My Litko WoW flight bases, flight pegs, flight peg toppers and altitude dials showed up the other day. The packaging was nice and they were well protected during shipping.
Flight Bases for Wings of War
The quality of the flight bases is good and are the correct size. I do find the center line, arrow and firing arch lines a little hard to see. Litko does suggest using a crayon to fill in the etched lines to improve visibility. I'll try this and report back. They are heavier then the WoW bases, so they should be more stable at the higher peg heights (up to 6").
3" Flight Peg
I have to say I was not very happy with the flight pegs at first inspection. I felt these really could have been made a lot thicker. After comparing them to the WoW pegs, they are quite a bit thicker if you actually compare the small part of the WoW peg (the part that has always broken off in our gaming group). While the Litko pegs look thin and fragile, surprisingly they are any thing but. Just like the WoW peg and base combo, the Litko pegs need to be paired with the best fitting base. If you don't do this, the peg will wobble quite a bit. I will say, most of them were a good fit first try. I still feel these pegs could be a lot thicker. Being a single piece is a big improvement over the WoW pegs in terms of not coming apart.
One draw back to the Litko base and peg combo, they do not really come back apart easily after you have paired them together. I was not able to pull nearly 50% of mine back apart due to fear of braking a peg. This means they will take up more room in your storage system (and you can not swap out peg heights).
Flight Peg Toppers for Wings of War
These little pieces work quite well. They are tight on both the flight peg and the WoW miniatures. You will have to do a little pairing with these as well.
6 Count Dials and Pointers
These little jewels hold the key for my simplified altitude rules I've been working on. Both the dial and pointer slide over the flight peg nicely. I was a little concerned that the pointer would slide around to much while moving the planes around. While I have not had a chance to play a full game with them, just moving the plane around a few times did not cause them to lose count. I tried the little black pointers with and with out the brown backing paper on them to see if it made a difference on how well the dial stayed in place. While it's not a big difference, I think leaving the backing paper on is slightly better.
I placed a very tiny amount of white (PVA) glue in one spot between the flight base and peg and then slid the dial down on to the peg. I centered the "1" in the middle of the firing arch. This should keep the dial rotating around the peg. This will make it super ease to tell at a glance what altitude a plane is at as it will standardize where each number goes from player to player.
These are highly recommended for anyone tracking altitude during games.
Over all, I'm very pleased with the Litko products. They have a nice look and finish to them and they work well.
WoW base and Litko stands
Another option I tried was to carefully drill out the hole in the WoW base to accept the Litko peg. I have a drill bit set with 135 bits in it and I still did not have the perfect size for the Litko pegs. I was able to drill it out using a .1200 sized bit. This was a little to small and the peg was very hard to get in to it. My next bit size up was a .1285 and it was to large and the peg just wobbled around. I think that a .1250 bit would be the perfect size. I'll try and find one to test out and report back with my findings.
There are two big advantages to going this route. The first is that you do not need to buy the Litko bases, so you save quite a bit of money. The other is that all of the planes data is printed on the WoW base for easy reference and the lines are much easier to read.
The draw backs are that it takes time and a steady hand to drill out all the holes on the WoW bases. If you drill it out to large, you will have to carefully fill it with super glue and re-drill it.
Another plus for the full Litko system is that the base is much heavier, so it feels much more stable.
One thing I wish Litko would do is to offer a verity pack of flight pegs. I would love to be able to order a pack that contained two each of the 2, 3, 4, and 6 inch pegs. Even using the altitude dials, I still like having my actual miniatures at different heights. It makes it so much easier to move them around the table when they are very close to another plane.
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