Proud daddy

A couple of weeks ago whilst it was my turn to do the child care duties my daughter Zoe asked if she could help me paint my plane that I was working on. I quickly found her a Pfalz D.IIIa and a Albatros D.III for her to paint whilst I continued to work on my current project. Zoe is four years old now and it filled me with pride that she wanted to get involved with what I was doing. She has also mentioned recently that she would like to play Wings of Glory with daddy. I have attended plenty of shows in the past where children playing Wings of Glory have this ability to shoot down the grown ups aeroplanes, whilst leaving us to contemplate what just happened. My daughter can be quite competitive so what could possibly go wrong chaps. So my question is for those who have young children or grandchildren. Is there a way to simplify the rules for a child of her age group.

The old "DOGFIGHT" game was pretty simple and you could let her paint the planes . . . Based on a square grid/dice system, s the e could get the maneuvers down . . .

Have you thought of holding 'Air Races', choosing one movement card at a time until she is used to using them and then building up to planning two and then three moves ahead? The next stage might be simple combat using the Basic Rules - only counting damage points, explosion and gun jam cards. However, since she probably cannot add yet, maybe use counters as hit points and either take them away as a plane is damaged or, if she can count high enough, arrange them in a pattern as they are received.

Kubajs is playing WoG with his son and doughter qouite often (the youngest is too young) and his oldest is a pretty deadly rookie ace. Boys and girls around 10 are regular players.
If I remember well, the first step is (obviously) do not play with altitude and with no special damage cards. The next one is simplify rules to choose and play with playing one (or two in case of WGF) cards instead of two / three. On the other hand, jammed guns are totally OK and they can heal a kid's ego when daddy hit him from very close distance ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naharaht

Have you thought of holding 'Air Races', choosing one movement card at a time until she is used to using them and then building up to planning two and then three moves ahead? The next stage might be simple combat using the Basic Rules - only counting damage points, explosion and gun jam cards. However, since she probably cannot add yet, maybe use counters as hit points and either take them away as a plane is damaged or, if she can count high enough, arrange them in a pattern as they are received.

---

What he said! :D

Hi Mark.
I've found four years as the perfect age for my kids to start with Wings.
I simplyfied it for my kids to one card and no shooting. We had two scenarios
- put on the table one card as the airfield and one card as the target. The plane starts over the airfield, must cross the target to destroy it and fly back to the airfield. It is solo for the kid, but be sure you'll be totally in too.
- create some gates on the table (four pairs of tokens with the same color works perfect) and create racing course as Red Bull Air Races (or you can call it acording to the Planes movie the qualiffication for the race around the world). You than go throught the race in the same time. When you provide the kids plane with F/M maneuvers and yours with J/I you find it challenging even for you. And dont forget to let the kids win as tight as possible :). Than it's a great fun for both of you.

The most important at the beginning is that they cannot be shot down. So the feel save and can concentrate for the maneuvering. How they get familliar wit the maneuvering with one card you can easily add planing of two and than plannig the three cards.
About one yaer later I played the first missions with shooting with my son not as the dogfight but as cooperation scenario with chasing very slow bomber or strafing some ground targets.

I hope some of my thoughts will help and you spend many hours of fun with your doughter and wings.

I have played separate games with both my grandsons, Cayden is 7 and Max is 5.
I found the best thing is to fly cooperative games.

We both flew scouts against a Gotha or Caproni, depending on which planes they wanted to fly.
The only special damages we used were Flames, Smoke, Jams and Boom (50% damage, not outright kill)
They both picked up the concept really quickly and will be fearsome opponents in a year or two.
:D

Thank very much chaps for all of the fantastic advice on how to play wings with my daughter.

By the way, another proud daddy who plays with his doughter is Andrzej. True, she was older when they started, but then he took the game into her class and made a special lesson about Polish - Soviet War ('19-'21) including battle on the table. You can imagine he was a father with rank "hero" ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dan-Sam

By the way, another proud daddy who plays with his doughter is Andrzej. True, she was older when they started, but then he took the game into her class and made a special lesson about Polish - Soviet War ('19-'21) including battle on the table. You can imagine he was a father with rank "hero" ;)

---

Thank you Daniel for recalling that event. Yes, engaging kids in games, especially WoG, was always a success.
That particular lesson we played with full rules except altitude. Kids were about 10-11 years old and had absolutely no problem grasping the rules.
What was interesting: I divided the pupils into two teams - girls and boys. The girls won by number of kills and generally played a bit better as far as orientation and maneuvering was concerned.
I remember one very ambiciuos boy caught in a crossfire who survived the clash, but burst into tears!
Oh, funny it was!

This was exactly the way how to improve lessons of history and make them fun, especially when you found such nice topic. I am pretty sure nobody from the class will forget about Polish - Soviet War (especially when most of the people do not know about our [Czechoslovakian] conflicts in '19 and '20). Definitely a :thumbsup: