It’s dead simple and plays very quickly. It reminds me a lot of Canvas Eagles except there’s no hex map and a lot fewer, simpler maneuvers you can do – which is nice in a way. I’m kind of torn now… I have a a dozen plus kits I’ve picked up to play Canvas Eagles that would be just too big for Wings of War…
(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)
Here we are after just having made our first pass at each other. With this first exchange I took 4 damage (out of a possible 15). Not sure what Curt took as you don’t get to see how much damage your opponent takes unless you cause smoke or fire or the plane explodes…
Same thing, close up on the planes.
At our second pass I took 5 more damage and took some rudder damage and was unable to make any right hand maneuvers for the rest of the game…!
Huzzah! Right where I want ‘im. Even without the ability to make right hand maneuvers the Camel was pretty maneuverable. I think this was where I caused his guns to jam up for a turn…
Later I got two turns of firing into him from more or less behind… still he kept flying… on the last turn I shot him up good again at short range taking him up to 15 damage, causing a pilot wound, and started a fire!
…. And that was the last we saw of Von Campbell!
The best part about playing the game was it game me an excuse to wear my new silly hat!
After Wings of War we played some Blitzkrieg Commander. We played my Tiger route Scenario again (Which I played with Gary last week). I changed it a bit; I didn’t give the Germans any reinforcements as Gary didn’t seem to need them at all. (I also forgot to give Kurt the Para’s AT platoon…).
I set up pretty mush the same as Gary did.
Curt set up some of his paras on the road, but others he brought on from the edge a bit further south.
I had some trouble getting my teenage Grenadier trainees to do stuff for a couple turns near the beginning. I tried to get two platoons of them across the road but they were quickly pinned down there and taken out by a combination of small arms and mortar fire. He then proceeded to take out my MG platoon.
I had a bit of an artillery duel with his mortar platoon and eventually cam out on top. His boys were hard chargers and make for Oosterbeek.
As there was no on in range I tried to rush the second pair of infantry platoons across the road to block the Para’s advance. The Germans broke on the 11th turn before they could get there…
The Paras ended the game with Oosterbeek in sight. Had the game lasted another turn it would have taken some magnificent rolling to get those boys off the table…
Afterwards Curt was checking out some of my freshly painted Falklands figures and got a bit excited about getting in on the campaign… the madness is contagious!
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So, considering Wings of War a bit further and comparing it to Canvas Eagles… It was definitely fun. It's got some advantages over Canvas Eagles. As I mentioned it's dead simple- there's a lot less maneuvers to chose from- which could be good and/or bad. Good because there’s less options to consider for yourself… as well as your opponent! Bad if you like lots of choices – Canvas Eagles gives you that. Wings of War requires no hex map sheet to play on, still haven’t made one for myself yet, and too sheap to buy one of those pretty ones from Hotz.... Wings of War lacks some of the detail I like in Canvas Eagles in terms of maneuver options, damage, etc. I wouldn’t be able to use 1/72 models with it - which I've bought a pile of- they’re just too big! At times we had trouble with the 1/44 planes and stands bumping into each other. The flight stands are just too darn small - we didn't play with the optional altitude rules. There are only 4 possible altitudes, in Canvas Eagles there are nine! The difference in the height of the flight stands at the different altitudes is negligible - the difference looks like it is less than the height of the actual model- so I can’t imagine it would really give the feel of being at different altitudes...
ReplyDeleteWhich one to go with? I guess it depends on what you want. If you want a super simple fast playing game - that you can play right out of the box - Wings of War. If you want a fast playing game with a bit more detail that’s pretty easy to pick up the basics but perhaps a little tougher to master the finer parts of dogfighting - that also requires a bit more work on your part to get the elements ready to play (buy or make a hex grid, build and paint models and flight stands....) - Canvas Eagles...