Wings of Glory WWI Rules and Accessories Pack
Designer: Andrea Angiolino, Piergiorgio Paglia
Publisher: Ares Games
Players: 2-99
Age: 8+
Duration: 30 minutes or more
First impression by Andrea “Liga” Ligabue thanks to the preview copy offered by Ares
I’m a big fan of the Wings of War series and I’m been really happy when Ares announced the publishing of the new serie: Wings of Glory. Some days ago I got a review copy of Wings of Glory WWI Rules and Accessories Pack with two new airplanes and I rush to try it as soon as possible.
The first things I noticed is that the airplanes are fully compatible with the old one: so my huge squadron could continue to fly. The second thing I noticed is a slight renew of the graphics, both in the cards and in the counters, that I really appreciated.
The small Accessories Pack is full of things: 4 damage decks (A,B,C,D) more than 20 special cards including AA Machine Guns Cards and Bomb Cards. 4 Consoles printed on two side: one side for basic rules and one side for advanced rules. I found this consoles better than the old board for the cards so it is another little but interesting improvement. Finally 2 rulers and more than 160 tokens.
For readers that don’t know Wings of Glory series a quick overview of the rules.
Every player drive an airplane characterized by a miniature, model, unit, pilot, a maneuver deck, a firepower class and damage resistance. Every turn you plan the next three movements of your plains putting maneuver cards on your console. Of course there are some rules like the impossibility to make two steep in a row of the special requirement before the Immelmann Turn.
All the players reveal the first card and move the plain according to the arrow on it, using the card as a guide. After the movement you can fire to other airplanes in range. Being hit at short range means drawing two cards from the appropriate damage deck (according to firing damge class); long range hits are just one card draws.
After three rounds there is a new planning phase and so on until the scenarios conditions are fulfilled.
In the basic version of the rules you can just have two kinds of special damage: explosion and jammed.
The rulebook introduce also Standard Rules, with the differents kind of damages like the engine damage and smoke that have effects on the continuation of the battle.
The Advanced rules introduce also the altitude, collisions and fire damage.
The final part of the book, from page 17 to page 40, is a compendium of all the optional and special rules previously published in the different Wings of War expansion inluding Baloons, Multi-engine airplanes, ground units and special weapons. Some real newelties like Aces and Rookies rules are also included in the pack
Conclusion
I found Wings of Glory WWI Rules and Accessories Pack great both for Wings of Wars players (like me) and for people eager of start flying and fighting in the WWI skies.
The extra damage deck, the tokens, the new consoles, the new Aces and Rookies rules and the well organized rules book with all you need to play. Of course you need als the airplanes that are not included in the box.
