Tripod Terror

Time to wheel out the Martians for a couple of games of Tripods and Triplanes at the club as I teach the rules to some first-time players.

Mark the Martian versus Matt and Jim the Aviators.

Martians have Landed

Finally, after much delay, the Tripods and Triplanes Kickstarter has landed. This is a fun add-on for Wings of Glory (Wings of War as was). Unfortunately, a series of events kept delaying the release from Ares games, but it turned up on my doorstep last week (in the pouring rain as the despatch driver didn't put it in the 'safe place' I'd specified. Thankfully it was extremely well packaged inside so avoided rain damage.)

The base game, despite its name, does not actually include a Triplane but instead is a 1 on 1, Mk.1 Tripod vs Rocket-armed Nieuport N16, which was previously available years ago as part of the Balloon Buster set and which was at the time too pricey for me.

Wings of 100 Years

To celebrate 100 years of the RAF, founded on April Fools Day 1918, I organised a couple of games of Wings of War.

4 a side, with one plane each. Getting the players to choose their own planes was probably a bad idea as ended up with a mixed bag of performance types and many planes the RAF would never have flown!.

World War of the Worlds.

A Wings of Glory Kickstarter with a difference, Tripods and Triplanes mixes genres up and brings the War of the Worlds to the trenches. Ironically there is currently no Triplane models available via the Kickstarter, but rocket firing Nieuport 16 comes with the basic kit. (edit - The Red Barons final Fokker Triplane is now a bonus item)

Have downloaded the Print and Play demo rules, and the main thing to note is these tripods are fast! This speed would render most ground based units useless as the ability to accurately target things travelling at this rate didn't exist at this time. Targeting would have to be close ranged and over the sights, So that nicely sets up the background.

Some are already claiming it's just a rip off of 'All Quite on the Martian Front'  , despite that games primary inspiration coming from a mockumentry and unofficial sequels to the H G Wells original plus a mix of World War 1 and 2 aesthetics for the Humans. Both games have spindly legged, almost insect like, Tripods.

Transplanting the War of the Worlds setting has always happened, whether it's Orson Wells, George Pal, or that film with the shrieking kid. The Furness Wargamers even did a 1920s based invasion of Great Britain.

On image that stuck in the mind was the cover from Challenge magazine depicting a German Tripod in a Steampunk 'Great War comes early' of Space1899. It's a shame the proposed Tripod on Tripod rules involves captured machines rather the Earth built responses, but it makes more sense in the setting, especially given the time frame and tech difference.
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Undead Wings

With Nexus, the producers of Wings of War, now no longer operating, and with the English language distributor of WoW, Fantasy Flight previously announcing that they would no longer support it (in favour of their Star Wars based X-Wing, which uses similar mechanisms.), things were not looking good for the 'Wings' community.

But at last some good news, posted by the games designer Andrea Angiolino on the Yahoo Group, and confirmed by the likes of Tabletop Gaming News.

The press release...

Camaiore, Italy – September 1, 2011 - Ares Games, a Tuscany-based games publisher recently established, announces an agreement with Andrea Angiolino and Pier Giorgio Paglia, the authors of the best selling game that recreates aerial combat during the WWI and WWII, formerly published with the name "Wings of War".
Ares Games will publish the game under a new brand, "Wings of Glory". Wings of Glory will be published with a new rulebook, while maintaining compatibility with the previous Wings of War products already in the market.

"We are happy to be partnering with Andrea and Pier Giorgio to bring this wonderful game system to market." said Christoph Cianci, CEO of Ares Games, "Thousands of fans worldwide will be pleased to know that their planes and maneuver cards from Wings of War will be compatible with the new Wings of Glory."

Initially, Ares Games will focus on developing new miniatures for the game, but also plans to release new starter sets.

"This game has a very strong and loyal fan base around the world, which gave and will surely continue to give a great help to the success of our game with their support and creativity. They have high expectations of it, in spite of several attempts to imitate it with other settings and chrome," stated Andrea Angiolino, co-creator of the game. "We chose to partner with Ares Games because we believe they understand our game, and that they will take care of the wishes of its fans, as well as be respectful of its creators."

The first Wings of Glory products to be released will be four airplanes for the WWII game series: the American P40, the Russian Yak-1, the Japanese Ki-61 and the Italian Re-2001 Falco. Ares Games will publish a Starter Set with these four models, containing the introductory rules and all other elements needed to start play. The complete schedule of the next releases will be announced soon.
With this announcement, Ares Games now publishes two important games from Italian creators that have achieved international recognition. In July, Ares Games aquired the rights from Sophisticated Games to publish the award-winning board game "War of the Ring", based on the J.R.R.Tolkien' s trilogy, "The Lord of the RingsTM", and created by Roberto Di Meglio, Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi. A new edition of the game, in English, will be available this Fall, with other language editions forecasted for Spring 2012.


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In The Air

Played some games of Wings of War at the club as nothing else to do. Choose to play a basic free for all given the uneven numbers of players. Single seaters only, with free choice of planes. Managed to win the first two sorties but was first down in the third and final one.

Elsewhere Graeme was demoing the new Cutlass rules, from Black Scorpion, in another three way battle.
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Beasts of the Air

A multi player game of Wings of War took place as I finally get to use the multi-engine Bombers from Flight of the Giants.

A simple warm up game with just fighters, to get a new player familiarised with the game, was followed by what the rulebook describes as a 'Stop Them' scenario.

From Furness Wargamers in the Air

Flyboys

Quite a variety of games going on tonight.

I managed to play a couple of Wings of War games with Tony, who despite never playing the game before soon picked up the tactic. Avoided using the altitude rules as for new players and single head-to-head games I find it redundant. Altitude is best used for 'furballs' with 6-8 planes involved. Didn't get the chance to use my newly purchased 'Flight of the Giants' expansion yet.

From Furness Wargamers in the Air

Three Way Furball

Due to a number of no shows due to the terrible weather I finally got a chance to play some Wings of War with Baldy and Colin. Baldy claimed to be new to the game, despite playing it in the past, so we started off with a simple everything goes battle with no altitude rules. Both Colin and Baldy chose two seaters, RE.8 and Ufag respectively, I chose a Fokker D.VII.

From Furness Wargamers in the Air

Winging It

Year 5 pre-season and first two turns played out, with the prospect of a three way pitched battle next week!

From Campoon 3

A siege started at the other end of the continent between Paul and Mark, with a bit of Martin's Nurgle thrown in. After a few failed storming attempts by the joint Paul-Martin forces, Mark decided to do the slightly bizarre thing of torching his own city! leaving the three forces in a smokey field ready for the big fight.

I'm taking this year a bit passively by doing a bit of exploring by ship to the harder to get parts surrounded by what remains of Jim's now dormant empire.

Got a bit of fortune in the previous winter phase as I rolled 'bad' and got the results that non of my razed villages recover. My buffer zone with Dave S remains intact!

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After the quick map moves a small game of Wings of War was played. Just a straight four player dogfight. Allied Sopwith Camel and Nieuport 17 vs Albatros DVa and a Fokker DVII. No 'bangs' in the deck and using altitude rules. Players could select any plane from the single seater mini's, Matt the Camel, Paul the Albatros, Me the DVII, and first time player Martin the Nieuport.

The Albatros hung back for awhile as the Camel and Fokker engaged each other, both inflicting damage. The Nieuport spent its time climbing up an altitude level. Eventually the Albatros came in and gained a tailing advantage, only for his guns to jam.

From Furness Wargamers

The Camel was the first to go down, but unfortunately in trailing the Camel the Albatros left itself vulnerable to the Nieuport, which managed to shoot it down after inflicting nine damage in a close up shot.

With both the Nieuport and DVII badly damaged we agreed to break off the engagement and claim our separate kills.
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Aleutian Campaign Takes Wing

A small GQ3 WW2 campaign has got under way based on an hypothetical attempt by the Japanese to reinforce\relieve their bases in the Aleutian Islands from American attack.


View Larger Map

Referee: Dave M.
Japanese: Martin (C-in-C), Jack, Tel.
Hot-dog Munchers: Matt (C-in-C), Colin, Alan.

The first set of hidden map moves have been completed, and, as I'm not totally daft, I'm not going to say what our sides moves were! Basically the first day (of three) is now over with no surface engagements and only a brief air-battle over a U.S. base to worry about.

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With some time left to burn at the end of a night a quick(ish) game of Wings of War took place, a DH4 and a Snipe vs an Albatros DVa and a Fokker DVII.

Using the altitude rules complicated things a bit and the table was probably too big an area to play on as well. Would probably of been fine with more planes.

In the end the allies managed to scrape the win, shooting the DVIII down and forcing the Albatros off board. Little did the Germans know just how close both allied planes were to going down, one more 2+ damage card each could of done it.

Also news of Series 3 minis; now supposedly being released sometime in November. Hopefully not too late else things are going to get caught up in the Xmas mail surge.
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New Wings

The new Wings of War Booster packs, Dogfight and Immelmann, finally turned up at the Post Office on Monday after failure to deliver on Saturday.

It looks like the RAF SEa from the Dogfight booster is going to be one of the favourite allied planes to play as its as fast as a SPAD XIII but more maneuverable. I'm hopeful that it'll appear in Series 4 of the miniatures, and would like it to include one of the night fighter colour schemes just to give the allies a bit of colour for a change. That is still in the far future as we are still waiting for Series 3 to be released and also the box set for the bombers.

The early war planes from the Immelmann pack also make an interesting addition to the game as they seem closely matched against each other. They are still totally outclassed by the later planes but, given the nature of the random damage, still have a chance. It would be interesting to find out of a single SE5a could take out a couple of Fokker E.IIIs. If playing altitude rules then the SE5a would be almost impossible to pin down as its climb rate and altitude ceiling is far greater than the poor Eindecker. (But still not as good as the Siemens D.IV that also appear in Dogfight!)
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