How to integrate bombers in AA1914 ?


  • One thing I like about AA1914 is the synergy between units and I want to keep that while adding on new things.

    I am looking at how bombers could be added in a nice way.

    Simply making it a powerful offensive unit would be wasteful in my mind because that means it would either be completely worth it or completely useless IPC wise. In other AA games, bombers are sometimes useful but in this scenario, with Infantry hitting on 2s and 3s, it’s just not THAT useful to have a unit with a stronger attack.

    So far, here’s the rule I came with that would make it interesting :

    1. Bomber attacks or defends only when you have air superiority or no one has it
    2. Bomber attacks or defends before combat by rolling one die for every enemy ground unit (or maybe a set number)
    3. For every roll of 1, the defender has a suppressed unit, which means it cannot fire during that round of combat; this would decrease your enemy’s effective force for the duration of the battle.

    I came with this idea after realizing that simply making a unit with a lot of dice to throw makes it uninteresting and hard to make different than simply having more troops.

    I did come at first with the idea that the bomber would destroy units before the actual combat, but it is very difficult to find a balance that makes sense for all sizes of battles without finding a flaw.

    I may give it more thought. Until then, I welcome some input.


  • Bombers in WWI, as far as I know, were not powerful offensive units – especially in the early part of the conflict, where tactical bombing (if it was conducted at all) consisted of manually tossing small bombs from an observation plane.  Techniques improved somewhat from those crude beginnings over the years, but tactical bombing remained hampered by the fact that the planes used for such missions were slow, highly vulnerable, had limited payloads and (as far as I know) had either no bombsights or only rudimentary ones.  As for strategic bombing, if I’m not mistaken only Germany had the means (Zeppelins, and later Gotha bombers) to indulge in that sort of thing, and the material damage done by this method was, at least by WWII standards, trivial.


  • We play with as a separate step not involving any units - it is just a die roll.

    Strategic Bombing:

    The K. u. K. Luftfahrtruppen, Deutsche Luftstreitkrafte, Group de Bombardment, Royal Naval Air Service, and Corpo Aeronautico Militare all participated in strategic bombing raids on the enemy during WW1.  
    Procedure:  
    1. At the beginning of each player’s turn, A-H, Germany, France, Britain, and Italy can roll 1 die to determine if they cause IPC loss to the enemy.  
    2. A roll of 1 is a hit (Germany to France or Britain, AH to Italy, Italy to AH, and France and Britain to Germany), a roll of 2 thru 5 is a miss, and a roll of 6 is a miss and causes damage by your strategic campaign to be reduced by 1 for the remainder of the war.  
    3. For a hit, roll another die for damage.  A 1, 2, or 3, and that is the IPC loss, a 4, 5, or 6 is 0 IPC loss.  The damage is assessed against the IPC count for the next turn. (If neutral Italy rule in use for turn 1, a hit by A-H will also cause Italy to enter the war.)
    4. Damaged bombing capability (roll of 6 in step 2), can be repaired by spending 1 IPC per damage.

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