A Review

There has been a big resurgence of interest in World War 2 in the last couple of years, for which there are many reasons. The 50-year anniversary of its end in 1995 might have been one reason, the passing of many of the “Greatest Generation” may be another. What ever the reason for the renewed interest in the “last good war”, the trend has reach even into science fiction, where authors ranging from Harry Turtledove to Newt Gingrich have been producing an explosion of quasi-historical or out-right fantasy versions of WW 2. The gaming industry has followed suit. It is one of these new wargames I would like to focus on in this article.

Luft Krieg is a stand-alone spin-off of the wargame/role-playing game Gear Krieg, first published in July 2000. The premise of that game is that all the weird designs and prototypes that were made during the war actually worked and were put into production. It’s a 1940s pulp science fiction game that not only allows Horton 229 flying wings in 1941, but has them actually work as advertised. This allows a lot of fascinating aircraft from the 1940s that never even got off the ground a chance to be used. To be fair, many of these planes would never have gotten off the ground if they had been built. The Horton 229 had terrible stability problems (no tail) which may have contributed to the crash of one of the two prototypes that was built. Planes of similar design (Northrop Grumman Pegasus, Boeing X-45, and the Dassault Star) are only now being produced due to breakthroughs in digital computing. Luft Krieg has a simple “pulp science fiction” answer to that in “compulators”. These 1940s analog “Gear” computers and “gyroscopes” provide a science fiction answer for this problem. That’s the sci-fi part of the game, now on to the mechanics.

Luft Krieg uses the Silhouette system developed by Dream Pod 9 for the games Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles. The system lends itself well to W.W. II air-combat, with only a few minor problems. The game was written with miniatures in mind. It can be played using either English or metric measurements. To avoid confusion the rules are written in measured units (MUs) where the length of the MU depends on the scale. Depending on what scale is decided on, a turn will last from 6 seconds to 30 seconds. Luft Krieg, like most wargames, uses six-sided dice to simulate luck and the random events. The game also has rules for skill and ability levels. The games best selling point for me was its playability in comparison to Mustangs and Speed of Heat. Luft Krieg is far more playable than those systems, allowing one person to handle up to a half a squadron fairly easily. While not as realistic as Speed of Heat or even Mustangs, I doubt anyone would want to play more than two planes at once in either of the other two systems. You can complete a large battle (8 planes a side) in less than two hours, which is also a bonus. The only problems I see with the rules are the ground-to-air interface rules. This may be some poor editing on the part of DP9 or it may be that the rules need clarification. This is a minor draw back in an overall solid game.

Finally, don’t pass up Luft Krieg if “Pulp Fiction” planes are not to your taste. They work just as well for historical aircraft, which make up the majority of the aircraft presented in the game anyway.