Air Aces (1975)

An early set of air combat miniatures rules for recreating plane to plane combat in World War II, for two or more players. The designer acknowledges that the game does not use a defined time and space scale, but is instead intended to demonstrate the "relative capabilities" of the various aircraft. The rules were designed for use with 1/100 to 1/365 scale models. Game statistics are given for 8 famous fighter aircraft. According to the author's introduction, he had worked on the game design since 1967. In the early seventies, the game was used by Spartan International at competitive events, and the game was printed in the Spartan Journal in 1972. One interesting note in the introduction: "When Lou Zocchi saw this game he flipped! He had been working on the same dimensional problems for years, but to no avail. He quickly adopted the 'break-throughs' offered by this game to use in one of his own."