Blue Max

What is Blue Max

In "Blue Max", each player pilots a World War I airplane in a dogfight. This wargame can be played as a campaign, with new planes becoming available as time passes, and with surviving pilots getting better at what they do.

Each plane has a maneuver sheet showing which ones it is allowed to do -- some maneuvers can only be executed by ace pilots, and other maneuvers are "restricted" in the sense that they can't be repeated from one turn to the next (the plane would stall).

If you "tail" another plane, its pilot must show you whether he's going right, left or straight ahead. You get to shoot ahead of your plane, unless you have a bomber with an observer/gunner in the back (swivel-mounted guns). Damage is rolled on a table that determines severity in terms of blue and red hits; you then draw the indicated number of coloued chits from a cup. Hits are taken to the wings, tail, engine, etc. There's a chance the pilot is killed, or that the plane catches fire.

Fuel eventually runs out and the pilots fly off to meet another day --if they survived.

Game details

Players

2–6

Age

+13

Duration

60 min

Difficulty

Medium

Type

Board game

Year

1983

Mechanics

Critical Hits and Failures · Dice Rolling · Events

Categories

Aviation / Flight · Wargame · World War I

Designer

Phil Hall · John Harshman

Publisher

Diseños Orbitales · Game Designers' Workshop (GDW Games) · Oriflam · Stratelibri