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.
