I enjoy air combat games and I have been playing them solo for some years now. I started out with Avalon Hill's game “B17 - Queen of the Skies”. In this classic solo game you fly a B17 Flying Fortress with a crew of ten on bombing missions from England over continental Europe, trying to complete 25 missions with the plane and as many as possible of the crew intact. Variants in AH's magazine The General allow you to fly other missions and an Arvo Lancaster bomber. If you have not tried this game, I can recommend it. It is enjoyable as a solo game and it would not work better with an opponent. (Yes I know that a computer game probably would do a better job of it, but I am old fashioned and I prefer my cardboard pieces.) But be prepared for a lot of die rolling.
Having lost aircrews and planes by the dozen, I looked around for a game that would allow me to fly other types of airplanes and more detailed dogfights. I got hold of Avalon Hill's “Air Force” and the expansion modules “Dauntless” and “The Air Force/Dauntless Expansion Kit”. In these games you manoeuvre individual aircraft and conduct air-to-air combat, bombing, ground attacks, flak, carrier take-offs and landings, night fighting etc. Combat strength is represented as a total of all the aircraft's guns that can fire into each 'sector' and them limiting the attacks to just one sector per turn. The games cover lots of different aircraft and variants. Extra aircraft and scenarios have been published in The General.
The main problem, from a solitaire point of view, is that the game system uses simultaneous movement. You secretly plot all the aircrafts' activities for the move, then move them and resolve fire combat, bombings etc. Though an aircraft tailed by another has to reveal its plot in advance. Gun strength is not given for each gun, but is listed as a total for all the aircraft's guns, for each direction the plane can fire in. So a plane can only fire at one target each turn.
To get around the simultaneous plotting when soloing, you can split the plotting phase into three parts. First side A writes its plot for half of its movement points (rounded up). Then side B writes its plot for all of its movement points. And finally side A writes the plot for the rest of its points. Next turn the sides switch around, so side B now plots half of its movement points first and so on. This way side A does not know what side B is going to do, when it starts the plotting. But it gets to react with half of its move. Side B will know what side A has begun doing, but has to plan for what side A can do with the last part of the plot.
This simple method works very well. I have been able to fight many battles where I have surprised myself. If you have more than one plane per side, the added complexity of visualizing the movements helps too. If one side is advantaged over the other (tailing or an ace pilot), it just gets to split its plot in two more often or to plot all of its movement last.
After some years with “Air Force” and “Dauntless” I came across 3W's “Aces High”, a WW1 air combat game and its sequel “American Aces”, as well as “Spitfire”, their WW2 game. They are based on the same basic system as “Air Force”. The main difference is that they handle gunfire individually for each set of guns. They include a lot of different aircraft. “Aces High” alone has got 90+. They also include a lot of historical scenarios, with many different missions. For some years they have been my favourite games, as they have simple rules, that still cover all aspects of air combat. 3W has gone out of business, but it should not be too difficult to find a copy of them, at a reasonably price. The basic system has been expanded in other games. These games are more complex. They simulate flying and combat in more detail. If you are interested in WW1 there is “Wings” from Yaquinto (It also includes a simpler basic version). WW2 in Europe has been covered in “Over the Reich” and “Achtung Spitfire” from COA. And modern air combat is dealt with in COA's “Speed of Heat” covering Korea and Vietnam, as well as in the “Air Superiority” series from GDW.
Besides the movement point oriented games, there is another game system that I like for soloing. GMT has published two air combat games in their “Down in Flames” series (“Rise of the Luftwaffe” and “8th Air Force”), that both use a card-driven mechanism. Actions (manoeuvre, combat, bombing and flak) are controlled by a deck of action cards. The cards can be manoeuvres like 'Barrel Roll', 'Half-loop' or 'Tight Turn'. Or attack cards like 'In my Sight: 1 burst' or 'Out of the Sun: 3 bursts'. The action cards also have information for resolving bombing, strafing and flak.
To start with, you draw a number of action cards, depending on the 'Performance' rating of your aircraft. (A Messerschmidt Bf-110C gets 4 and a Spitfire Mk. IX gets 7). During a turn you play a card to manoeuvre your aircraft into a better position or to attack. Your opponent then gets to respond with a card, you can then respond to that with another card and so on. If you are the last to play a card the manoeuvre or attack succeeds. If your opponent is the last to play a card, then it fails. On each card is listed the specific cards that it can respond to. You can also change your altitude. If you climb, you lose a card from your hand. If you dive, you get to draw an extra card, representing the gain and loss of speed. At the end of your turn, you draw more cards depending on the Horsepower' of your aircraft (typically 1 to 3), but your hand can never contain more cards than your Performance rating. The number of attacks you can make each turn is limited by the 'Burst' factor of your aircraft, your position vs. the other aircraft and the attack cards in your hand.
This way of representing speed, manoeuvres, and combat by cards works great. As you manoeuvre, attack or respond, you use up your hand, which can only be replenished at the end of your own turn, at the rate of your Horsepower. If you are involved in a long series of manoeuvres and responses, you can end up with few, if any, cards left. This represents the loss of speed (movement points), which then has to be regained over a longer time period.
In the basic game you handle pair of fighters (leader and wingman) in dogfights. The advanced game adds bombers (light, medium and heavy), flak and other mission types. The missions also become part of one of several larger campaigns. This could be the invasion of Poland, the Fall of France, the Battle of Britain or the air war over Germany in '44.
There are several things about this system that make it easy and fun to play solo. Action cards are not drawn for wingmen and bombers until they are needed, either for attacking or defending. This means that you only know the number of cards they will draw, not what options are open to them, until you have chosen to act. “Rise of the Luftwaffe” comes with about 20 aircraft and “8th Air Force” adds about 40 more. GMT's magazine, C3I, has had several new aircraft and campaigns as well as some variant rules. There are also more games in the pipeline. They cover WW2 in the Pacific and WW1.
To round things off, I will just mention another good solo air game, “London Burning”, also from the late Avalon Hill. This is about the Battle of Britain where you go through the campaign, seen from a British fighter squadron, flying a pair of fighters, with a limited number of pilots. The combat is simpler than in the other games, but in this game you also fight the Battle of Britain on an operational level, as you control which airfield the fighters start from and where they go to patrol and (hopefully) how they intercept the attacking planes.
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