This is an Optional Rule, as part of the Axis & Allies Global 1940 & 1943 House Rules Expansions.
Players should agree before game start if this Optional Rule is used.
The Fighter Ace & Luftwaffe Ace rule has been play tested and widely used since Early 1997 with various Axis & Allies versions.
Since Late 2015 the rule has been play tested for use with Axis & Allies Global 1940.
Due to their skills and determination, the Fighter Aces & Luftwaffe Aces of World War II had an enormous impact on morale - both on their own side - and certainly on their opponents side.
Many Aces kept fighting until they were lost in combat.
Some survived the War to tell their story.
The G40 Fighter Ace & Luftwaffe Ace rule is created with both the Game Player as well as the History Enthusiast in mind.
The IPC cost and the 2-dice advantage of the Fighter Ace & Luftwaffe Ace represents the units training, experience (number of combat missions) and commitment as well as the skills each unit acquired.
For game play reasons and balance of play - and to some degree the Historical Aspect - the number of Fighter Ace & Luftwaffe Ace units are limited in numbers.
Captain
@The-Captain Sweet ! Another rule :)
I assume they can land on CVs too then ?
Edit
No Lend Lease ? USA can’t send one to the soviests ?
I assume you already have a Japanese fighter ace rule (can’t remember exactly).
It’s part of a larger issue I have with the rules, but the fighter aces really shouldn’t be bought for a higher price. Just spending more money doesn’t make someone an ace.
Instead fighter aces should be created (unlimited amount) after participating in a set number of battles (5 to 10, undecided) and surviving. If that’s too complicated upgrading fighters (like how Waffen-SS are done, those of which should be bought for a higher price and mobilized like regular units, as those units were formed mostly from scratch, not upgrades of regular Wehrmacht) would work. To give credit where credit is due, the later 1942 date helps.
Otherwise, the other unit statistics seem to work.
The ace American pilots probably don’t speak Russian/Ukrainian/sorry but I don’t have every language in the USSR memorized so sorry if I excluded that language.
True - these units are not eligible for Lend-Lease - this is now specified in the rules.
@The-Captain Since you’ve been playtesting for over a quarter century and almost a decade with Global, I imagine you tried giving 1 to UK and JPN ?
If so, did they prove too powerful in playtesting ?
Luftwaffe Ace is done :) Working on yanks and commies now.
Awesome - great work on TripleA.
We’ve marked the Fighter Ace units and Luftwaffe Ace units with a red dot on the engine-nose (basically the original color used on some fighter planes during the War).
We’ll post pictures later of these units.
The original concept of the Fighter Ace rule was to give all Nations an opportunity to have Fighter Ace units.
We play tested various concepts for the rule during this phase.
As play testing went on, we also discussed the Historical aspect - and we came to the conclusion that only the Nations with the highest scoring Aces could build Fighter Ace units.
It is true, that some Japanese fighter pilots did score a high number of kills during the early stages of the War, especially in China.
As the conflict expanded to include the USA, Japan gradually exhausted their number of skilled pilots due to combat losses.
This is the main reason why Japan does not have any Fighter Ace units available when the Fighter Ace & Luftwaffe Ace rule enters the game (Late 1942).
Compared to the Soviet Union, most of the Soviet fighter pilots increased their skills and accelerated their scores towards the middle of the War and until the end of World War II.
To reflect the Historical number of Ace units compared to the overall number of Fighter units - at least to some degree - and to keep the Balance of Play, the final play testing ended with the rules as mentioned in the rulebook today.
Also, we had to keep the rules simple - and still attractive enough to use - since the overall number of units and rules that are available to players lifts the entire game to the category: Advanced.
Shouldn’t Japan at least just start the game with aces? Several Japanese aces had more kills than America’s best World War 2 ace.
It would also be more accurate as the Japanese were known for their aces early in the war and only allowing them to start, but not build any more, can capture the historical phenomenon better.
The Fighter Ace & Luftwaffe Ace IPC cost is 11 IPC for each unit.
There was a flaw in the IPC cost in the original text in the rules.
This has now been corrected and updated in the rules attached to the first post in this thread.
Captain
