Modder Fokkers in the 70's

Deep in a box in the store room I found a folder with old shiny photo copies of the handwritten 1974 rules for WWI Air War we were playing at Ogilvie St in Mt Stuart.  We had already been playing the game for year or so then, but this is the earliest surviving set of rules.  It wasn’t called Modder Fokkers then, but the original DNA of Modder Fokkers is clearly there.

The planes were Airfix 1/72 scale.  All of them are still in use 42 years later. 

The planes were mounted on plastic stands that scissored at the joints with wing nuts to fix the joints.  Distances vertically & horizontally were measured in inches.  Turns were controlled with cardboard templates of varying radii.   Movement was simultaneous with proposed moves written down on a piece of paper.

Shooting was done by drawing a card for each burst from a box containing several decks of mini playing cards with the royals removed to leave cards 1 to 10.  Damage was recorded by writing down on the movement log.

 The rules were brief:

 Table 1 provided aircraft stats:

 Table 2 provided Fire Factors:

 Table 3 was the damage table:

The system was a bit cumbersome and required some delicate work to manoeuvre the planes on their stands, measure moves & ranges and avoid catastrophic upsets of the whole shebang in a dogfight. But it worked & we loved it. 

In those days a younger & naive Renfrey was frequently sent up in DH2's as cannon fodder for Albatrii. 

Over 42 years we have been playing the game off and on as it periodically took its turn as flavour of the month in our endless cycle though the games & eras we play.   In the 90’s it became Modder Fokkers with the advent of vertical sticks, hex based movement, computer printed logs & dice instead of cards.  

Recently the equipment has been improved some more, but the DH2 & Albatros in today's pic are also in the one above.