"Imperial Skies" Topic

Thinking of dipping my toe into Aeronef's and was looking at the Imperial Skies ruleset. So
(a) Are the Imperial Sky rules any good?
(b) Roughly how many aside Nef's for a small 2-3 hour game with novice players?

Hi,

Yes the game is great.

I would, as I did, start with 4-6 ships per side, no aircraft, just Aeronefs

Enjoy

Oh and the Brigade miniatures are awesome

Haven't played yet, but modelling and painting is proceeding along as a back burner project. Next step coming up soon, epoxying flight stands together.

Having acquired several rules to study (including Ironclads & Ether Flyers which I have played long ago and enjoyed), I settled on Imperial Skies as the most entertaining looking game of the lot for my tastes.

Yes, the Brigade minis are outstanding!

There is a nice FaceBook group for the game, lots of inspiring photos, the author Robin Fitton chimes in from time to time: link

Did you ever try Sky Galleons of Mars or its expansion? Wondering if you liked it and how it compares to these games. (Mostly asking mimiMo.)

Yes, I've played Sky Galleons and liked it. Ironclads & Ether Flyers is the companion book that brings in historical naval forces and has some great campaigns included too. Played the Spanish-American War campaign and it was quite good. The rules work great for small actions, but are a bit too fiddly for my tastes for scaling up to bigger games.

There is also a more recent update of the Sky Galleons system that was published in Miniature Wargames 409, May 2017: Cloudships of Mars. Well worth a look. I may well use this for doing small engagements when I ever build my 28mm lasercut ships and get them mounted on microphone stands to run games at the Watch City Steampunk Festival. (That project is awaiting house remodelling work to be done and when I then have time to re-organise the basement to make storage space for the ships!)

For Imperial Skies, I'm planning on starting with small games as Frostie suggested, but with an eye towards scaling up to multi-player games with 8-12 ships plus some fighters per player.

At the small engagement level, either system will work fine with good entertainment value. Sky Galleons (or Cloudships) of Mars has more detai; the choice would between that and Imperial Skies would be a factor of playing time.

Comments on Wessex's Aeronef?

I enjoy Imperial Skies, but Aeronef seemed simpler to this simple man. I will say I tend to house rule here and there, which may destroy my proposition.

Nicely, Brigade Models' ships support both… ;->=

Doug

Picked up Aeronef for the great comparing the rules phase of getting into the genre. It does look like a good simple game that benefits from application of the pencil here and there. Can't argue with that.

For my tastes, Imperial Skies looked like it gave more flavour without a whole lot more complication. And a big deciding factor for me was that new ships coming into production are being statted out for Imperial Skies but not for Aeronef. Ease of getting new shinies onto the table won for me. Robin Fitton is currently working on a full set of new ships cards for Imperial Skies, adding new models and updating some of the old ones based on player feedback.

Robin Fitton is currently working on a full set of new ships cards for Imperial Skies, adding new models…

Now THAT'S great news!

Doug

Robin's live video preview here: link