We had another ‘Schild & Vriend Revivial Game’ this month, this time organized by Bart Vetters, and hosted as usual at Phil’s Gaming Attic. Again, Eddy Sterckx was so kind to provide us with a gaming report:
Last night - at what is already becoming a fine tradition - we had another game in Phil’s attic.
Bart had adapted the Wings of War – WWI dogfighting - system to work on hexes and we were ready to try it out in a series of dogfights : Tommies versus Jerries. As the dogfights throughout the night unfolded it would mostly come down to 1-1 fights between a slow moving, highly maneuverable versus a fast moving, slow turning plane.
The system basically is about guessing where your opponent will be next turn, picking the right three maneuver cards and hope you can get a shot in. Damage done can go all the way from a tiny hole in the wing canvas (0 points damage) to a bullet through the pilot’s head (game over)
The first round immediately taught us the important lesson that given the size-constraints of the terrain you better plan ahead … carefully … very carefully. Over the evening more planes were lost due to flying “out of bounds” then to enemy fire. This especially proved to be a disadvantage for the faster planes who were often reduced to “fly straight ahead – Immelmann – fly straight ahead in the other direction” tactics. A brilliant suggestion to reduce the distance flown by one hex managed to remedy this in one stroke: the third round “felt”’ correct with “real” dogfights going on across the boards. I think that everyone agreed that this single correction made the system 99% playable as is, no further tinkering required, though a bigger board and missions (photographing / bombing / strafing) would add to the variety.
Now as to the question of which plane is better : the slow movers / hard turners or the fast movers / slow turners opinion is still divided – we’ll probably need another game-night like this to really get to grips with the system. So as Frank would say : Ze Red Baron vill fly again !