Night Witches

Night Witches is a solitaire or two-player cooperative player game in which the Night Witches–female pilots of the Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment–work together to fly harassment missions on the Eastern Front during WWII. Their planes are rickety and minimally equipped, but with their engines whirring quietly and with the dark of night to cloak them, the Night Witches are flying towards promotion to 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment–and towards making aviation history!

Night Witches is a light wargame that consists of a ten-mission campaign, during which the pilots try to amass enough victory points to be promoted to form a Guards unit, a great honor in the Soviet military. Each mission lasts roughly 30 minutes, and each can be played on its own, separately from the campaign. On each mission, two planes will venture into unknown territory to complete a specific goal and to earn victory points. As they fly, players will observe the terrain around them by drawing tokens from a bag. Some tokens will merely represent the night, but the players will also need to avoid spotlights, navigate through clouds, respond to attacks from AAA, and more.

Each mission is made up of multiple sorties, with brief recovery times between. During sorties, players will evade enemy fire–and bomb targets–by pulling from a bag containing success, failure, and stress tokens. During recovery, they will have to manage their time, fuel supply, and stress levels. As pilots gain experience and complete missions, they will also be able to acquire upgrade cards. (Those victory points are good for something!) Will the Night Witches be able to dodge AAA, do maximum damage to the Nazis, and fly off into the sunrise?

-description from publisher