A LONG night of good food, boozing and plenty of laughs was inevitable, but we were all still up early and ready to get going as between us we had brought well over 20 new or favourite games. I had been battering (seriously I really had) on about Wings of War for months… so everyone was to keen give it first blast.
That was great but I suddenly felt serious pressure for it to be good… even just ‘OK’!
Cue a lot of ‘first time used in anger’ fretting and careful fiddling as I took well over an hour to set everything up.
But eventually we were ready and I was ready to unveil my ‘attempt’ at a handpainted game mat!
Well nearly ready, as it would have been damn bad form to hop into your kite without the correct facial decoration for the gentleman aces of the Great War…!
…and a good number of laughs later that got us right into the mood to give each other a damn good hiding!
…and soon there were casualties!!!
In a word this game is BRILLIANT!!!We played it all Saturday afternoon, again on Saturday night, all Sunday afternoon, and all Sunday night!
FACT: We played nothing else all weekend. It is really easy to learn and play. You just select and secretly lay out 3 manoeuvre cards, placed face down, then everyone plays their first card in turn moving their plane(s). Then you can fire if in range, randomly select from the damage deck if hit and apply the damage effects. Everybody then then plays the next card and so on! It is amazingly addictive trying to get into a position to shoot and second guess both ‘friends’ and other ‘enemies’. As you can imagine the great sledging and slanging is worth it alone!
We slowly added additional more advanced rules on fire damage, smoke, pilot injury and weather and tried missions such as to destroy / protect the blimp! We never had time to add altitude rules, but that really will make it a great challenge.
The miniatures are great to look at, gameplay is really easy to pick up, you can make it as complex or simple as you like, and there is no limit on the numbers who can play all you need is enough planes and space!! You can even pimp (re-paint) your own aircraft!
Since the weekend DS and JR-S have invested in the WWII version and ID is preparing to purchase of his own squadron of spitfires…
…watch this space I too may yet (ok I will) be tempted!
That’s fantastic: pretty much from start to finish awesome. I’m stunned, since you usually use the cottage trip as a testing ground for boardgames that you stuck to one game all weekend. That says a lot about the quality of the game.
Although, once you had the mustaches on… what else are you going to do with them. Unless someone had written a great Call of Cthulhu mystery involving the cosmic horror fighting duo of Hercules Poirot and Freddy Mercury.
I think the mustaches themselves are worth the trip out to a cottage in the country. Dickie and Stuart’s look positively peppy, while I’m impressed that Steven chose to highlight the role of mexican bandito pilots in the Great War. Ray actually really suits his…
I’m not sure which is more disturbing though… Donald’s Hitler mustache or seeing Mr Vikings Fan Club in a Packers t-shirt. Playing the villain, eh Donald?
I’m sorely tempted to pick up a starter kit of this after reading this entry.
Superb.
Note to self: Write a Call of Cthulhu mystery starring Hercules Poirot and Freddy Mercury.
I was about to welcome Jonathan (aka Arabtim) to the site, but decided to see if this was really his first post. It isn’t. It’s his 6th. Which means a) I’m glad that David is paying attention to legitimate new user request and b) it’s long overdue for me to say thanks for contributing. Especially as it means dodecaheathens.com is not just a blog for us yanks, but a more international audience.
Your intinerant web-maester, Matt.
Why thank you our great webbed one! 😉
I am a BIG fan of this site and dip in regularly.
I have also been trying to gently indocrinate the other 6 in our ‘Olde World’ sect to yield to the cause and make this a truly international gathering of great minds and ideas it could and will yet be!
Your initiate(tional) brother, JC.