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Review and Summary
Published on June 18, 2007 By Jythier In Gaming
To summarize Wings of War does not take long. Wings of War is a game about World War 1, specifically the planes of World War 1. The game is primarily played with cards, representing planes, maneuvers of the planes, and cards representing hits, misses, and damage. The brilliance of this game is clear as soon as you see the maneuver cards. Each plane card has an arrow the bottom, and a line on the top. The maneuver cards have a line clearly showing the maneuver, and an arrow where it ends. So, when you move, you line up the line on both cards, then you pick up your plane card and line up the arrows.

The planes shoot at each other when they are within range, which is shown by an arc at the top(or bottom if it's a bomber) of the plane cards. Each plane has its own deck so that it only has a certain number of possible maneuvers to pick from.

Now, what makes this game challenging is that you don't pick a maneuver, move, then pick another maneuver and move again... no, you pick three maneuvers at a time. So, while on your first maneuver it is pretty easy to tell where everyone is going, the second and third can get very interesting.

So we were playing a mission. The mission was to bomb a target across the board from us. We had one bomber and two fighters against their 3 fighters.

The first thing I decided to do was move off to the side I was on, the left, and then cut back in to fire at anyone coming at our bomber. This was a bad decision, as I was late getting there. It might have worked a little better, though, if my guns didn't jam at the first shot. Guns are jammed for three maneuvers (as opposed to turns, which consist of 3 maneuvers each) so even though I was lined up to shoot again the next few times, it just wasn't happening.

Because of that, the bomber got shot down, while my wingman was doing a great job trying to defend him. Bomber shot down is -5 points to us, +5 for them, because we now could not complete the mission (I don't know if the points are in the rulebook). However, we still had a chance - and that chance was to shoot down all three planes left, without either of us dying. Planes are two points each, plus to the shooter, minus to the shootee. Luckily, every time the bomber had gotten shot, he had shot back, so one plane was limping. We quickly took him out, and then set to work on the other two. The first 4 times I shot, though, were all gun jams. I got yelled at for not loading my guns properly, even though it's just luck of the draw. Funny though. My wingman took out one of them.

On the last turn, I was to the right and behind the plane I was shooting at. He had done hard rights all night long, and I knew that he was going to do a hard right again, and if I kept going straight, I might be in his sights. So, I chose to do a swerve to the left, which leaves me facing the same direction but to the left of where I was, which would keep me out of his sights.

He did not pull a hard right.

He did a stall, which is a very short straight. Basically moves the plane up one card length. He probably though I was going to fly right on by and be in front of him, but no way. As soon as I put down my card, everyone watching was like, "Ooohhh! What a move!" I swung right over and was DIRECTLY behind him, and shot him out of the sky. Game over, we win. 1 to -1.

It was awesome. This is the best game ever.

Comments
on Jun 18, 2007
Within range is shown by a ruler, by the way, not just the arc. It's a pretty neat system.
on Jun 19, 2007
i came so close to buying this the other day....i may still order it...tell more about it, please....

Chris
on Jun 20, 2007
There are lots of things about the game I don't know, like the rules for altitude. However, I do know that you can buy miniature planes with altitude pegs that will sit on top of the card, which is really awesome.

But, that's not really the game...

Things that can happen to you in Wings of War, when you have been shot at -
1. You could start smoking. (lasts for 3 turns)
2. You could lose a rudder, which means you can no longer turn a certain way.
3. You could catch on fire, which means you take a damage at the end of each turn. (lasts for 3 turns)
4. Your engine could start hiccuping, which means you have to do a stall maneuver each turn (really short straight)
5. If you are a bomber with a rear gunner, your rear gunner could be killed.

If you are on fire or your engine is going (maybe even for smoking, too) and you get the explosion card, your plane goes down.
If your engine is already hiccuping, and you draw another engine hit, you go down.

There are markers for all of these things. However, you don't have to mark the rudder or the engine, because it lasts the rest of the game, and you don't have to tell the other team about it.

Certain maneuvers can only be done in certain situations. For example, an immelman (please excuse any spelling errors, I only know how to say it) which is a complete 180 degree turn, must have a straight before and after it.

Also, you cannot play 2 steep cards in a row... a stall is a steep maneuver. The swerve I mentioned from my gameplay was also a steep maneuver, but most things are not.