Per the introduction in the rules, the game of B-17: Queen of the Skies recreates the bombing missions of the Eighth Air Force during the timeframe of November 1942 to May 1943.

The game is designed to be played solitaire with the player controlling one B-17 and each game representing one mission for that B-17. However, it is suggested that the player engage in a series of twenty-five games with the ultimate goal of completing all twenty-five games with the same bomber and the same crewmembers. This is a rare feat indeed.

To facilitate solitaire game play, the missions are conducted utilizing a number of charts and dice rolls. You start by determining the target city of your mission. Missions 1-5 are on a separate chart and represent "easier" cities which are only one to two zones away from your home base. Missions 6-10 represent somewhat more challenging missions with cities two to three zones away and missions 11-25 are the most challenging, where any city can be your target and may be up to eight zones away.

For each zone, you roll to determine the number of waves of enemy fighters you encounter. If you are lucky, this may be none but it may be up to three. You then roll to determine the composition of each wave which may be up to six enemy fighters. Luckily, you also roll to determine the extent of friendly fighter cover which may drive off enemy planes prior to them attacking the B-17.

Combat takes place in stages with your B-17 attacking enemy fighters first. The angle of attack of the enemy fighters determines which guns on the B-17 have a clear shot at the enemy. Cross referencing the gun, the angle of attack, and the type of enemy fighter will give you a target number you must roll on one die in order to hit the enemy fighter. Any hits require another roll to determine the extent of the damage done. Destroyed enemies are removed but those remaining now can fire on the B-17.

It is the enemy fire that relies most heavily on the charts provided. Enemy fighters first roll to hit and if successful, roll to see how many of their shells hit. For each shell, dice are rolled to determine which area of the B-17 is affected. Once the area is determined, dice are once again rolled to determine the specific damage done. Many results are for superficial damage but it is possible to hit the bombs of the B-17 prior to drop causing them to detonate - instantly destroying the B-17 and killing everyone on board. Every enemy fighter which hits has the possibility of making up to two more successive attacks in that wave.

This combat continues all the way up to and including the target zone. Once in the target zone, you roll for the weather in the zone. Bad or poor weather affect your roll to encounter fighter waves in the target zone. Once combat in the target zone is finished, you are then ready to encounter flak.

A roll is made to determine how severe, if any, the flak is over the target. The severity of the flak will determine what column on the flak chart to roll under. Three rolls are made on the appropriate column and as can be expected, you are more likely to be hit if the flak is heavy than medium which in turn is expected to hit more than if the flak is light. For each flak hit, you roll for the number of shell hits (just like you do for enemy fighter combat) which generally results in one to four shell hits. However, if you roll snake eyes, the flak actually bursts inside the plane (the dreaded BIP hit) which causes catastrophic damage.

If you survive the flak bursts, you actually get to bomb your target. Rolls are made to determine whether your bomb run is on target (and this is affected by whether you were hit by flak and the weather over the target) and then how accurate your bombing is. For victory purposes, you need to be on target for the mission to be considered an Allied success.

Once the bomb run is concluded, you turn your B-17 around and head for home. Enemy fighter activity is conducted in each zone identical to combat on the way to the target. Once over your base, you again roll for weather conditions. The weather conditions and any landing modifiers are taken into account when you land. If you land in good weather with no negative modifiers, you don’t need to roll the dice - a safe landing is assured. However, if the weather is not cooperating and/or you have negative landing modifiers, you must roll to land and find the results, from landing safely to crashing and destroying the B-17 and all aboard.

Of course this procedure assumes that you make it back to your home base. Along the way you may encounter problems that force you to abandon the B-17 (having to roll to see if crewmembers bail out safely) or crash land (either in water or on land) which will result in more rolls to determine the fate of the crew (killed, captured, rescued by the Underground).

If this sounds like a lot of dice rolling and chart look up, it is. The solitaire nature of the game dictates that the enemy actions are determined randomly. However, this does not mean that there are no decisions to be made in the game. Enemy planes can come at the B-17 from multiple angles. A given gun may have multiple targets but can only choose one. Since ammunition is limited, you may choose to conserve ammo to use later (assuming you survive to later!). Additionally, your plane may take damage which will allow you to abort the mission. However, if you abort, you fly out of formation thereby losing the protection of the other B-17s in your squadron. In like fashion, if your B-17 takes enough negative landing modifiers, you may decide that a wiser course of action is to bail out rather than take a chance on crashing upon landing.

The solitaire nature of the game may not appeal to some but others may like the fact that you can play a game at any time. Once you are familiar with the system, a mission can be played in as little as 15 minutes, consulting only the charts. The nature of the combat and varied results on the charts produce very satisfying game play. I am on Mission # 6 of a new campaign and somewhere along the way (without conscious thought), I stopped jotting "B-17 fire" and "German fire" in my notes for combat and replaced them with "our fire" and "their fire" because I felt I had a stake in the success of the mission.

I have take multiple hits to the bomb bay and each time I nervously await the roll, hoping the bombs are not hit. When the outcome was bomb bay doors jammed (which effectively sealed the bombs in the plane), I crossed by fingers for a safe landing so that I wouldn’t have to roll to see if the bombs detonated if we crash landed.

B-17 is a great game and it has a lot of replay value. After starting the most recent campaign, I rerated this game ‘8’. If I had my choice, I would almost always pick a face-to-face game with one or more friends. However, if that is not possible, B-17 is one of the best ways to satisfy your gaming itch.

[Personal note: It has been almost 30 years since B-17 came out. This game would benefit immensely from an application that would allow you to play on the computer. The chart based resolution of the game would make this an ideal candidate. I would love to see this done as an Excel spreadsheet with pop ups showing you your choices. Additionally, my dream version would allow you to either use a dice rolling utility to generate your rolls or allow you to actually roll dice and record the results. I think this would cut down on the note keeping but still allow all the fun of the present game.]

I ordered my copy of this game in 1987 and am still playing with all the original components. It has provided me great hours of entertainment. Glad to see others hold the same affection for this game as I do!!

I recently traded away B 29 Superfortress in order to get B 17 QotS back in my collections. In fact, I'm gonna roll up a couple missions this evening in my second campaign since getting it back.


Edit: Apparently I should have stopped at two missions this evening. Stupefyn' Jones went down over Belgium on the third mission this evening. Only the Navigator and Radioman made back to England. The rest were killed or captured.

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Thanks for reviewing this great old game!

The one thing I don't want to see is a computer version.

B-17 is a great and fun solitaire game that tells a story. Computerising it would "speed" it up and turn missions into 20 quick mouse-clicks. It would be horrible. There are many computer games I love to play. B-17 is one of the board games I love to play.

This game has become my Holy Grail. I WILL own it someday!

I somewhat agree with you which is why I mentioned the option to still roll your own dice to enter the results.

I suppose if you had the computer skills, you could program the game to run by itself which would defeat the whole purpose.

I may have to rexamine my position on this.

Thanks.

My pleasure and thanks for the tip! It gave me enough for my GeekBadge.

Kjamma4,

There is a site, Vassal, that does just this. Only thing is you don't roll the dice, there is a die operation in the programming. You still fill out the Mission Chart (also on the computer. The computer keeps track of your turns.

Here is the link:

http://www.vassalengine.org/community/index.php?option=com_v...

Jim P

With all the recent activity on this I just may have to pull my copy out of storage... Thanks for resurrecting the memories of playing this in my youth, before these darn kids and computers started swallowing up all my time...


If I remember correctly Atari had an early generation video game on this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-17_Flying_Fortress_(computer_...)

But there was an even earlier one I remember in 1985'ish for the Atari game console.

This game was the one I had the most difficulty in acquiring on E-Bay (granted, this was 10 years ago). It took five tries before I was finally successful (damn all you snipers to hell!), but it was certainly worth it. And as for all of the dice rolling, heck, you need to get some exercise, don't you?

I seem to recall using that to play a few games in the past. It does a pretty good job of emulating the boards you use for the game but what I would like to see is something that keeps track of the status of your plane for the mission.

You could still roll the dice but it would then look up the charts for you and give your result. If you were over one of the cities that has superb flak, it would automatically add "1" to your flak roll. Similarly, it would track any negative landing modifiers for you.

Basically, just a "helper" program rather than something that plays the game for you.

Thanks.

Thanks for taking the time to write this well written review.

This is one game in my collection that I can safely say I will never sell or trade.

I have tried t play this on vassal, and I have to agree with Randy..there's something quaint & very special about having all the cards, charts, chits, notepads and dice there with you on the table.