Space Nazis from Hell

The elevator pitch: the Nazis and the US have retrofitted their WWII fighter planes with antigravity drives and have taken the war into space! (That's really all you need to know theme-wise.)

SNFH! is a very simple and unpretentious 2d hex-and-counter space wargame. It knows exactly what it is and gets straight to the point - blowing up WWII-era fighter planes in space! The rulebook comes in at a breezy eight pages, several of which consist of setting fluff, scenarios, and two combat tables. I found it very easy to quickly leaf through the rules and then jump straight into the game.

Each plane (I know they technically aren't planes, but I'm going to keep calling them that) has a velocity from 0 to 15, which determines how many hexes it must travel in a round, and a turn rating, which is the number of hexes it must travel forward before it can rotate one hex side. Thus, a high turn rating means a large turning arc. The engine rating determines how much you can adjust a plane's velocity up or down each turn, and its weapons rating determines the quality of its hits.

Planes can fire in any direction, so there's no need to line up your shots (although maneuvering behind your opponent gets you a slight benefit on your roll). Combat is simple - roll a d10, subtract the range to target and any other modifiers (the target's facing, and any significant differences in velocity, can affect things), and then cross-reference with your weapons rating on the CRT to find out how many hits you scored. For each hit, roll once on the damage table to find out what system you damaged - though a roll of 8-10 will always destroy the target. Given that a plane can pretty easily score 3 or more hits with a single shot, you can probably tell that planes aren't meant to last very long.

The Americans have fewer planes, but of higher-quality. To compensate, the Nazis tend to start with more planes and/or get more reinforcements, and they get a +1 on all their to-hit rolls due to their fanaticism.

Scenarios cover small and large skirmishes, holding out for X rounds against superior forces, and a battle against the Nazi Space Fortress Grossdeutschland, among others.

SNFH! isn't doing anything all that remarkable, but it works fine for what it is. There are a few minor gaps in the rules (e.g. does anything happen if you hit a system that has already been destroyed?), but they're pretty easy to house rule. This would likely make for a good introductory wargame for a younger gamer who likes the theme.

See detailed review (in French) of this game in Errata #2: www.errata.fr/mag/errata-2.pdf

Fun game. The Americans can even go after the dreaded Nazi "space festung!"