You have an interesting site and I am flattered that people are
still playing the games after all these years. I thought that,
since I have a little time at the moment, I might take the
opportunity to reply to you with a chatty letter. I don't have much
chance to communicate with the old AIR FORCE/DAUNTLESS crowd, so
maybe you might want to post this on your site as some background
about the game and what further adventures befell the soon-to-be 59
year old designer of said cardboard classic.
I started working on the game about 1967, while still in
college, and played a very crude version of it with several of my
gaming buddies there over about a two year period. In that early
version of the game, basic movement was quite simple and Igo-Ugo,
but, when you were ready to fire, all involved aircraft plotted a
simultaneous move of up to two hexes that represented close-in
evasive attempts. Later, the simultaneous evasive system was
developed into the game's entire movement mechanism. We had a great
time naming our pilots and planes, writing up the (often
contradictory) propaganda about our duels and developing arch
enemies. Chris Chandler (who later flew a gunship in Vietnam) had
Tom Slick in his "Thunderbolt Grease-Slapper-Special" and fought
many a one-on-one dogfight against my Herman Boring (who kept
getting shot down and baling out, flying many different Me-109s and
FW-190s) and Nolan Bond's Huckleberry Hashimoto, who flew a Zero
named the "Emperor's Fragrant Armpit." Although I couldn't find an
opponent for the next three years, I continued to work on the
design very sporadically, including finding a marvelous book on
World War II aircraft superchargers (you have no idea) in the Omaha
Public Library. After moving to Atlanta in 1970, I started up a
miniatures group (THE ATLANTA MINIATURES BATTLEGAMING SOCIETY) the
following year that eventually could put up to thirty enthusiasts
around a tabletop on a Saturday afternoon. Among many other
periods, we started playing a miniatures version with the old
Bachman plastic planes (I still have about 400 of these for WWII
and about 100 more for WWI - back then you could buy one of these
suckers all assembled and painted and ready to go for under $1). We
mounted them on stands that allowed the aircraft to be shown in
bank and climbing/diving attitudes and used markers on their bases
to show altitude. With two planes per player, we sometimes had as
many as 60 aircraft on the table at once. After I devised the
four-plane log sheet, a multiplayer game might feature over 100 dog
fighting fighters and stately bombers (run by the less-experienced
players). Nirvana for a WWII flight enthusiast! Over several years,
the game gradually developed into what was mechanically a very
similar game to what was published by Battlelines as the AIR FORCE
board game. Two weeks after the game's release, I got a letter that
started with the words "You left out some aircraft, you know." Wow,
somehow with all that research, I missed all those other planes!
That was remedied by DAUNTLESS and the AIR FORCE/DAUNTLESS
EXPANSION KIT. As you can imagine, in those pre-computer days, the
original data for AIR FORCE was tediously worked up using a slide
rule and even the later installments involved a digital calculator
and reams of sheets of charts and graphs. This is still the version
that I play - I was never impressed by the semi-circles of the
Avalon Hill version, especially as it changed some of the data.
Basically, the whole AIR FORCE series went to
Heritage when Battleline made the mistake of merging with them in
late 1977. Steve Peek and I were only at Heritage a little over a
year before we left to form Yaquinto Publications in January 1979.
Heritage shortly sold the Battlelines games to Avalon Hill, where
the series was redeveloped without my input (the EXPANSION KIT was
never republished). Although I was assigned to answer the rules
questions while at Avalon Hill from 1984 - 1994, my design
connection to the games ended with the release of the AIR
FORCE/DAUNTLESS EXPANSION KIT in early 1978, while at Heritage.
The Hasbro corporate lawyers kick and scream and make it difficult but a
number of designs where the outside designer was paid royalties by Avalon Hill
have reverted to the designers. Since I was the co-designer (with Bob Coggins -
since I worked for AH, only he got any royalties for it but that was our
corporate crowbar), we were able to get back our rights to the NAPLOLEON'S
BATTLES miniatures rules. I was the developer on NAVAL WAR and MACHIAVELLI and
did get developer royalties for those but only the designers can get those
titles back - the developer has no legal standing to secure title to someone
else's design. I have no legal claims to any of my other designs (there's some
pretty good ones besides the AIR FORCE series - especially WOODEN SHIPS & IRON
MEN and FLATTOP) that ended up with Hasbro and I'm not about to lay out cash
for my own designs.
I later worked on some additional tactical air games, notably
WINGS (WWI) at Yaquinto (basically a somewhat smoother version of
the old AIR FORCE system). I also designed a WINGS Expansion Kit
with 50 more aircraft but, alas, it has never been published. MUSTANGS (WWII
fighters - as part of the simplified Smithsonian series) was one of my last
designs while I was at Avalon Hill. I was also the developer on Mo Morgan's
FLIGHT LEADER (jet air combat) while at Avalon Hill. I designed a campaign for
the boxed computer game AIR WARRIOR II while with IMagic but that was my last
foray into tactical air combat.
I left Avalon Hill in August 1994 to try my hand at computer games but left
the computer industry in January 2001 after a screaming match with my boss at
TalonSoft. I was very unhappy in the computer gaming industry; they don't have
the remotest idea how to use a designer. Most computer games try to design
themselves by osmosis from the development team personnel, their release
schedules are determined by wishful thinking in their marketing departments and
these facts probably go a long way to explain why 87% of all computer games
lose money. Don't get me started on this!
Anyway, except for re-developing NAPOLEON'S BATTLES for
republishing, I was in semi-retirement as a game designer until the spring of
2003. Then, I became a cofounder and shareholder of Lost Battalion Games. Since
then, I've been very busy here (and downright happy in my poverty, in a loopy
sort of way) as the developer of the BATTLELINES and
BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS card games, the designer of the
BATTLESHIPS IN ACTION and SERGEANTS! board games
and the co-designer of the shortly-to-be-released BATTLEGROUP (with Jeff
Billings) card game. Our PANZER Miniatures Rules are an extensive redesign
effort by Jim Day (I developed the original PANZER, ARMOR and 88 with him at
Yaquinto and IDF and MBT with him at Avalon Hill) where I had the fun of being
a play tester and getting to critique someone else's rules. Maybe, someday,
I'll work on another air game.
If you're interested, we do most of our sales over the web and our website is Lost Battalion Games. I have a column, the "Publisher's Corner," on the site, where you can listen to an old man bloviate about a variety of subjects.
Thanks for sharing your site.
S. Craig Taylor, Jr.