Sopwith rules
Six pilots plan their flights in secret over a hex battlefield. Learn the movement, fire and landing rules before taking to the air.
Objective and setup
Six pilots fight over a ten-hex-per-side battlefield. Each pilot receives a randomly assigned corner airfield and begins with 12 hull, 16 ammunition and 0 victory points.
The last surviving pilot wins. Victory points measure performance, but never replace survival when deciding the winner.
Twenty cloud hexes begin in three to five clusters, with clear space around every runway. Aircraft, clouds and submitted-status indicators are public; unresolved orders remain private.
Plan a turn
Every living pilot secretly submits one order containing three connected movement segments. You may replace your order until the turn is adjudicated. All pilots then resolve each segment together.
| Order | Effect |
|---|---|
| Ahead | Move one hex in the current heading. |
| Turn left / right | Rotate 60° and move one hex in the new heading. |
| Slip left / right | Move diagonally forward without changing heading. |
| Hold | Stay in place. Hold is illegal in segment one; a segment-two Hold also forces segment three to Hold. |
| Immelmann | Ace only: move one hex forward, then reverse heading. |
Each segment starts from the position and heading produced by the previous one. Leaving the battlefield crashes the aircraft.
Take off, land and service
Each airfield has three inward runways, named for their takeoff direction. To take off, choose a runway and order Ahead, Ahead, followed by any airborne movement except Hold. You cannot fire while your wheels remain down.
To land, approach the far end of one of your own runways while facing the airfield and declare Landing. The aircraft then follows two committed Ahead movements along the runway; these may span two turns. A completed landing restores ammunition to 16 and keeps the aircraft grounded for the rest of that turn.
Landing does not repair hull. Each later full turn deliberately spent grounded repairs 2 hull, up to the original maximum of 12.
Fire
After a movement segment, an airborne aircraft may fire ahead, forward-left or forward-right. A pilot may order at most three bursts per turn and may use each direction only once in the same segment. Every burst costs 1 ammunition.
A clear firing ray hits every opposing aircraft on it; aircraft do not shield one another. Clouds stop fire into and through their hexes. Grounded, taking-off and landing aircraft may be hit but cannot return fire.
| Range | Regular damage | Ace damage |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | 5 |
| 2 | 3 | 4 |
| 3 | 2 | 3 |
| 4 | 1 | 2 |
| 5 | 0 | 1 |
Movement, cloud damage and eligible fire resolve simultaneously within each segment. Mutual shoot-downs are therefore possible.
Clouds
Entering or remaining in a cloud after movement costs 1 hull before fire resolves. An aircraft inside a cloud cannot be hit from outside, but it may fire outward.
After segment three, every cloud moves one hex in the same seeded wind direction. Wind does not itself cause damage. Cloud cells blown beyond the battlefield disappear.
Scoring and Aces
| Event | Victory points |
|---|---|
| Hull damage actually inflicted | +1 per hull |
| Shoot down a regular pilot | +5 |
| Shoot down an Ace | +10 |
| Win the battle | +5 |
| Crash as a regular pilot | −5 |
| Crash as an Ace | −10 |
An aircraft destroyed by cloud damage still receives its crash penalty, but no opponent receives a shoot-down bonus. If an aircraft flies off the board, its remaining hull is divided among the pilots alive at that segment, rounded upward for each recipient.
A surviving pilot reaching 40 victory points becomes an Ace after the current simultaneous turn has fully resolved. Ace movement and fire benefits begin on the following turn.
Elimination, placing and missed orders
An aircraft crashes at zero hull or when it leaves the board. The first eliminated pilot takes sixth place and the last survivor takes first. Pilots eliminated in the same segment share a place. If every remaining aircraft crashes in the same segment, the battle is a draw.
At an expired deadline, a missing airborne pilot continues straight ahead without firing. A missing grounded pilot remains grounded for service. Crashed pilots submit no further orders.
MyTurnYet's rulebook is rearranged and rewritten for online play from the postal Sopwith tradition. Special thanks to Keith Thomasson and For Whom The Web Rocks for preserving and publishing the reference rules at fwtwr.com.