You know, sometimes it's just hard to get a game on the table. And sometimes it's even hard to figure out why.
Wings of War should have been easy to play before now. It's quick. It's easy. I have all the stuff needed and then some. I've been collecting expansions, miniatures and accessories fora couple of years and yet something always seemed to get in the way of getting any of it one the table.
But finally the logjam broke a little bit. A few days ago I did a couple of solitair balloon-busting missions and today I took the balloon down to the comic book store to see if I could get some interest going.
No problem at all. With the Wings of War playmats, a balloon and a few planes there was an enticing scene and four of the Magic players decided to try their hands. Three of them took Nieuports (a pair of Nie 17s and a rocket-firing Nie 16) while one of them joined me to defend the balloon. I took an Albatross DIII while the other fellow took Kempf's Fokker Dr1.
A good and bloody time was had by all. The poor fellow in the Fokker managed to fly in front of every single of of the French planes at some point and eventually went down without doing much damage in return. My Albatross was able to circle around one of the Nieuport 17s and shoot it down just moments after it finished off the Fokker. Meanwhile the other Nieuport 17 made a pass at the balloon, poking a few holes in it, but as he came in for another shot an unlucky rifle bullet blew up the plane!
Unfortunately for the Germans (me) I was unable to haul the Albatross around to pester the Nieuport 16 before that pilot got a rocket shot lined up. While the first rocket salvo missed entirely, the second salvo blew up the balloon and that was that.
The final tally was one Balloon and one Fokker downed by the French arcraft, one Nie 17 downed by ground fire and one by me.
The entire game took less than an hour to explain, play and pack up. A good time was had by all and I expect to run a few more scenarios soon.
That game is always a fun time. You can get in a couple of sessions easily in short order, even with new players. The maneuver decks do a good job at differentiating the planes abilities; I usually pull the explosion card out of the damage deck so the games don't end too abruptly (extremely abruptly...)
ReplyDeleteI can see doing that, although I kind of like the dramatic effects. I usually play with critical hits in naval games, too!
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