Target for Tonight: Wargaming Lancaster Bomber Raids Against Germany 1942-1944

by David Wayne Thomas, John Curry (Editor)

A game for 1 to 6 players about the experience of flying bombing missions over Germany 1942-44. The RAF and the USAAF dropped 1.6 billion tons of bombs on Germany between 1939 and 1945. The impact on the German war machine was huge, but so was the cost. Over 55,500 Bomber Command crew lost their lives during this campaign. Each morning the weather and moon state were suitable, target(s) were selected by Bomber Command. Often the orders included the phrase ‘Maximum Effort’ that meant all bombers that had crews were to be part of the attack. A complex series of steps were then initiated to ensure the bombers were in the air, over the target at the appointed hour to deliver their bombs in the shortest possible time. Concentration of the bomber stream was designed to overwhelm the enemy defences. The game allows the player to assemble their crew, select their target and go through the various stages of the mission. From take-off, over the enemy coast, through the flak zones and onto the target. Key to returning home was avoiding the enemy night-fighters. The rules are embedded in historical research and include briefings, aide-memoires, maps and period material. Playing the game aims to help the player(s) understand the experience of the crews of Bomber Command a little better. This book is published by the History of Wargaming Project as an example of experiential learning in the form of a hobby wargame.

94 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 22, 2018

Reviews

[Nathan Trachta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been a long time wargamer and love the stories involving the bomber raids and seeing what both sides did so when I saw this I was intregued and decided to get it, and interesting game/booklet.
I'll open by saying this is two star, 4 star or somewhere inbetween . Mr. Thomas has a lot of information here but the assembly isn't always good and honestly something of a "pull together" or let me put a lot of information down and not make it easy for extraction. I don't know if that's the publisher, the writer, or a combination of the two. My opionis a little bit of both. What I mean by this is the structure of the book isn't conducive to to teaching a game or game use. That said there's some great thought put into this and the game does look interesting to say the least. I blame this on both the publisher and Mr. Thomas; the publish for putting tables into the book where layout changes and the tables aren't configured to be printed by someone wanting to play the game; poor form on the part of the publisher, especially since this is a Kindle version and it's much easier to play with the formatting electronically than in printed form. As for Mr. Thomas the structure and writing style don't lend themselves well to a reader picking up the rules and being able to read and then play the game easily. This is poor form for someone working on the history of wargaming project. I mean the writing is reminscent of wargames developed pre-Avalon Hill. I was also a little disappointed that Mr. Thomas constrained himself to looking at the Lancaster when it would have been very easy to add the Halifax given the rules and could have been expanded to include the Stirling, Wellington, and other twin engine bombers Bomber Command used in the early part of the war.
Having said that and said it could be 4 star I want to complement Mr. Thomas on looking at Bomber Commands efforts. He's done a very good job breaking down the time line a bomber crew would go thru from start up to target and back home. Additional material that add to this include a nice random event for each type of area a crew moved thru (called Pot Luck) and a nice look at the electronic warfare employed by both sides that's about right for wargamers who aren't Crows but want to include a key componet of the battle.
Merging what I've described with the historical additives Mr. Thomas added in (pictures and descriptions ofhistorical compoents and a desciptor from the movie Target for Tonight) makes rating this one more of a what you can pull out of it/does it fit your interest/style than a rock solid answer. For me, the final rating will really be once I've re-assembled the rules in a format I can play thru and then play test the game.