The core concept of Skies Above the Reich was spatial. The formation of heavy bombers penetrating Axis airspace during World War Two constituted a discrete space. That space was stable, even somewhat static. The four-engined B-17s and B-24s creating that space relied on each other for mutual support, each sporting at least seven gun positions, and no pilot dared leave formation if he could avoid it. To the German fighter pilot, that space was lethal, and the game presented the German player with a map of the formation. The player’s task was to navigate that map and loosen the bomber formation.

Early in development we toyed with porting this concept to the Battle of Britain, but quickly dismissed the idea. By comparison to the heavies of the USAAF, the medium bombers of the Luftwaffe’s 1940 campaign were maneuverable and poorly armed. The space of the formation was less stable, and to the RAF pilot, less lethal. To model Battle of Britain air combat using the system devised for Skies and Storm Above the Reich would be like stuffing a square peg into a round hole.

Some folks disagreed. Gina Willis chimed in on BGG, and after I politely explained why it wouldn’t work, she returned with a Vassal prototype of Skies Above Britain. She then built a prototype and brought it to Hanford to show it to Gene Billingsley and Mark Simonitch, two of the publisher’s executives. They gave it two thumbs up and sent me the prototype. Two things struck me immediately: I was wrong, and I was right.

Gina’s game worked and it stayed true to the system of Skies Above the Reich. And yet, all the emphasis was on the violent encounter between fighter and bomber, while very little was placed on the dueling and dogfighting between fighter and escort. That seemed like a missed opportunity, because the interesting bit about the Battle of Britain, to me anyway, was the desperate challenge of the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots to deal with the German escorts. Gina agreed.

We played design tennis. I took apart her prototype and created a new version, sending it to her. She bounced ideas back to me, I bounced some ideas again, and gradually out of this back and forth emerged a game that bore little resemblance to that initial prototype. This collaboration took a while, complicated by a backdrop of life-events that included the death of Gina’s dog, raging California wildfires, and the emergence of a global pandemic.

In comparison to Skies Above the Reich, this game is both less and more. There is less detail in the encounters between fighters and bombers. Instead of a game board with a bomber formation printed on it and Lethal Levels value printed in each space of the board, the Heinkels, Junkers, Dorniers, and Stukas are presented on tiles. Each tile represents an element of three bombers. When fighters engage those bombers, the formation is a neatly organized mosaic of tiles, and if the player’s attacks are successful, those tiles will be spread apart in a disorganized mess.

In Skies Above the Reich, encounters between fighter and escort were simple, taken care of by a single die roll and a CRT. Here, we unpack those encounters and focus the game on formation and maneuver. The RAF pilot was constrained by a Vic formation, less maneuverable than the rotte and schwarm their adversaries maneuvered in. Skies Above Britain spatializes that contact, which means that angle of approach is important (nose, oblique, tail). Instead of a CRT, card decks mediate these encounters allowing for more detailed results.

Skies Above Britain also spatializes the approach to the “Raid,” the Luftwaffe formation of bombers and escorts. The centerpiece of the game is the board, printed with an Interception Map. The bombers are represented in the nucleus while escort stations are marked around it. As the Raid develops, that is, as the player’s RAF squadron makes contact and approaches the formation, information is revealed. Escorts are revealed to be in some stations but not others, and upon contact the RAF squadron finds itself in a position on the map relative to those escorts and to the nucleus. The player must then decide how to crack open this problem. Should the squadron split, sending some pilots against the escorts over there while the others tear after the bombers? Should the squadron maneuver into a better position first? Should the player just send the entire squadron straight in? Altitude, sun position, and visibility complicate the equation, not to mention the clock. You want to get at those bombers before they drop their eggs.

Space in Skies Above Britain happens at two scales, that of the Raid, a formation scale mediated by the Interception Map, and that of individual aircraft as fighters engage bombers or tangle with escort. When fighters successfully penetrate the nucleus of the Luftwaffe Raid, the action is handled on the bomber tiles. When Messerschmitts engage your fighters, that action is handled either on the Squadron Display or on the periphery of the bomber mosaic as escort chase fighters to protect the bombers. It doesn’t take long for your fighters to lose contact with the Raid as they maneuver against Bf109s or 110s.

This new game is therefore similar and yet different from Skies and Storm Above the Reich. Fate Boxes, Hit markers, combat cards, Damage markers and Catastrophic Effects, and many other features remain the same. But the system has been tailored to handle encounters with medium bombers, a very different animal from the American heavies. Complexity has been siphoned off that encounter to reside in the dogfight between Spitfire and Messerschmitt. We think the overall complexity of the game is no different than Skies Above the Reich, and playing time is also about the same. An individual mission, or “patrol” in Skies Above Britain lasts 20 to 45 minutes, and a campaign consists of patrols played one after the other. There is a Squadron Log and a Pilot Roster, and part of the enjoyment of the game is maintaining an effective squadron of pilots. You command Spits or Hurricanes, and you can play just a few patrols or a short campaign or the entire battle.

Considering how I was convinced a game like this couldn’t work, that the Skies system was a poor choice for the Battle of Britain, I am glad to have been proven wrong. Gina’s enthusiasm carried the project. She is persistent and has the quality of perseverance. I’m not always the easiest person to work with, and starting the collaboration off with the assertion that “it won’t work” surely didn’t strike an encouraging note. But she endured, demonstrating rather persuasively that besides being a solid designer, Gina Willis knows how to win an argument.

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