I recently borrowed a copy of Wings of War: Famous Aces from my mate Griff because I was curious to see if my four year old son CJ would be interested in playing it. As CJ will happily play a number of the Cranium range of board games (Zooreka being a favourite) that involve standard card and dice mechanics, I suspected he could handle Wings of War which is entirely card based.

In Wings of War you dogfight various WWI single and double seater aircraft. The game supports any number of players (although 5-6 players is a practical limit) who all act simultaneously. Each aircraft is represented by a card which you move around the playing surface – which can be any flat, clear tabletop. Each aircraft only has three basic statistics: the amount of damage they can receive before being shot down, the deck of cards they use for movement, and the deck of cards they use when firing their machine guns.

The real beauty of the system is the way the decks of cards work. The various planes use different movement decks which reflect the historical flight abilities of that plane. So for example tri-planes like the Fokker DR-1 which were very maneuverable have a set of cards that give you quick side slips and sharp turns, while planes like the Albatross D-III tend to have a smaller set of more graceful movement cards. The various movement decks work well to give each plane a distinctive feel while gaming. Famous Aces comes with four distinct movement decks which enough to give you a fair range of planes to fly.

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It’s June already! Time I posted about the three month painting challenge we kicked off in February then. No, your addition isn’t wrong, this challenge was supposed to finish at the end of April which was over a month ago. However for a variety of reasons much of late April and May was rather awful for my extended family and I simply had no time nor desire to do any hobby work.

I did start the challenge fairly strong, with the three DAK armored platoons I needed primed and ready to paint. It wasn’t long before I’d weathered all my DAK tanks with Marmite and the turrets were finished a week later!

Then things went on the back burner and here we are early June and all I’ve managed to finish and varnish is the two DAK panzers you see above – a IIIJ late and a IV F2. Still I feel a little more inspired now and will try and get some more of this army painted this year. How did everybody else go?

Did I miss this news or not? I noticed a story posted on Tabletop Gaming News just yesterday so I’m assuming it is fairly short notice of a price increase?

Battlefront are increasing their prices on average 11% across their range of figures and vehicles in one week. Rulebooks and gaming accessories (dice, templates) are not increasing in price. It’s been over three years since our local New Zealand market has seen a price increase from Battlefront and I personally haven’t bought any Flames of War figures for almost exactly two years so I can’t really complain!

The good news is that while Battlefront are about to increase their prices, we’ve been promised those prices will stay in place for at least another two years, so once again we really have no grounds for complaint. The way Battlefront treat their customers still makes me glad I play their games, almost makes me wish I’d given them more of my money in fact! Which reminds me weren’t their vague rumors a while back about them starting a new period game system? Whatever happened to that? Daniel – you’re our resident Battlefront guru, any ideas?