Sopwith Dolphin was the most used aircraft that hit the front in 1918 (Camels, SE5As and some 2 seaters were used more but they all reached the front in 1917). It is the logical choice to use after the Camel and before the Snipe, from january 1918 and forward.

However does it (together with some of the other planes like Fokker EIV and certain versions of the Pfalz DIII and a few experimental Camels) have more than 2 guns.

It was delivered with 2 Vickers and 2 Lewis guns. Most pilots removed them because they where badly placed and easy to hit the head in but not all. Others did put 2 extra (that was impossible to reload in the air) on the wings, particulary to use incendiary ammo which the Vickers gun couldn't use (according to both Wiki an one of my books).

It seems like the pilots using 4 guns fired them simultaneously but after that didn't bother to reload the lewis guns even in the cockpit, no wonder either since reloading 2 of them while flying takes a long time when you fly straight and have all your attention on the guns, more or less suicide.

So my question to you folks is: How do you handle this in Wow? I don't have every box so I might have missed something but the logical thing would be allowing the planes to use a better damage deck for the first few attacks and then go down to the regular (while the Pfalz and Fokker should use them the whole time).

And while we are at it: Some few planes like the Spad XII had 37mm canons on them (a few bombers had them too, and a 47mm version only for hitting ground targets).

A few aces like Fonkk, Nungesser and Guyenmeier used them with good results while most pilots never could hit a barn from the inside with them. 1 hit was supposed to be a kill (well, at least almost every time) but hitting was close to impossible. Any good ideas how to handle that?

There is of course always the possibility that Wow releases and expansion with odd and alternative armaments. None of these planes ('cept the Dolphin) were that common but the aces flew them (Immelmann and Boelke flew the EIV) and they did some good damage with them. So I think they should be included in the game, we are currently modding a Spad XII and I just built a Dolphin, now I just need to custom up some rules for it.

And you guys do play a lot, so does anybody uses these planes or have any good ideas?

There's a 3-gun Fokker EIV in the Immelman booster pack. It draws both an A-deck and B-deck card when it fires. Presumably, a 4-gun plane would draw two A-cards. Of course, you double all those up at short range.

The cannons are a bit trickier. I'd suggest using the solo AA gun rules (i.e. draw an A-card, if it does any special damage then the gun hits and draws a C-card for damage. If the A-card has any other result it misses) or the rocket rules and deck (I'm assuming that the cannons are slow firing and hard to aim accurately). Perhaps limit the number of shots they can make, same as for rockets, as well. I'd expect they wouldn't carry that much cannon ammo because of the weight (and the weight of the gun).

IRM said:

The real cannon had to be reloaded after every shot and had enough ammo to fire 5 shots.

But thanks, that sounds about right.