"Wings of Glory Balloon Bursting AAR " Topic

Here's my latest blog post, in which I play a Wings of Glory balloon bursting mission and then finished the day with a game of Munchkin Cthulhu. Please take a look here:

link

Thanks for dropping in!!

Great AAR. Love your game mat … where did you get it?

Mark

Thanks Mark, that is most asked question whenever I post a Wings AAR! The mat is from Terrain Mat and their WW1 range:

terrainmat.com

I should start asking for commission from them…

Looks like a fun game – I have two mats from the Terrain Mat guys and really like them.

It was a good game, indeed. yeah the mats are excellent, Ninjasaurus Rex also has one of their space mats, which is equally as good as the trench one I have.

I've played that game and really enjoy it. Even more fun than X-Wing and Attack Wing, in my opinion. Great looking game and it looks like Yall had fun.

Thanks Rrobby, yeah, I have always enjoyed Wings of Glory, it's a quick and easy game and the results can be surprising, sometimes! I like X-Wing, but it has a bit more complexity to it and feels a bit more like a tournament game with the points system.

Hi,
The Terrainmat mats are definitely good. I have one of their sea terrain mats which is excellent.
As for the most frequently asked questions regarding "Wings of War/Glory", I can't help thinking that "Whatever happened to the Gotha's??" is a good one. I've seen one at a wargames show on which I was reporting and that was it. None of my usual stockist have stocks and can offer no suggestion as to where the Gotha's can be obtained… without taking out "a second mortgage"!
Maybe if Ares aren't going to produce these after the initial run for whatever reason, they should make pdfs available for download of the manoeuvre cards and the base so that we can source a suitable model from other sources?

We had a pair of "bag bust" games last week too (different rules by far, though).

I'm not seeing balloons "begin to burn nicely" in the original source descriptions. When they start to burn, they go up with a large and rather swift *KaRumpf!" And if any aircraft is within the radius of flying debris that is the danger, not so much the fireball itself.

We had an involved discussion on this point, because one of the aircraft which made a shooting pass was within the radius of danger.

In the past, we had always assumed that it was the fireball torching the airplane that resulted in its destruction. But really, what amount of time is there inside the fireball for any airplane traveling c. 100 mph? Not enough time to light anything on fire at all, not even the pilot. An instant of heat just as instantaneously passed through.

BUT, the cables, "canvas" and whatnot would be flung far and wide by the explosion, and those nasty bits of hard stuff if they connected with the airplane at all would cause damage.

So now we treat an exploding gas bag like the danger zone for a "midair collision", i.e. the outer range is a 25% chance of catching debris, within the midrange is a 50% chance, while within almost contact range is a 75% chance of your airplane getting hit by debris.

In the event of a hit you roll for damage, and a "midair" is nothing to sneeze at: it can range from a "bump" of one or a few damage points, to being required to roll a bunch of critical hits. In that event you are likely to go down, and if not, then your airplane will be so crippled as to be useless and vulnerable in the extreme….

@Architectus, I have one of the Gotha models, but I can't remember for the life of me where I bought it from. Maybe Ares will rerelease them?

@Greatwarace, yeah, I'm sure it's more the debris than the fireball of an exploding balloon that does the damage. All it would take is a piece of rigging to get tied up in the prop and it's curtains for the pilot… In WoW any plane that is overlapping the balloon base takes a hit, in our case it was enough to destroy the SE5a, but it didn't affect the Pfalz that was also overlapping the balloon.