Wings of War is an airplane dog fighting game that I had a chance to play a demo of at Gen Con 2009 over the last weekend.  This game piqued my interest more so than most of the others that I was able to try out this year at the convention.  The game is simple in that each plane gets a movement deck and each plan has the ability to make 3 maneuvers per round.  After each of these moves there is an opportunity to shoot at planes that are in range, rinse and repeat until planes crash.

Shooting Backwards is neat

We were lucky enough to have two gentlemen who were familiar with the game teach us since the guy who was demoing this game was no where to be found until about halfway through the game.  The game was simple enough that it didn’t really matter.  The movement mechanic of the game is pretty neat because each of the bases of the planes has an arrow, you start by taking your move card, placing it in front of the plane, and then lining up the plane’s arrow with the one on the card.

This allowed for fairly fluid movement of the planes and for a quick game play as each person did their move simultaneously.  Once you moved you could shoot, the plan that I used had a rear gunner who was far better than the pilot at shooting.  Each time you shoot your opponent draws a damage card from an appropriate deck.  Ex. My front gunner was a B and my rear gunner was an A.  If the rear gunner was shooting and was in range, your opponent would draw an A card.  If you happen to be within a short distance, half the shooting ruler, then they would draw two cards.

Getting shot to pieces

On each of the damage cards there are two things, a number for the amount of damage you take from the shot and possibly an icon. The icons do different things, like prevent you from turning one direction or changing altitude or something like killing the pilot or gunner.

Overall the games mechanics are pretty solid, I’m not sure how well they hold up after playing a bunch, but each plan does have it’s own maneuvers and abilities.  The game has a bunch of scenarios to play through but I can’t imagine those being fun for a very long time as they are static circumstances.

One of my major complaints and probably the main reason for not getting a copy of this game is that the box version of the basic game comes with NO PLANES!  The game is card based, completely, and not real sized cards, mini sized cards…..

So I thought, Hmm…how much could they possibly charge for the mini planes, $13 for the small fighters all the way up to $16 for the larger ones.  Did I mention the game itself is $35?  It just seems funny to me that this is how they decided to market this game, which is a bit frustrating to me since I really liked the demo.  This is one of those games that I’m going to put on my list of…if I see it cheap enough, I’d buy it, but until then…….oh well……..