Ammunition rules ?

By IRM2, in Wings of War (WWI)

I'm thinking of adding in rules for ammunition to WAW. Partly for added realism, partly to reduce the maximum turns a game takes, partly to make players think about whether to shoot or wait for a better position.

Currently, I'm planning on dealing out cards to each aircraft at the start of the game and that's all the shots they can make (the target plane draws from the firer's deck, the second card for short range shots comes from the normal pile). What I'd like to hear some suggestions on is the number of cards each plane should receive. Right now I'm trying out using 10 cards for everything except Lewis guns, which get 8, representing bursts of around 50 bullets each. Planes with mixed types get the higher card number only, don't want to get things too complicated. 2-seaters will only get cards for the observer since they only usually perform their mission and then disengage.

IRM said:

I'm thinking of adding in rules for ammunition to WAW. Partly for added realism, partly to reduce the maximum turns a game takes, partly to make players think about whether to shoot or wait for a better position.

Most acft. of the period had ~20 seconds' worth of ammo, based on rate-of-fire and ammunition available; Lewis guns, due to the rather inefficient magazine design had maybe half that (550 RPM; 94-rd. pan drum; for the 47-rd. drum, maybe 5 sec. firing time).

It says something that throughout air-combat history, 20 seconds appears to be the standard for a given gun's firing time; RPM and magazine size may vary, but it usually results in 20 seconds' firing time.

We use limited ammo but only for lewis guns. Usually had a plane with a lewis gun 3 spare mags so we just split the damage deck into 4 nice piles, one for each mag and it takes a straigh level movement card to reload it (observer can of course not bomb or observe when loading).

As for regular guns we just don't allow reshuffling (if everyone have their own deck). That gives a realistic ratio between the guns if not realistic in itself. The german parabellum that the 2 seaters use make we split into 2 piles.

We thought about different ways but this is fast and doesn't affect the time it takes to play the game.

Sometimes do we have reloading in long scenarios, in that case we have it done by landing and standing one full round at the airfield. It is something we do rarely however.

We have been experiementing with fuel rules also, they are harder since faster speed uses more fuel, I am not happy with anything there yet. Maybe a custom card with a fuel cost printed on and giving all players a bunch of fuel tokens at the start of a game or something, as I said is it still not good enough, but something like that.

Pour Le Merite said:

We have been experiementing with fuel rules also, they are harder since faster speed uses more fuel, I am not happy with anything there yet. Maybe a custom card with a fuel cost printed on and giving all players a bunch of fuel tokens at the start of a game or something, as I said is it still not good enough, but something like that.

Give players M&M or Skittles when they expend fuel, they can Eat Their Losses.... :)


csadn said:

Give players M&M or Skittles when they expend fuel, they can Eat Their Losses.... :)

Lol, I see some players crashing because they like to munch a bit too much... But, yes, something like that would work.

IRM said:

I'm thinking of adding in rules for ammunition to WAW. Partly for added realism, partly to reduce the maximum turns a game takes, partly to make players think about whether to shoot or wait for a better position.

Currently, I'm planning on dealing out cards to each aircraft at the start of the game and that's all the shots they can make (the target plane draws from the firer's deck, the second card for short range shots comes from the normal pile). What I'd like to hear some suggestions on is the number of cards each plane should receive. Right now I'm trying out using 10 cards for everything except Lewis guns, which get 8, representing bursts of around 50 bullets each. Planes with mixed types get the higher card number only, don't want to get things too complicated. 2-seaters will only get cards for the observer since they only usually perform their mission and then disengage.

My group uses 10 cards as ammo exactly as you described using them. very rarely does someone run out of ammo in a typical 10-12 turn game. I think for the next campaign I run, I will reduce it down to 8 cards just to make people think about their shots more. If you are interested in more info on other ways to limit ammo and/or simulate different gun types, check out Wings of War Aerodrome . Lots of really good stuff there.

We don't use the card anymore. We just roll dice on a damage table. For ammo each gun gets 10 shots, then you're out of ammo.