When I was a boy one of my favorite TV series was 12 OClock High, a show
about the men who flew B-17s in England in WWII. By the time I was 14 I read "Flying Fortress" by Edward Jablonski; still
one of the best books every written on the B-17. I eventually saw the 1949 movie 12 O'clock High, starring Gregory Peck,
and I currently a DVD of the film. In 1984 I found something that was better.
The Original Game
In 1984 I bought Avalon Hill's B-17:Queen Of The Skies. It's a simple game to learn
and it's solitaire game. The game mechanics relies on random dice rolls and table lookup. The startegy for the player
is to try to keep his plane in the air by the judicial use of defensive gunfire. The average game is around an hour.
I enjoyed. I quickly "flew" 25 missions and more. At Origins in '84 a multiplayer
version of B-17:QOTS was played. Each player had his own plane and the bombers went to the same target. The same idea was
copied at Pacificon, now called ConQuestSF, and "Raid Over Dunfey" was born.
But something was missing.
Multi-player B-17 or Thank You Mick and Dane
Mick and Dane, the original GM/referees for "Raid Over Dunfey" had started
a fun heavily attended event. But the multi-player rules had a serious flaw. B-17s were startegic bombers. They were built
to bomb industrial targets. Also, B-17s were flown in specific style of a formation called a "combat box." the box was designed
to provide mutual protection with the bombers machine guns.
Instead the lionshare of the points in the game were awarded to those who shot
down the most aircraft. Also, there was no mutual protection. Hardly realistic. Chip and Dane came up with a multi-player
version that allowed for those two basic ideas to be incorporated into the game. For now on bombing success counted more than
individual aircraft shot down, and the bombers had to protect one another.
From "Raid Over Dunfey" To "Target Reich"
For the last twenty years the rules have remained more or less the same. The current GM/referee "Colonel" Ron Plunk,
who took over in 1997 has run a very well attended game. I believe, and Ron, hopefully, will correct me, that Ron added the overhead
projections of aerial photographs of our targets as well as other refinements.
| The All-Important Briefing |
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| "Colonel" Plunk briefing the group |
| A Squadron On The Way |
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| "Keep It Tight!" |
TARGET REICH Plus 20 years.
This past labor day weekend ConQuestSF hosted the 20th Anniversary Game of Target Reich. There were at least 60
players!
Ron talks about using other aircraft such as B-24 Liberators. The "Lib" was more prone to succumb to battle
damage than the "Fort." Some of us regulars have suggested modifying the game to have cannon armed B-25s at the Battle of
the Bismark Sea. Talk about major changes in rules!
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