How to play · B-17: Queen of the Skies

A mission, step by step

Briefing. A roll picks the target: missions 1-5 go to the closer targets in France, 6-10 reach further, and 11-25 can go anywhere up to Germany. More rolls place your B-17 in the formation (lead, middle or tail) and your squadron (high, middle or low), which changes how many fighters come at you.
Take off and form up over England. Zone 1, around the base, is safe.
The flight out, zone by zone. In each zone you roll for Allied fighter cover (it only reaches so far), then for waves of German fighters. Each wave rolls which fighters attack and from where: a clock position (12 is dead ahead) and a height (high, level or low).
Combat. Fighter cover may drive some attackers off. Then your gunners fire, you assign each gun a target, and the fighters that are left fire at you. A hit becomes a number of shells, each shell lands somewhere on the B-17, and each place has its own damage table: wounded crew, guns knocked out, fires, engines lost. A fighter that survives may come round again from a new position.
Over the target. The weather is rolled, then flak, then the bomb run: how close to the aiming point your bombs fall. On target is what wins a mission.
The flight home, zone by zone, with more fighters.
Landing. The weather at base, then the landing roll, with modifiers for damage, wounded pilots and engines out. A badly hit B-17 may have to ditch in the Channel, crash-land, or be abandoned by parachute.
Debrief. The seriously wounded roll to survive, frostbite is checked, and the mission is scored: an 8th Air Force victory if the bombs were on target and the B-17 came home in one piece, a German victory if she was lost or wrecked, and a draw otherwise.

Reading the screen

Strategic map: The board: England, the Channel and occupied Europe, with the zone rings around your base. The blue line is your route; your B-17 is the plane inside the pulsing ring (amber when she has fallen out of formation). The strip below gives the briefing and each zone's fighter-wave modifier.
The B-17: Your bomber from above, with the attacking fighters around her. The rings are the heights (high outside, low inside) and the clock numbers the directions. Damage is drawn on the plane: red patches and numbers for hits, red engines for engines out, flames for fires. Tracers show the latest roll: blue for your guns, red for German fire; solid for a hit, dashed for a miss.
The prompt: Top right: what the game needs from you now. Usually a roll (press Space or the button, or enter dice you rolled yourself), sometimes a decision. The last roll and its result sit underneath.
The log: Everything that has happened, newest at the bottom; the latest roll's lines are highlighted. Each table name links to that table on the Card Check page.
Crew and guns: Each man, the gun he mans with its ammunition left, and his state: wounds, frostbite, oxygen hits, and the Ace's bonus.
B-17 damage: Engines, damaged equipment, and every modifier now in force, with where it came from.

Your decisions

Assigning guns. For each attack you choose which gun fires at which fighter; the screen shows what each gun needs to hit. The tail guns may save their fire for a fighter diving past from the front (a passing shot).
Moving the crew. Between attacks, men can take over guns whose gunners are down, and pass ammunition to guns running low.
Aborting. When the B-17 is badly hurt you may turn for home without bombing. Some damage forces it. Only some aborts count toward the twenty-five.
Evasive action, jettisoning bombs, bailing out: offered when the rules allow, with what each one costs.

The campaign

A tour of twenty-five missions. The crew carries over from one mission to the next: the wounded may recover or be sent home, the dead and captured are replaced by new men on their first mission, and a man who survives twenty-five goes home. A gunner with five kills is an Ace and hits more easily. Each man's own experience counts: a bombardier and pilots on their 11th to 25th missions do better.

If the B-17 is lost or damaged beyond repair, the crew gets a new one. Between missions the campaign screen shows the tally, a bomb painted for each mission flown, the crew, the B-17s and the record of every mission. After twenty-five, whichever side has more victories wins.

House rules

Two optional rules, both off by default, chosen with checkboxes when you start a campaign. A campaign remembers which ones it's using; you can't turn them on or off partway through.

Crew experience: Each man earns XP for how well his own job goes on a mission: a gunner by his hit rate, the bombardier by his bombing accuracy, and whoever's flying the B-17 by the landing. Between missions, spend XP to level up his job's ability (and anyone's survival, which helps a seriously wounded man pull through and softens every wound roll) up to twice each. His current levels and available XP show on the crew table.
A B-17 lost away from a landing attempt in England: Without this rule, the rulebook's 7.3 note d holds exactly: anyone who personally makes it back keeps flying, no matter how the B-17 was lost. With it on, that only holds for a landing attempt in England itself (the B-17 comes back wrecked or damaged beyond repair), and only if at least one man aboard was alive at the end of it — a crew that's wiped out even in a crash on home soil leaves just as little to build on as one lost over Germany. A B-17 shot down, a crew that bails out or crash-lands anywhere else, or a landing attempt in England with no survivors, all send everyone home the same as a man returned by the Underground. And since nobody is left to build a new crew around, the campaign ends there rather than carrying on with replacements and a new B-17; a campaign that ends this way counts as a German Air Defense victory, since it never reached the twenty-five missions needed to tally one honestly.

Keys and tips

Space takes the main action: roll, fire, fly the next mission.
Games save themselves after every action; pick one up again from Play or the home page.
"Print the mission report" at the end of a mission gives the result, the crew's fates, the map, the damage and the whole log.
The theme switch at the top flips between the briefing-room paper and night-time olive drab.

Terms

FCA: A fighter damaged but still attacking; its shooting is a little worse.
FBOA: A fighter damaged badly enough to break off after this attack.
Wave: A group of German fighters attacking together in one zone.
Out of formation: A B-17 that can't keep up (engines out, damage) loses the formation's protection: more fighters, extra attacks.
Ace: A gunner with five or more kills in his career.
Zone: One ring of the map; the further from base, the more dangerous.