Above the Trenches: Aces
It might seem a bit odd to be include aces in a design intended to show the importance of the observation aircraft. Won’t aces just emphasize the role of the fighters?
But the top aces single-handedly shot down multiple squadrons worth of aircraft. So I argue that it’s not unreasonable to include them for their undoubted effect on the air war. Plus it doesn’t hurt to add a bit of a human touch. Perhaps when an ace dies, it’s a bit less impersonal event then removing a squadron counter.
The exact effect of the aces must await definition of the combat results, but the general idea is that the ace markers are assigned to fighter counters and will give those fighters a slight combat bonus.
Since the players represent the highest command level of their air force, who had little control over the emergence and fates of the aces, the aces work as follows.
Each faction (Britain, France, Germany) has a limited number of named ace counters. For an ace to make the cut to appear in the game, they have to have shot down at least 40 enemy airplanes. I court controversy by omitting Billy Bishop, who was probably legitimately a 5+ victory ace but whose record is so unreliable (especially his unlikely Victoria Cross mission) that his claim to 72 aircraft is almost certainly not even close to true.
Ace counters are two-sided, healthy and wounded. “Wounded” here shouldn’t be taken too literally. Game-wise, it’s simply a means of making sure the aces don’t die too early.
Aces are also inactive (not yet in play) or active (in play).
At the beginning of the game, all aces are healthy, but only the ace Boelcke starts active. (The counter actually represents Max Immelman as well as Oswald Boelcke.) The remaining aces are held in an “Available Aces” box on the map.
At the end of each turn, a d10 is rolled for each ace, whether active or inactive, and the corresponding result from the following table is implemented for that ace:
| Dieroll | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Result | - | - | - | - | W | W | A | AWK | AWK | K |
where the results mean:
| - | No change; an active ace stays active, an inactive ace stays inactive |
| W | If active and healthy, the ace is wounded; otherwise, no change |
| A | If inactive, the ace is now active; otherwise, no change |
| K | If active, the ace is killed and removed from play; otherwise, no change |
| AWK | If inactive, treat as A. If active and healthy, treat as W. If active and wounded, treat as K |
I went through several variations of the results table. Until thinking of the wounded status, aces were too often either appearing and then getting killed the next turn (if the table had a lot of K results), or never dying at all (if there were fewer K results). Now with the above you can still get the occasional shooting star that only lives two turns, or the immortal that never dies. But computer simulation shows the average ace lifespan reasonably closely matches history.