Playing Wings of Glory (a review/commentary of sorts)
Taken from: http://behindthesofa.net/wargaming/2...ings-of-glory/
So today was the day of the big roadtest (an ironic expression considering we were taking to the skies, but I digress). My mate Andy and I cracked open the Wings of Glory “duel pack” that features the Spad VIII of America’s Frank Luke Jr. and the Albatros D.Va of Germany’s Paul Bäumer. Along with the pre-painted planes and stands came unique movement card decks for each plane, a “console” for each player to play their cards in when paying, a rulebook featuring basic and standard rules… basically everything you need to play in one simple box for less than $30, which is a ripping price for what you get.
Kudos to the makers for designing such a well put together package.
We had already read the rulebook, so were ready to go and, aside from a few rookie mistakes from over-eagerness, found that we nailed playing the basic game with ease. That said, Andy — who has been playing way more X-Wing Miniatures than myself lately — found himself all over the place at first, as I flew rings around him in the Spad VIII and, eventually, shot him down in the opening game. Because, while it’s quite fair to say there are a few similarities between the two games, they also play quite differently in some ways, too. Andy took about three games to fully adjust his mind to this fact.
In total, we played seven games (switching to the standard rules — which add more ways to take damage — on the third or fourth game), with five wins to Andy and two wins to myself. That said, two of the games lasted just one turn as, in successive games, I drew the one and only explosion card in the deck of damage cards, destroying my plane instantly before either of us had shown any flying skill at all against our opponent. With those anomalies removed from the record (seriously, who explodes on turn one with the first card they draw, let alone in two games running?), it was realistically three wins to Andy and two wins to myself, in quality games that lasted 30-60 minutes apiece.
My thoughts on Wings of Glory are that it “feels fair” and that is a HUGE issue for me when it comes to some wargames. Yes, there was that explosion card that took me out on the first turn in two successive games, but that’s not the kind of fairness I mean. In X-Wing Miniatures, for example, there’s a lot of emphasis on who your pilot is, and ways in which they can affect their opponents. For example, if Wedge Antilles is shooting at you, you can’t roll your full complement of defence dice to try and block his shots. Other pilots don’t have that ability, but might have other abilities, to greater or lesser than effect.
This kind of thing “adds flavour” to the X-Wing game and, yes, can make an X-Wing really feel like it’s being flown by an ace pilot like Wedge or Luke Skywalker, rather than some rookie (of course, it also features stats for rookies, too), which is a great and fun kind of game. But Wings of Glory is very, very different in regard to pilots. You don’t buy the Red Baron pack, for example, to get a pilot who can shoot twice as many bullets or be able to take more hits than everyone else, or anything like that to artificially simulate Manfred von Richthofen being a better pilot than everyone else. That would be cheesy and would simply lead to another statistics-based game where choosing ‘x’ pilot with ‘y’ abilities will lead to victory ‘z’ per cent of the time as it can sometimes be in X-Wing Miniatures.
In Wings of Glory, there are some differences between what the planes can do (their movement cards show some of them to be faster, or do certain moves better than others), but, on the whole, you are the pilot, making all the decisions and, beyond that, it’s a simple deck of cards that will affect your overall fate if you find yourself getting shot at.
So, for example, you might find yourself getting shot full of holes in a game, but consistently drawing ’0′ or very low damage cards when you get hit. In one game, I was having a blinder in terms of consistently getting in position and hammering Andy — and he had drawn well over 10 damage cards, yet was still flying the unfriendly skies. Or, for example, you might only get hit four or five times but start drawing cards like ’5′, ’5′, ’3′, ’4′ in succession… and suddenly you’ve taken more damage than your plane can withstand in a relatively short period of time. And if you’ve noticed none of what I’m saying involves dice… well spotted. Wings of War is a dice free game, and is quite fun in that respect.
All in all, we really enjoyed ourselves and, from a shaky start (which I put down to the fact I kicked his arse, but he denies it), Andy finished the day calling the game fantastic.
Wings of War is all about getting in position to his your opponent with your guns and, when you do, hoping they draw some nasty cards from the damage pile. They might. Or they might not. That’s the game at hand. And, in terms of representing WW1 aerial combat where one lucky bullet could hit a fuel tank, or hit a pilot in the head, while other planes might get shot full of holes and live to fight another day, I think it’s a pretty good representation of the era. Again, it “feels fair” to me, while still feeling like a game.
Does this mean I’m giving up X-Wing Miniatures? Not on your life! X-Wing simulates something completely different and is its own game. And you know, I’m really happy to be saying that, as part of me feared the games might be so similar that it would become hard to decide what to play, as it would be a case of “six of one, half a dozen of the other”, but that’s not the case at all. Both are flight games. Both use similar movement. But from there, things start to move in almost opposite directions. Vive la difference!
Reply With Quote
Thanks for that review Rob!
Originally Posted by gully_raker
Neil
Bookmarks