Dogfight! Rule the Skies in 20 Minutes is the third entry in the 20 Minutes series originally published by PSC Games (and recently taken over by Floodgate Games). This time it's a different designer, so while the graphic design is consistent with Blitzkrieg! and Caesar!, the game play is entirely new but does retain some of the other games' basic elements, such as drawing tokens from a bag.
I used to play quite a bit of Wings of War, and my main complaint with it was that too much of the game was spent flying around in circles trying to get a shot on your opponent's plane. In Dogfight!, that's the entire game, but in a good way. Dogfight! distills World War One air combat down to its simplest form: the board depicts a simple loop of 8 spaces, plus two extra spots for a special maneuver. Players start their plane meeples on opposite sides of the loop, simultaneously revealing tiles that show a distance and a number of shots. Both players move their planes, then if one is behind and within 3 spaces of the other, they shoot.
It sounds simple, and at its most basic level it is. A special "loop" maneuver makes use of the two extra spaces on the board to allow the plane that's in front to attempt to loop around and get behind its opponent. An alternate board adds the concept of elevation in a very simple way, with different colored spaces restricting when a plane might be too high or too low to make a shot.
Additionally, the game includes ten different planes with different abilities, so once players have mastered the basics (which should only take a game or two) they can try adjusting their strategies based on their new plane's capabilities and drawbacks. Finally, the game introduces several scenarios that provide different win conditions beyond simply shooting down the other plane.
- Dogfight! Rule the Skies in 20 Minutes official website
- Dogfight! Rule the Skies in 20 Minutes on BoardGameGeek