When I start rambling about weird niche board games, my industry friends politely smile and nod. But I can tell when they’ve started looking for the quickest possible exit to the conversation. “That sounds cool,” they might say, “but not relevant to what WE do.”
There’s no way to get them to tune out more rapidly than to mention solo board games. Indeed, talking about a solo board game yields a rapid response – something along the lines of “Why the hell would you do that, when you can just play a video game?”
Maybe they have a point. Board games and video games are different mediums, with different rules, standards, and goals. Video games are better for an audience that doesn’t want to sit hunched over a table of tiny cardboard chits, dice, and cards for several hours. Video games require no setup and no scanning for edge cases in lengthy rulebooks. You just play.
Yet there are times I need the more tactile nature of solo board games, and their slow, contemplative rhythms. Shuffling cards, laying out the board, the bookkeeping of tracking turns and score tracks – it’s a soothing and quiet hobby in ways that playing video games isn’t.
And board games frequently inspire my work. Board game designers are, collectively, an especially thoughtful and smart group. They can’t rely on awesome animations, sound effects, and the latest and greatest hardware to prop up their ideas. Their path to engaging players – and keeping them around – is great game mechanics that strongly reinforce the theme of the game.
So when the local board game shop has its regular Thanksgiving 3-for-2 sale, the family and I make a pilgrimage and come home with a haul to add to my collection of cardboard. This year, one of the purchases was a solo wargame – even more niche than most solo board games – called Skies Above the Reich.
Early on, as fighters approach
a small damaged formation.
Playing the Bad Guys
Let’s get an obvious negative out of the way first: like many World War 2 games, you’re stuck playing the bad guys. The game puts you in the role of commanding a group of BF109 fighters against B-17 bombing raids, starting in 1942.
Playing the German Air Force in World War 2 is justifiably uncomfortable for lots of folks. (I’ve written about this topic before.) It’s clear from the notes in the manual that the designers of Skies chose the setting specifically because it reinforced the story they wanted to tell (more on that later). For my part, I’m able to enjoy the game’s mechanics and separate my gaming experience from the horrible history of the Nazi regime.
But if playing the bad guys is not something you find palatable in gaming, I support you – you can stop reading now. That said, there is a related Skies Above Britain game which has some mechanical differences but lets you take on the role of British fighters defending against the German onslaught during the Battle of Britain.
Skies Above the Reich was first published in 2018 and is now in its second printing. It’s a GMT product, and if you’re familiar with GMT you know that wargames – sometimes with very obscure topics – are their thing.
GMT products tend to have similarities – simple but solid components, with a horde of cardboard counters, mounted or paper boards, card decks, and sometimes wooden blocks and sticker sheets. They often feature dense rulebooks, with a game’s complexity rating listed on the box (Skies Above the Reich is listed as a 5 out of 9).
GMT games also list a “solitaire suitability” rating, right next to the complexity. They know many of their customers like to play wargames alone – recreating battles on their gaming tables, controlling both sides to just play out history. Skies Above the Reich is rated as a “9” for solitaire suitability; it’s a solo-by-design wargame.
I’ve Got New Rules, I Count ’Em
When I first set up the game, after applying fighter stickers to wooden blocks and punching out two sheets of counters, I was overwhelmed. I’m no wargaming novice, but something about the rules initially did not click for me.
It’s no knock on the game’s materials. The rulebook is excellent, with big friendly text covering each topic and concept in clear terms with plenty of diagrams.
There are also three player aids – two bifold and one trifold – that step through every system in the game, include all the necessary charts and tables, and reference specific page numbers in the rulebook when more detail is required. Once you’re familiar with the systems, the player aids are all you’ll ever need.
Part of my initial tentativeness was a lack of familiarity with the topic. As a long-time wargamer and amateur history buff, I was familiar with the American B-17 Flying Fortress and its reputation as a nearly unstoppable bomber. But the other side of the air war, and the tactics German fighters used to pick apart bomber formations, isn’t something I’ve read much about.
On the front cover of the rulebook, the subtitle for Skies Above the Reich is Breaking the Combat Box. That concept is what the game is laser-focused on in both its theme and mechanics.
different altitudes. Multiple angles
of attack equals downed bombers!
The mounted maps, four in all, portray various formations of B-17 bombers – from small groups of three and four planes, up to massive late-war raids. The bombers occupy the center point of four diamond-shaped spaces, representing the front, sides, and tail of the aircraft. Each space has a blue number, representing how hazardous it is to incoming fighters.
On top of the four core maps, the design layers starting conditions into each scenario. Maybe the sun was in front of the formation last time; this time it’s off to the side. The inbound bombers were intact last time; this time, the outbound bombers are already damaged. In the previous mission, the bombers were heavily escorted by Spitfires; this time, the escorts won’t even show up until five turns in.
All the setup options result in a highly diverse play space demanding thoughtful analysis – tactical terrain in the sky. As bombers start to fall out of formation, the map changes and new angles of approach appear.
Missions in Skies, which typically take less than half an hour to play, paint a vivid mental picture of the conflict while the action’s going on. Fighters weave in and out, some climbing, some rolling, and some blasting straight out of the sun to tear into the bomber formation before diving to safety through a hail of tracers.
The Human Cost
The evocative missions are glued together in three campaign options – a short campaign, where you pick a single year of the war to play; a medium campaign, which covers a couple of years; or a long campaign covering the entire bombing campaign from 1942-1945.
While there is some technical progression through the years – the maps get more hazardous, the bomber formations more complex, and your fighters get more toys to play with – this isn’t a game about the machinery. Instead, the focus is squarely on your pilots.
You start in 1942 with eighteen, six veterans with special skills. Over time, pilots will get wounded, bail out of damaged aircraft, and sometimes die. New green pilots, perhaps prone to panic or erratic behavior, will join the group. It’s a light role-playing mechanic with a progression element that makes you feel the human cost of the grinding conflict over time.
In one of the cleverest game mechanics I’ve ever seen, the potential for a pilot’s demise looms over every phase of a mission. When a pilot’s plane is hit, it doesn’t instantly go down. The turns represent a brief time slice, mere seconds in the rapid-fire pace of air combat, so hits on your planes aren’t resolved until the following turn.
At this point, the pilot’s plane takes damage, but even then your pilot’s fate is unknown. Depending on where the hit was – the cockpit, the fuel lines, the wings, or elsewhere – he’ll end up in a special “fate box.” Only after the mission is over will you make a couple of dice rolls to see what happened. Did he safely land or bail out? Was he wounded? Or did the plane explode in mid-air?
The stickered wooden blocks representing damaged planes linger ominously around on the fringes of the board, waiting for you to finish the mission – a grim reminder of the human cost of your decisions. The mechanics intentionally make you nervous to send another wave of fighters after the bombers, especially if deadly enemy escorts are on the scene. But success in a campaign requires aggressive play.
awaits his fate; two others chase
bombers that fell out of formation.
A Perfect Mechanical Stew
Skies Above the Reich is one of the best solo tabletop wargames I’ve ever played. I’d rank in my top three, alongside two excellent John Butterfield designs, D-Day At Omaha Beach and Enemy Action: Ardennes. Yet it stands shoulders above even those great games in its excellent components, brilliantly-designed game board, thoughtful mechanics, and strongly realized theme.
The pilot injury mechanics, the vivid maneuverings I see in my mind’s eye of fighter waves as they weave in and out of bomber formations, and the mind-bending puzzle of the “terrain” of the air formation all work together. The result is a consistent, coherent design where every mission – indeed, every pass of a fighter wave – is unique and surprising.
Skies Above the Reich is a game that humbles me as a developer. It’s a shining example of design excellence that consistently impresses me with how well it all works. It’s more than worth your time – it’s worthy of a permanent spot on an overcrowded gaming shelf.
Skies Above the Reich can be purchased from most online gaming retailers. The Scree Games blog is posted weekly on Tuesdays, with a repost on Medium every Wednesday.