Paint Jobs and Firing Arcs.

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I tend to agree with you, that it's dumb to put super niche planes in the game first without seeing to a good variety of the basics. On the other hand, perhaps a lot of their buyers have no interest in the history, so they don't care that WWI and WWII air combat wasn't between 36 different types of aircraft at a time... so they wouldn't buy these paint jobs? It'd be interesting to know which strategy would be more successful. You'd think the different paint jobs would be pretty low cost, no need to create the new models.

Awesome game!

When I was buying these up, I basically went based on looks and paint scheme. No thought was given to shooting or maneuvering. I wanted the flying circus to be as varied and colorful as possible and the allies to be as similar as possible.

However, when the few cases where I was looking at buying duplicates of the same model (because, yes, some like to flying them in pairs) I'd still either look for the 2nd boldest paint job (central) or for the allies the less loud of the remaining options.

I liked the way the olive green v rainbow clash looked on the table.

As best I can tell you're buying for pretty, you're buying for best-playing, or you're buying for history. Most likely it's some degree or another of each. I'm helping a guy opening a new store set up his initial stock, and that's where my thoughts congealed once I spent the time to think it through.

But yes, the paint jobs matter a lot. I think there's a fair amount of players out there that would buy ten of the same model if there were ten good paint jobs for it, and they could likely Kickstart sets of four, six or eight and have the money in-hand before producing them.

If people are into painting their own a/c, here is a site that sells 1/144 scale models: WWI aircraft

I do wish they'd put out more paint jobs of the popular planes.

So what are the top WWI planes in this game? I don't get to play it as much as I'd like and never with experienced players.

For the Germans the Fokker D.VII is the best flyer game-wise, and the Fokker Dr.I is really pretty and turns a very tight corner. Those are likely the first picks. The Albatros D.Va was a great early war plane, really changed the game for both sides. And super pretty paint jobs on it. I have a bunch of them including a couple that are hard to find now.

For the Allies the Sopwith Camel is likely the plane of choice, flies well game-wise, plenty of hit points. Paint jobs aren't as pretty (the Allied paint jobs in general aren't as pretty. But! I have a Hanriot that is very pretty, flies very well, and is downright lucky. I've played it three or four times now and all I pull is zero-point damage cards with it. The Sopwith Snipe is maneuverable as hell which makes it worth playing just for that.

And today I put in an order for two BF.110 twin engine fighters to fill out my Battle of Britain set. I now have four planes for each side.

Remember how I said the old paint jobs are hard to find? Well for World War II major planes are simply unavailable now, and the word I got back from the publisher was that when Ares rose from the ashes of Nexus there was plenty of the more popular planes still in inventories in stores and in distributors. So they started print runs of the less commonly known aircraft, plus some of the later war planes that are well known. A late model Spitfire, the P-51, etc., and the good news is that they also ran some of the twin engine fighter-bombers that Germany used earlier in the war. Some of them are left over. Good news.

Given that Ares is a small company trying to wrestle four "big" games (Wings 1, Wings 2, Sails of Glory and War of the Ring) their demand backlog is starting to stretch to years instead of months.

Last night I got the opportunity to play the World War II version of the game briefly, and forgot how much I enjoyed it. Much more heads-down, much more focused. I didn't enjoy some of its mechanical foibles (pegs that don't grip, bases that are hard to pick up, damage chits with side-flash that is difficult to trim and difficult to play with untrimmed . . . I believe my official definition of "fiddly" is "shit that don't work when it should") but the action on the table was very engaging. I have aftermarket pegs that I can put into play now, I have mats that will make picking up the beveled bases easier, and I'm looking into getting damage cards made so that I can skip the chits entirely. At that point I think the game will be a complete pleasure to play.

So with store credit burning a hole in my pocket, over $100 worth right now, I sprung for a matching pair of 110s so that my two 109s have something to cover. This means 8 people doing Battle of Britain up right, with Spits, Hurricanes, BF.109s and BF.110s all in the hunt. Should be a good time the next time we have a session.

S.

We played a WWII Battle of Britain scenario. We house-ruled that after a certain number of turns (I think maybe it was 8?) the Axis planes had to start making 'gas rolls' to see if they had to start heading off the south eastern side of the map. It put a sense of urgency on their side.

I didn't even know they had WW2 planes. Now I'm interested. I need to see how it plays though.

Mr. White wrote: We played a WWII Battle of Britain scenario. We house-ruled that after a certain number of turns (I think maybe it was 8?) the Axis planes had to start making 'gas rolls' to see if they had to start heading off the south eastern side of the map. It put a sense of urgency on their side.

We generally play with fuel rules. We set a certain number of chits aside and pull one away each turn. You need to be off your end of the board before they run out. We do ammunition rules with cards, another thing you can't do with chits. I need those cards.

Both fuel and ammunition are ways to differentiate different planes. The WW2 version does it with the more varied damage categories, which makes sense as the planes were more different in that war.

S.