A cough, a low thrum rising to a roar while you keep the brake pressed down. The engine finds its life and you release, shooting forward along the carrier deck into the wind. The great blue ocean on the horizon and, above, the specks as your squadmates climb ever higher. As you rise to meet them, you reach out and grab a fistful of dice.
It’s time to fly with solo flight war games.
How to Play Solo Flight War Games
War games, like euros, find niches like we might find change in couch cushions. Every discovery is a pleasant surprise, and few, for solo wargamers, are going to be better than the solitaire pilot war games. These tactical level titles tend to set you in charge of a squadron during a major conflict, tasked with 
carrying out a series of bombing runs, interceptions, and general aerial mischief. Your pilots will gain skills, your aircraft will take damage, and both will end in a fiery crash or the popping of celebratory Champagne.
While variances arise between titles, like tweaks between hex-and-counter games within the same rules system, the overarching feel remains the same: you’ll have a target for the mission and craft your squad to suit, picking pilots and aircraft from what you have available. Every venerable machine comes with a stat sheet showing modifiers for the rolls you’ll need to make as they spin through flack, avoid enemy fighters, and line up their bombing runs. Getting the right gear for the task at hand is as fun as building a force in a miniature skirmish game: everyone has their role, and you’ll need to gauge whether you’ll need more bombers, fighter escort, or faster planes to get the job done.
Once you’ve assembled your squad, it’s off on the mission, usually one pulled from history and laid before you with all the set dressing you’d expect from a war game. The act of getting the mission going is a strong suit of these games, as you’re not wading through a counter miasma or dealing with maps the size of small countries. They’re lunch-break sized games, easy to pop up and take for a spin without feeling so light as to be ephemeral.
The protein bars of solo gaming, you might say.
Or not.
Anyway, you’ll slap the mission before you and take the counters belonging to your noble fliers and despised opposition. Phases proceed in clean sequences, as your pilots will pick maneuvers, roll to pull them off, and hope a lucky shot doesn’t find their engines. The action comes fast and clean, keeping you absorbed in the game and not in the rulebooks. You’ll down bogeys, drop those bombs, and scurry back home before the fuel runs empty, usually in an hour or less.
Immersion, smooth gameplay, and a tailored solo experience that delivers on its promise. If you’ve never taken flight on your tabletop before, then you owe it to yourself to give one of these titles a try.
Getting Started With Solo Flight War Games
1981 saw the release, and more or less progenitor of the genre, of B-17: Queen of the Skies (Glen Frank, Bruce Shelley). Despite its 40 year age, you’ll find many of the core mechanics in today’s newer games, from damage modeling, dice rolling maneuvers, and laying out a bombing run. If there were infinite copies of this one left in print, I’d say go for it, as its lighter ruleset makes it an easy jumping in point.
But a more realistic place to start is Target for Today (Steve Dixon, Shawn Rife) and its sequels, which place you in a single bomber’s pilot chair. You’ll soar over the Reich on bombing runs suffused with daring, risk, and dice in an almost direct update of B-17. While controlling only one airplane might seem a tad simple, you’ll come to learn these bombers in and out, from their turrets to their radios, their engines to their landing gear. It’s an immersive experience, and one that’ll have you exhaling as you manage to land your bullet-riddled baby back on Britain’s safe shores.
If you’d prefer fighters and eras outside WWII, then DVG Games’ Leader series lets you jump into jets, helicopters, and, yes, B-17s (because you gotta
have’em). Unlike Target for Today, games like Corsair Leader (Dan Verssen) have you picking a squad of pilots and aircraft, creating a different feel going into missions. It’s not just one engine that might fail, it’s ten. Not just one bogey to down, but a dozen. Your fliers will earn experience, become aces, and make hero moves in made-for-the-movies missions. DVG Games keeps these entries accessible too, so you’ll be able to get in that cockpit and fly without spending hours mulling over rules.
For a single fighter pilot experience, though, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better series than the Ace titles from Compass Games. Starting with Nightfighter Ace (Gregory Smith, Joe Gandara), in which you play as a single German pilot in WWII, these adventures put a simulation spin on fighter combat. You’ll contend with equipment failure, spoofing raids meant to throw your flight off track (and drain precious fuel), and the hazards of, you know, dogfighting. Survival means experience, skills, and potentially new aircraft. Making it to the end of the war is an achievement, one littered with downed enemies. Sequels like Interceptor Ace and Western Front Ace move the campaign to the Battle of Britain and WWI, respectively, giving you the chance to live out your Red Baron story.
All told, these solo pilot war games range from easy to complex, thirty minute affairs to several hours-long tense missions. They differ enough in era and focus to warrant trying them all, though I’d first ask yourself whether you want a solo plane focus or a one bent on managing a squad. For the latter, picking an interesting era from DVG Games’ Leader series is the way to go. Otherwise, Target for Today gives you a bomber while Nightfighter Ace and its sequels have you dogfighting.
Pick your sortie, and get to flying.
Solo Submarine and Tank War Games
Some folks, though, are afraid of heights or prefer their action more bound to the ground. That’s where similarly styled, functionally different games like Atlantic Sentinels and Tiger Leader come in.
First, let’s dip underwater. Atlantic Sentinels (Gregory Smith) and The Hunters (Gregory Smith again, who’s designed half the games in this piece), along with 
recent 2024 call-out Wolfpack, put you in the seafaring shoes of either a submarine or its escort ships. Atlantic Sentinels does the latter, where you’ll carry out a series of missions attempting to keep convoys to Europe alive against German U-boats. Every crossing will task you with picking a destroyer and corvette roster from a broad variety, then deploying those escorts to keep dozens of needed cargo vessels afloat. The Hunters gives you the opposite view, sliding submarines through dark waters in an attempt to ambush those same convoys. Neither is especially rules heavy, perfect to dive (heh, dive) into as first-time solitaire war games.
What’s more, enterprising players can integrate Atlantic Sentinels with The Hunters to turn both solo titles into a two player cat-and-mouse duel.
If dry land and rumbling treads are more your thing, DVG Games took their Leader line and gave it the tank treatment with titles like Tiger Leader (Rick Martin) and Sherman Leader (Rick Martin, Dan Verssen). Whereas the airborne options see you leading squads into dogfights and bombing runs, these ground-bound variants put you in charge of an armor group. You’ll run a selection of campaigns, picking your forces—ranging from infantry to half-tracks and air support—ahead of each mission and attempt to take the objective without losing all your pals. Randomized terrain and dice-driven tactical combat
keep things fast and furious, and you’ll have to manage your squad’s fatigue, abilities, and equipment well to succeed.
What DVG does well with these games is create an accessible, tactically engaging, smaller solitaire experience. You’re getting something you can pop out on just about any table, run a thrilling mission, and be back at work or making dinner before anyone notices you’re gone. You’ll get to tell an emergent story, make meaningful decisions, and do it without needing a nose in the rulebook every other impulse.
A Perfect Day For Solitaire Games
Solo wargaming is growing, and while I like throwing 500 counters on the table just as much as anyone, cracking out a dedicated solitaire experience that fits a short playtime is a boon. The games above get you right into the action and don’t stop after one session, letting you dig into real historical campaigns without bulky productions. Ditch gimmicky makeshift solo rules pasted onto multiplayer titles and give your solitaire wargaming the experience it deserves.
Jump into one of these, and you’ll never need to solo Here I Stand again.
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