I'd shown Sarah one of my new acquisitions last week, and, upon finding that it was just the two of us for Thursday-night gaming, she had to make a choice: play Space Empires again, or learn Bomber Command. As she put it, "It's the choice between a game I really like or one I don't know!" But she, like me, enjoys learning new games and so Bomber Command hit the table. I gave her control of the English bombing mission, gave her the rulebook and the plotting pad, and headed out to get some dinner for us both.

While I was gone, Sarah worked out how her missions – one main bombing raid and three mosquito raids – would fly to the target. The playbook suggested she chose a target in the Ruhr for the first game. She chose Essen. And then misinterpreted what a "leg" of the journey was. In fact, it's a straight line between two points where the planes turn (waypoints). She thought it was each turn's travel of two hexes. When she realised her mistake partway through the game, she revised the plot. She also mistakenly had two missions end a turn in the same hex – this is also not allowed – but it was our first game and this is the sort of mistake we expect.

One of the really fun things about Bomber Command is the plotting map. The English player plots the path of each of their missions beforehand. Then, during the game, they consult the map to work out how far the mission has got – and occasionally let the German player know. It's a brilliant mechanic, and creates a great fog-of-war. Here's how Sarah's map looked after all the corrections (and leaving in a few errors). The numbers indicate where the planes are at the end of each turn.

So, once I was back, I sorted out the German Nightfighters and placed them in the Ready box to the side of the map. Then we began. Sarah moved her forces onto the map. Or, at least, I think she did. She doesn't place counters unless I find her!

The major ways of discovering the Bombers are as follows:
* Make a detection roll equal to or above the jamming number
* The Bombers fly over flak, thus showing where they passed
* Similarly, with GCI attacks (Ground Control Interception) as they pass over alerted hexes
* Or you could just wait for them to bomb somewhere!

It takes time for the German player to scramble nightfighters to intercept: The first turn you place them on the map (and they can't do anything else). The second turn they move one hex and can attack. After that, they can move at two hexes a turn and have full capabilities. Single-Engine aircraft are faster to set up and get going, but the ones I used this game had very little fuel.

Scrambling my first two fighters

Your nightfighters act in three phases, for the most part: They get to Move in one phase. New ones then get to Scramble in the next phase (that's putting them on the map). Finally, they can be deployed to various tasks – either protecting areas or on patrol. This took me some getting used to, and I'd often forget a phase, as a result my planes took a bit to get into the air, and Sarah faced much less opposition than she otherwise would have!

Weather has a big part to play in this game: it makes it much more difficult to scramble and land again (causing losses if you're unlucky) and it affects attacks and detection. This game, most of Europe was quite clear – only Berlin was overcast, and that wasn't part of the map we would visit.

There are basically four sorts of attacks the German player can make at the incoming bombers:
* Flak attacks, automatically triggered when the bombers pass through a Flak-capable hex or bomb a city.
* GCI attacks, triggered when the bombers pass through an activated GCI hex (requires a nightfighter to be tasked to that duty).
* Wild Boar attacks, which can be made by nightfighters as a hex is being bombed.
* Tame Boar atacks, which require the nightfighter to infiltrate an attacking force and slowly take out bombers.

Sarah basically took no damage from the Flak attacks, but I was successful in infiltrating two nightfighters into the main attack group, and started shooting the English; Sarah didn't know where they were, and couldn't get rid of them.

Meanwhile, she approached Essen… my planes scrambling in her wake.

Bombing a place is a mini-game all of its own. Each size of city has its own map. The attacker gets to place 20 counters on the map (a combination of Incendaries and High Explosive), which are hopefully clustered around the target they want. There is the real possibility of landing off course…

Sarah chose to attack the residential part of town. There was no scatter, but the smog of Essen reduced the accuracy of the main strike: only four counters were placed. After that, one counter was placed in the closes hexes to the main target. That gave us the following:

Then, there is further scatter by the German player, some accuracy movement by the English, and the damage is then possibly converted into major fires and even firestorms. Finally, VPs are worked out: double points for industrial centres and transport, more points for fires.

Here's how the attack looked after the modifiers:

All in all, the attack netted Sarah 14 points: 4 for each fire, and 1 for each other hex bombed, double if it is valuable.

With the main bombing raid done, Sarah successfully used some mosquito raids to do more damage; I was unable to stop these.

However, I now had two fighters infiltrating her main raid, and they were able to do a fair amount of damage in return for very little losses.

And that was basically the game: Sarah lost a few planes on the way back, but I had scrambled too late and I wasn't able to fly them to stop the raids. Otherwise, my infiltrators did significant damage, and Sarah was happy to get back relatively safely. She'd lost 13 bombers in the main raid, and 3 in Mosquito flights – none of the Mosquito losses were confirmed, though.

The score was positive, and Sarah was relieved, but the victory conditions require more than just average. The large number of bombers I'd taken out was a sizeable penalty to overcome.

In the end, it turned out that I'd eliminated 13 bombers in the main group whilst Sarah had only shot down 2 fighters. The final swing gave the total at 7 VPs in Sarah's favour… but, for the Berlin Scenario, that counts as a loss to the English.

In retrospect, my planes could have worked smarter. Sarah chose a poor hex for her attack run on the city (too much residential nearby, not enough industry). However, we both found the game to be very enjoyable and a real challenge. The rules aren't all that hard, and I hope we get a chance to play it again soon while it's fresh in our minds.