Wings for the Baron in Review

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Great write up Sag! I really dig the unique overall concept of the game. There's something a little Pax Porfirianaesque about it that's piquing my interest.

I just wanted to bump this thread again because, damn, my buddies played the hell out of this game this past weekend at our gaming retreat.

This is really a good game, like, Puerto Rico or Acquire good. I've probably shown it to 10 or 15 people at this point and all of them have signed up for multiple plays. This is the most requested game in my collection.

So here's a game that's in my top 5 that almost no one has heard of or seen in real life. It's out on the table the entire weekend in spite of me only getting in on one game of it (and I was asked to join as they were setting up). Everyone is impressed with it, and none of them are airplane or even history buffs. Really an excellent play, so if you see a copy take the time to pull it out and give it a spin. In spite of the glowing review above, I think I admire the design now more than I did in 2015 when it was still a fresh title for me.

Thanks for bringing this back up Sag. Your review and Michael's original take piqued my interest. Looking at it again.

It really is a cool game- a novel concept, good mechanics, and a solid economic model. I’d like to try the newer edition sometime myself.

For those not keeping track Victory Point Games is closed down. Alan Emrich, VPG's top man was asked what the future of Wings for the Baron is and he reponded, "patience". So it appears this critter may have a third edition coming out. I love my second edition and it gets heavily played. But it's good to hear this one is staying hot, and may get the recognition it deserves. I put this title in the Settlers/Puerto Rico group, classic architectures well-executed.

My game of the year for 2015.

Sagrilarus wrote: For those not keeping track Victory Point Games is closed down.

Technically VPG still exists. Tabletop Tycoon and Dan Yarrington (of Game Salute fame/infamy) bought VPG from Alan Emrich (who wanted to focus on making games, not the game biz) and then a month ago fired all of the VPG creative team, including Alan. So TT still have the recent big-budget titles in house, like Nemo's War and Dawn Of The Zeds, but the small fish seem to be slowly reverting their rights to the designers (Frank Chadwick took his big box European Theater Of Operations games to GMT.) We will see what happens with the more traditional wargames that were once VPG's bread-and-butter, as it seems Dan is permitting those rights to revert to their creators so they may be pitched elsewhere.

FYI -- we just dropped a podcast episode into the stream for this game, speaking to a lot of what I wrote above, plus plenty more. Well worth a listen on tomorrow's commute -- www.cellargames.com/episodes/wings-for-the-baron Tell all your friends!

Appreciate the thank-yous!

I'll mention that our episode on Alien Frontiers had an unexplained jump in downloads yesterday. Don't know if any of you were part of that too.

Boo Yah!!! Wings for the Baron has been picked up for version 3 by GMT Games! That kicks ass!!!