W/T (i.e. radio).2 Once the squadrons were in the air, there was little way to communicate with them from the ground in order to do the other things (command, control, intelligence).3 So the standard procedure was for the defenders to move to patrol zones and hope that they caught sight of the raiders. By and large, in 1917-18 fighter squadrons did not roam over the Home Counties looking for enemy traffic as they were to do in 1940-41.
This isn't modelled in standard 1BoB, in which the British player can simply launch their fighters and fly them anywhere they like on the map.4 To be clear, the designer was aware that this was an issue that needed to be addressed, and so added an optional rule for patrols. But even that allows too much freedom, in my opinion. So for 1BoB+ I made the patrol rule mandatory, in that it's the only way for fighters move (unless they themselves are being used to bomb, or rather strafe): once they are at their patrol station (and this is another change), they have only a very limited ability to move – until they encounter an enemy unit.5 Because I got rid of standard movement, I also had to introduce a mechanic where, once a fighter (or fighter stack) does intercept a bomber (or bomber stack), it can then pursue it and try to engage it combat over a number of flying turns. Since combat is not automatic even if two opposing aircraft are in the same hex, this adds a bit of drama as well as giving the defences more of a chance if they're in the right place at the right time. And I think this is more historical too.
Fog of War
Another problem I have with 1BoB, related to the above, is that the British player knows exactly when a raid is coming, because they can see the German player moving their aircraft from their aerodromes in Belgium out towards the English coast, long before they ever arrive. So they can calmly set up their defences, a patrol here, a patrol there, even send an aggressive squadron or two out over the North Sea to stop the Gothas before they ever cross into the interior. This is not historical. British fighters only scrambled once it was confirmed that enemy aircraft were approaching, usually meaning that they had crossed the coast (though there could be warning from British ships also).
Luckily there's already a really neat mechanic in 1BoB called spotting. An enemy aircraft is considered 'spotted' when it comes with a certain range (varying according to a number of factors) of friendly aircraft, an early warning unit, an AA unit, a naval unit, or engages in bombing or strafing. But in 1BoB spotting is only used to control knowledge of the enemy aircraft's identity: that is, the British player doesn't know if that unit flying down the Thames Estuary is a Gotha or a Giant until it has been spotted. So I decided to use it to as a tripwire for the ability to launch patrols. So the British player may be able to see the German player moving counters out into the North Sea, but there's nothing they can do about it unless and until those units are spotted. Again, this adds both tension and historicity. It also gives the British player a serious reason to build up their early warning and command net, and the German player an equal motivation to try and route around it.6
Zeppelins
Zeppelins aren't really the point of 1BoB, since they were definitely a second-class weapon by this time in the air war. But they were still used to bomb Britain and I like that they are included in the game, essentially as weak, slow bombers. However, I think they are a bit too powerful. The German player can navigate them to any desired point in England and bomb away, something real Zeppelins were never capable of since they rarely knew where exactly they were. Because they are low-value units, the temptation is to use them almost as cruise missiles (or drone bombers) - they might not have much chance of doing damage, but neither is it a great loss if they are shot down, plus they might draw away a patrol or two from the path of the main bomber force. I decided to defang them in several ways: (1) they can't enter UK airspace during daylight (no Zeppelin commander would ever have willingly done this); (2) they can't bomb units (aerodromes, flying units, early warning, AA), only cities and towns; (3) even in cities, they can't bomb high-value targets (Parliament, etc). This doesn't stop them entirely being used as spoilers but it does limit the havoc they can cause to more realistic levels.
Crashing
1BoB has a rule for landing at night which accounts for the hazards of landing at an aerodrome (if you're lucky) in the dark after a patrol in a possibly damaged fighter with only flares to guide you in (etc). This is sensible in itself - many of the German losses in this campaign were due to heavy landings rather than enemy action. The trouble is that the mechanism is far too brutal: unless a unit is trained for night flying (which few are to begin with, though an optional rule allows for more to be trained as the game progresses) it essentially has no chance of landing safely at night: it is either out of the game for one or two turns, or, much more likely, it's eliminated entirely (though it can be brought back in, at a cost in MP). Night flying was not as dangerous as all that. In the end I decided to retain the crash mechanism, but reduced the severity from one-in-one to one-in-three chance of damage (and even that is probably too high). I also made the night training rule non-optional, and made most sides
Forming the RAF
This is another nice rule which I like a lot, but felt I needed to tinker with. Basically, the British player can pay a penalty in MP and declare that the RAF has been formed, which gives them certain advantages in stacking and purchasing bombers. But, historically, the RAF's formation was not a rational process of deciding that having an independent air service was a better way to fight a war; it came about due to a torturous mix of public opinion, political expediency and German actions. So I changed this rule in a few ways: (1) the British player doesn't get to choose when it happens; the process begins when London is bombed by a Gotha or Giant unit; (2) the London Air Defence Area (LADA), not the RAF, is formed immediately, which provides the increased stacking limit as well as the ability to launch patrols before enemy units cross into UK airspace; (3) the RAF itself is formed a random number of turns later, providing cheaper bombers (representing the Independent Force, I guess).
Scenarios
1BoB has three scenarios: 1) May–September 1917; 2) January–May 1918; and 3) May 1917–May 1918. The end points for scenarios 2 and 3 were obviously chosen for the sensible reason that the last air raid on Britain (well, until 1939) was in May 1918. But there was still the possibility of raids until much later in the war, and there is already a mechanism in 1BoB by which players can pass if they don't want to fly (obviously, mostly a decision for the German player). So I decided to use this mechanism to extend the gameplay through to September 1918.
September 1918 was also when – as seems likely – there was a plan to use the German strategic bomber force in an all-out attempt to burn London. They couldn't have achieved that, but maybe they could have caused enough havoc to bring something to the armistice talks (or something). Anyway, I decided to model this possible last-ditch offensive with an optional rule which doubles the MP value of bombing London. But since September 1918 was also when all LADA aircraft were equipped with W/T, this rule also removes the patrol restrictions for the British player, meaning that their fighters can now basically hunt freely across the map. So it will end up as somewhat historical carnage which could completely overturn the outcome of the previously calm, rational (sic) air campaign. Could be random, could be unbalanced, could be fun, could be intensely irritating – but that's war for you (?).
Miscellaneous
Patrolling fighters can't stack (that is, end the turn in the same hex) as friendly AA units. (You want to be sure that everybody is shooting at the enemy.)
Aircraft based on an aircraft carrier (of which only the British have any, and only one) cannot take off or land at night (unless it's at night), because this never happened until well after the war.
Probably some other stuff which I forgot.
1BoB++
With new maps, counters, scenarios and probably rules, 1BoB+ could be extended to simulate the Independent Force (1918), the Inter-Allied Independent Force (1919), the French Air Menace (1923), or even the Knock-Out Blow (1930s). I am definitely not doing any of those things!
Image: Leonhard Sandrock, Luftkampf (date unknown, but evidently 1914–1918).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://airminded.org/copyright/.
- The only other one I know of is an expansion for Luftschiff, which I also have; but it's more of a mission simulator than an operational or strategic game. [↩]
- They were all equipped with W/T by September 1918, by which time the raids were over: Christopher Cole and E. F. Cheesman, The Air Defence of Britain 1914-1918 (London: Putnam, 1984), 453. [↩]
- Systems were evolved using flares and W/T aircraft, but as far as I can tell these were not especially effective. [↩]
- I will often speak in terms of the British player, but in fact both sides have aerodromes and units on the Continent which can be bombed, so in principle the same defensive considerations can apply to the German player also. [↩]
- A problem here is that the raiders could just fly around the patrol, which is a bit ahistorical since they would have had even less idea of the whereabouts of the enemy. But this is why you need patrol lines, and enough fighters and aerodromes to maintain them. [↩]
- Again, that's not very historical, since Germany knew next to nothing about British C3I. But you can't have everything. [↩]