Aces High! Compass Games Brings Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines to the Table. Board Game Review
Western Front Ace: The Great War in the Air, 1916-1918. Publisher: Compass Games. Designer: Gregory M. Smith and Ian Cooper. Price $109.00
Passed inspection: A solid game that produces plausible encounters and engagements while conveying the experience of a Great War fighter pilot.
Failed basic: Rules organization could be better. The ‘grind’ of running mission after mission starts to feel like a repetitious chore rather than a game to be enjoyed.
From the logbook of Otto Hefty, – K.u.K. Luftfahrtruppen
20 Sep 16 – Aircraft: Brandenburg D.1
We’ve been tasked with a bomber escort mission. The outbound leg was an uneventful mission over the lines into Italian territiory. The bombers conducted their attack and turned for home.
During the return flight, I encountered a SPAD VII over the front lines. We came at each other head to head. As we closed, our guns hammered away at each other. I could feel the stick shudder in my hands as my tail took some solid hits. But I was the better pilot as the enemy aircraft raced past me and then exploded in a fireball from my short, precise, burst of fire. The smoking wreckage fell to the ground ½ northeast of Roana.
During my return to base, I happened over a solitairy enemy Caproni heavy bomber. I was fortunate to catch him with the sun to my back. I bore in and pulled the trigger, scoring hits on his rear gunner over the center rear engine mount. With the gunner incapacitated, my attack from the rear would be much safer.
Stomping on the rudder pedals and throwing the stick over, I horsed my Brandenburg fighter onto the tail of the three engined beast. Hanging behind the behemoth, I poured firing into the tail planes and after fuselage. The bomber could take a lot of punishment, but even it had limits and the Italian plane shuddered as the pilot was hit and the tailplanes disintegrated. The bomber nosed over and went down in the eastern section of Osteris del Termine.
A safe landing back at the field. Two kills – a few days later I would be awarded both the Military Merit Cross and the Silver Medal for Bravery.
Thus concludes a single mission from Gregory M. Smith’s a solitaire boardgame, Western Front Ace, from Compass Games.
Western Front Ace is a game that puts the player in the cockpit of a First World War fighter plane. You’ll be sent on a series of missions over which you’ll develop your skills and rack up a tally of downed enemy planes. That is, assuming you survive combat with the enemy and avoid a fatal crashlanding back at your home aerodrome. If you are truly fortunate, you’ll survive the war and perhaps join the ranks of the legendary aces such as Fonk, Barker, Barraca, Linke-Crawford and Richtofen.
Derived From Greg’s earlier games – Nightfighter Ace, Interceptor Ace, Defending America, and the upcoming Spitfire Ace – Western Front Ace builds on those games to provide an experience that evokes the excitement and terror of aerial combat during the Great War. You can see the ‘bones’ of the game that traces it roots back to Greg’s earlier games “The Hunters” and “Zeppelin Raider”. Western Front Ace retains that similar cycle of a mission being leaving your base, engaging the enemy and returning to base, but the experience in Western Front Ace is much more engaging.
A criticism commonly leveled against games like “The Hunters” is that you are basically along for the ride with minimal decisions over whether to engage and what range to engage. After that it’s a matter of luck (and die rolls). While there is an element of this in Western Front Ace, it’s nicely tempered by the depth of decisions the player makes during combat, as well as at each stage of the patrol. ‘Do I have enough fuel?’ ‘Have I used too much ammunition?’, ‘Is the plane too badly damaged to continue the mission?’ These are questions you are constantly answering across the duration of the mission. And the answers can change drastically as the result of one single hit on your plane.
The game box is stuffed to the top with components. It’s a heavy box, full of aircraft display mats, reference cards and even more cards. So, to paraphrase Brad Pitt in the movie Seven, what’s in the box? The short answer is…a lot! There are a total of 42 aircraft displays for scouts of various nations and their two-seater/multi-engine bomber targets. But in specifics, the game consists of the following components.
• Two Counter sheets of 9/16? unit-counters (336 counters)
• Twenty-one Aircraft Display Mats 8.5? x 11? (double-sided, 42 total)
• Seven Player Aid Cards 8.5? x 11?
• One Two-seater Target Mat 8.5? x 11?
• Four Pilot Awards Display Mats 8.5? x 11? (double-sided, 8 total)
• One Air Operations Display Map 11” x 17” (double-sided, 2 maps total)
• Twenty-four Ace Pilot Cards
• Sixty Combat Cards
• Rules Booklet
• One Log sheet 8.5” x 11”
• Two 6-sided, one 10-sided, and one 20-sided die
• Box and Lid
The component quality is what you’d expect from Compass Games and is similar to any of the other Greg Smith-style of solitaire games of this type. If you want to see a detailed view of the components, go check out Gary’s excellent unboxing video over at Ardwulf’s Lair on Youtube.
‘Yes, yes’, you are thinking. ‘The components are very nice. But how does the game play?’ It’s a fair question. Let’s go on a sample patrol so you can see the game in action.
At the start of the campaign, we create a pilot/character. After consulting a number of tables, we have our pilot – Oscar Ritter von Tutschek (the random name generator leverages the names of historical pilots, in this case our namesake is Adolph Ritter von Tutschek.) Oscar is assigned to Jasta 13P (a Prussian squadron, befitting his titled name.) Oscar will be flying a Fokker D.III as his starting plane. It’s a strong choice with its twin machineguns and good speed and agility. Coming out of flight school Oscar has acquired the stamina skill and the landing skill. Our airfield is located in the Guise sector along the Somme front
We are tasked with a patrol along the front line. Leaving our airfield, we gain altitude and look around – there are no enemy planes nearby. Moving onward, the patrol pushes forwards to the area behind the front lines. This time we detect an enemy aircraft – a Sopwith 1½ Strutter. Though not the nimblest fighter, they do carry a rear gunner, which makes attacking it from the side and rear a more dangerous task.
The engagement starts with a head on pass. Flipping a couple of combat cards – I inflict five hits on the Strutter while taking two hits in return. I’ve hit his tail (a good start), the fuel tank (which is only leaking), shredded his undercarriage with two hits and finally, hit the starboard strut.
In return, I take a hit on the canvas (basically ‘no effect’) and a crew injury. I literally ‘dodge the bullet’ when determining if the pilot is hit by rolling an 8 on 2d6. (A 7 or less would hit the pilot).
Consulting the initiative table and rolling two dice, I determine the effects of maneuvering the planes after the exchange of fire. The result is that I’ve moved to an advantageous position! This would be great, except for that rear gunner in the Strutter. On to the next round of combat!
I inflict five more hits, but the Strutter pulls a tight turn and improves its position to try and gain advantage on me. I’ve got bullets on the target, but four of the five hits are into the canvas (typical of my luck with dice.) I do score a second tail hit, meaning I need two more to bring down the Strutter.
Fortunately, that rear gunner misses me in return.
While the Strutter turned tightly, I do some fancy maneuvering and I find myself closing head-to-head. The initiative is handed by opposed die rolls, modified by aircraft attributes and damage. The relative position swings one aspect back towards the Germans so we find ourselves head-to-head.
Again, the machineguns chatter as we rush towards each other. I walked the bullets down the length of the plane scoring critical hits on multiple systems including the engine, forward weapons, controls and rear guns! In return, the British pilot shreds my starboard struts, scoring three of the four hits needed to collapse the starboard wings.
Yikes!
Determining relative position, we’re still engaged head-to-head, but with no guns, the Strutter elects to go defensive and avoids all damage. If the Strutter could gain an advantage, he’d try and break off, but for now, we remain locked in combat.
We circle around one more time. I’m beginning to get concerned about ammunition as I’ve fired 2/3’s of the ammo belts at this point.
The final pass sees my rounds punch into the fuselage and the plane explodes! The wreckage tumbles to the ground approximately 1 ½ miles east of Ham.
Looking at the remains of my starboard wing, I elect that discretion is indeed the better part of valor and head back to my airfield. Nearing the field, I spot an RE.8 up to no good, but being low on ammo and a wing that is held together mostly with my optimism and prayers, I don’t engage him. The RE.8 turns west and runs for home.
Arriving over the field, we find the weather has gotten bad, but I’m able to set the plane down without incident. As I roll up and stop the engine, the expression on the face of the riggers and fitters tells me I made the right choice to head back to the field. There’s basically a sliver of wood and one wire holding the wing together.
But I’ve survived my baptism of fire. Even though I didn’t reach the front lines, it’s considered a successful mission as I engaged the enemy. An auspicious start to what promises to be a long war…
That’s what a single sortie in the game looks like. If you want an additional example of play, you can read the example of play provided in the rulebook, which is available on the Compass Games website.
Western Front Ace gives a good representation of how a First World War dogfight plays out. The combat card deck gives a range of outcomes for attacks. The defensive options help mitigate – and in many cases flat out nullify – an attack. The descriptions attached to the maneuvers convey a sense of ‘fighter pilot speak’ with planes performing chandelles, split-S and tight rotary right turns to avoid damage and gain position.
The game rewards historical tactics as getting your plane positioned on your opponent’s tail awards extra damage and makes it harder to shake the attacker off, though it can be done. But if you’ve got an enemy scout on your tail, there’s one more decision you can make to improve your situation – bring on your wingman!
The wingman is an abstract concept in the game. It’s basically another pilot flying the same plane as yourself. Instead of taking an evasive action, you can see if your wingman can come to your aid. Much of the time, he can’t as he has his own dogfight to deal with, but on occasion, your wingman can come in and save the day. I’ve had two engagements that were rapidly going against me in which my wingman ‘Ganz’, came in and drove off the attacker, saving me from death or capture. I’ve benefitted from the wingman enough that I forego solitary hunting (and its benefits) for the security of having my wingman watching my back.
The pilot skills do a great job of modeling the depth of experience that turns a green rookie into a hardened killing machine. Skills provide a mix of defensive and offensive bonuses. I found that acquiring the defensive bonuses early meant I could live long enough to pick up more of the offensive bonuses. The ability to dodge enemy fire, to gain advantage in the initial engagement and having a sixth sense about an imminent attack go a long way towards keeping you alive. Couple that with traits that manage your ammunition usage and enhance your shooting and you are on your way to becoming the next Rene Fonck.
During each sortie, the steps of moving your plane from the rear areas up to the front reminds you that the lives of pilots were relatively much better than that of the poor bloody infantry fighting in the trenches. Pilots get a hot meal a couple of times a day and generally sleep in a bed every night.
Adding the optional pilot fatigue rules brings another dimension to the game. While you want to fly as many missions as possible so you can score more victories, the effects of fatigue will build up and make dull your senses in combat and increase the chances of having a mishap on landing. The in-game cure is what you’d see in the real world – annual leave. You’ll miss a couple of missions, but the down time lets your get some much-needed rest and re-focus your mind on the job. I found that the fatigue rules ground the game in the pilot’s sense of mortality and well-being. As a player, you want to push that pilot along with increasing levels of fatigue. As you push, you see the in-game effects of fatigue on the pilot’s abilities and effectiveness. As your fatigue increases, so does the anxiety that this mission could be your last.
Western Front Ace is a solid game. You’ve got lots of planes and the ability to play from the perspective of multiple nationalities. In submarine terms, it’s like getting The Hunters, Beneath the Med and Silent Victory all in the same box! Hey, the game won the 2023 Charles S. Roberts award for Best World War One game, so clearly, people are enjoying it! Single missions are relatively quick events, and the game gives a good sense of flying a mission over the front. Like many of Greg Smith’s other solitaire designs, the game can be packed up until you can fly your next mission, so it’s not constantly occupying table space between missions.
Even with all it’s got going for it, there are a few things that don’t perfectly capture the spirit of the campaign. We’ll start with defensive guns. Some of the planes, specifically two of the Italian bombers – the SP.2 and Caproni historically had gun loadouts which the defensive gun rules don’t model accurately. I know, I know, I’m arguing over picky little details. But really, isn’t that what wargamers do? Basically, the rules for defensive guns as written assume that the ‘rear’ gunner is just that – a gunner in the rear. While the Caproni does have a rear gunner, it also has a forward gunner and the SP.2 only has a forward gunner. These are by no means fatal errors. You can quickly write ‘house’ rules for these exceptions, but it would have been nice to see it reflected in the game.
Like similar Greg Smith designs, Western Front Ace can be a bit of a ‘page turn’. No, it’s not a book you can’t put down, but rather, you’ll be consulting a number of charts throughout each mission. It can get a bit tiresome keeping track of all those charts. Folks have tried laying them out under plexiglass or sleeving them in page protectors and creating a binder. Find the solution which works best for you to keep things organized and moving along.
Another part of the game that feels a bit disappointing are the counters. While the artwork is great in concept, the executing of printing on the counter left me cold. Between the small size of the counters and the flat finish, the artwork on the counter does not really ‘pop’. It stands in contrast to the stellar work done on the aircraft and pilot mats. Let’s temper this assessment of the counters with the acknowledgment that the aircraft counters are almost always informational markers. Much of the game’s narrative experience takes place in the player’s mind. It’s a similar challenge to what you see in GMT’s Bloody April – there is only so much detail that can be included within the limits of the printer technology and the counter size. Most of the time you’ll be staring at the full color profile of the planes, and these have rendered in excellent detail. Some folks have substituted small scale models of the planes for the counters. It’s a visually impressive choice if you happen to already have the planes in hand.
Did I mention that there are a lot of planes included in the game? The box is practically bursting at the seams. However, there are many additional planes missing from the game. Even with the large selection of aircraft, a lot of additional airplanes that didn’t make the cut for Western Front Ace. Just to name a few, seaplanes and float planes are an obvious gap. All my gaming compatriots know my fondness – which they might call an obsession¬ – with seaplanes and floatplanes, so yeah, I’m missing them. I get it, the game is Western Front Ace, so the focus on the air war over the front is understandable, but if you dig a bit, you’ll find a lot of interesting actions happening in the coastal zones of the North Sea and Mediterranean.
But beyond the coastal theater, there are a number of planes that didn’t make the cut like the Spad XI, Bristol M1C. While, the production team has to draw the line somewhere, there are always going to be folks that want the lesser-known aircraft. It would be nice to see some of the ‘pre-1916’ aircraft. Sure, the air war didn’t begin in earnest until 1916, but aerial combat was happening in 1915.
Speaking of the coastal zones, the naval air war on each end of the Western Front receives no attention in Western Front Ace. Again, we acknowledge that Western Front Ace has a LOT of activity represented, but the actions of the Royal Naval Air Service and The Imperial Naval Air Service in the North Sea well as the Ihe Italian Royal Flying Corps (with the Allies!) facing the Austro-Hungarians in the Adriatic each served an important often overlooked role in what we would today call littoral operations.
On the subject of the Adriatic, it would have been nice to see a Balkans front campaign. This is arguably the easiest one to add as almost all the planes you need are already included in Western Front Ace. It’s basically a new theater map with different start times and availability for the participants.
But that’s enough grousing about what are basically ‘nice to have’ features that should not diminish what is a solid gaming experience. If you manage to play through campaigns using each nationality you will at played at least 7 full campaigns before going back to repeat a country. That’s a LOT of gaming value in that box.
Western Front Ace is seeing a lot of action with our group. Our esteemed editor, Rick Martin finds the game has a very immersive narrative. Rick would have liked to see some of the earlier war planes such as the Eindekker and the Morane Saulnier. (But hey – we did get the DH.2!). It was not all wine and roses as Rick found the special rules for the major ground offensive a little unclear. The fatigue track on the sortie log had him scratching his head (fatigue is an optional rule.) I remember having similar questions pop up as I learned the game and I found the Facebook group to have been a great sounding board for getting rules clarifications and tips on how to play.
Dan Schul, the leading Austro-Hungarian ace from our recent multi-player campaign found it would have been helpful if all the rules had been in the rulebook, instead of having some information split out onto some of the charts. Dan also found himself suffering from fatigue as he had to grind out a lot of missions to keep up with the campaign schedule. (Individual players of the game will not experience this pressure as you can always set the campaign aside as needed.)
There’s been a growing number of games covering aerial warfare during the Great War. A quick compare and contrast show the unique perspective and strengths of Western Front Ace.
Aces of Valor from Legion Games is a similar type of game, though the time frame is more limited and the perspective of the player a tad more removed from the action. In Aces of Valor you send flights of planes out on missions and manage your squadron of pilots. Ace’s feels a bit more structured as you move your flights across the map and you send out flights of planes. Combat is much more abstracted, though it nicely models pilot skill and aircraft performance.
But Western Front Ace is a much more personal experience. This game is all about YOU and your wingman as you seek glory and try to live, thrive and survive. Aces of Valor presents a broadly similar experience but takes a step back to put you in the role of squadron CO, managing your pilots and planes across a campaign season. You may appreciate your skilled pilots and work them hard, but Aces of Valor lacks that intimate sense of peril that Western Front Ace delivers.
You might think that GMT’s Bloody April would be a good comparison, but the reality is it’s like night and day. Bloody April is a much more complex and multi-player game. Bloody April gets down in the weeds with individual airplanes and two-minute turns. It’s a good game, but more on the other end of the spectrum from what Western Front Ace delivers.
Western Front Ace is designed from the ground up as a solitaire game. As such the game put’s you in the pilot’s seat and puts you into the skies above the front lines. How well you do once you are up there is up to the decisions you make and the vagaries of the fortunes of war.
The closest Western Front Ace gets to multi-player is for two (or more) players conduct their own careers and then scoring victory based on a metric. In classic fighter jock terms, the best metric is total confirmed kills over the course of your career. Over the spring of 2024, I was fortunate to participate in a massive online campaign set on the Italian Front. The campaign game was run via the Western Front Ace group on Facebook – and a well-deserved shout out to Ted Brayton in making the campaign happen. In the campaign, the players were grouped into opposing squadrons and reported our progress (and failures!) across the duration of the war. You see similar events done for games like Target for Today/Target for Tonight. The campaign experience forces the player to get the game on the tabletop and knock out the missions (See Dan’s comment above. ), but it also creates a great forum for share your experiences and posing the inevitable rules questions.
Western Front Ace is a solid solitaire game. The game has enough detail to impart a sense of time and place to the player. This is accomplished through both having an assigned airfield and the tables that generate a location for shot down/crashed planes. The inclusion of the pilot mat where you track your awards and skills helps give your pilot character depth and individuality.
Unlike earlier games of this type in which I objected to the limited decisioning making input of the player Western Front Ace has found the sweet spot in which I had plenty of input in the decision process, specifically in the ‘OODA loop’ of aerial combat. The use of the damage card deck and the ability to call on our wingman added layers of decision making to the game. My personal experience led me to what I called Dicta Hefty, which was, ‘Never fly without your wingman’. In practice this meant that I would shun solitaire hunting missions. I had multiple encounters in the game to which I fully credit having my wingman present as ‘saving my bacon’ from eventually defeat, injury and death. So full marks for an engaging game!
Weather is abstracted from having a direct hour-to-hour impact on the missions. The game flat out states that the limited number of sorties each month stems in part from abstracting weather-related issues. We can argue that ‘no contact’ results are due to clouds or weather that prevents contact with the enemy. The one place where the actual weather conditions do matter is landing. While the weather was good enough to allow you to take off and conduct a mission, the conditions on your return to the field might have changed for the worst. The results could be mist, fog, or even heavy storms that cause the field to be ‘socked in’. The current weather conditions serve as a modifier to your landing die roll and can contribute to a bad landing or in extreme cases – a fatal crash.
I found the game engaging and – especially when using the optional fatigue rules – gives some insight into the experience of a pilot during the Great War. The game reflects the advantages of veteran and ace pilots nicely. It’s dangerous to start out as a novice pilot as you – understandably – lack the experience and skills to be a master of your trade. Air combat is a harsh teacher, and you’re more likely to be shot down or injured before becoming skilled enough to hold your own in the skies. For a historical game, it’s good to see reasonably historical outcomes.
Beyond the pilot’s skill abilities, you have to contend with the qualitative match up of your plane versus your enemy. This match up ‘flips’ several times over the course of the war and is dependent on which front you are stationed. But that anxiety of taking to the skies in an inferior machine against qualitatively better pilots and planes can lead to a frustrating experience. You are best to remember that rookies are just happy to survive until they learn the skills to be an effective hunter, though many are doomed to join the ’30 minuters’.
While the constant cycle of patrols can start to feel repetitious, that tracks with the role of a fighter pilot. It’s literally what they do. However, the old saw about war is long stretches of boredom punctuated with moments of sheer terror is as good a description of Western Front Ace as any other. Things may be going great until suddenly, they are not!
You’ll see reflections of the themes from the classic 1976 movie ‘Aces High’ in Western Front Ace. The narrative journey of the pilot/player in Westen Front Ace mirrors that of Peter Firth’s character as you get a glimpse of the nature of the ‘chivalrous’ war in the air. With luck, maybe your pilot will survive the war and be remembered as a leading ace. Or maybe you’ll just count yourself as lucky to survive.
Armchair General Score: % 95
Solitaire suitability (1–5 scale, with 1 being virtually unplayable as a solitaire game and 5 being completely suitable for solitaire play): 5
Ray Garbee has been a tabletop gamer for the past four decades. Ray’s interests include the Anglo-Sikh Wars through the conflicts of the 20th Century and beyond, but his passion remains American Civil War naval gaming. His past works include Iron Thunder, Anaconda, Anaconda: Capital Navies and articles in a number of hobby magazines.
