Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Wings of Glory: Ares Games to release new WW1 model airplanes in January 2012

The WW1 range of “Wings of Glory” products debuts with extra-large models representing two of the giant bombers which were used during the conflict

Camaiore, Italy – September 22, 2011 – After announcing the launch of the Wings of Glory WW2 game (created by A. Angiolino and P. Paglia) with 4 Airplane Packs and a Starter Set, Ares Games announces its first releases for the WW1 version of the game.

The first WW1 products – to be released worldwide in January 2012 – are two extra-large models, the WW1 bombers Caproni CA.3 and Gotha G.V. At the same time, a rules pack will be released, including the rulebook, damage cards and counters required to play with these models as well as similar planes which are planned to be produced in the future.

“As the core mechanics of Wings of Glory are essentially the same of the “Wings of War” products created by Andrea Angiolino and Piergiorgio Paglia, we are developing new Wings of Glory products to keep them fully compatible with the Wings of War sets and expansions already in the market,” declared Ares Games’ CEO Christoph Cianci, “so that existing fans may continue to play the game combining our new releases with their previous purchases. Wings of War players will be able to add these new models and their rules to their game without any problem.”

The WWI bombers will arrive in two different color schemes and will be sold in packs containing one painted and assembled 1/144 model with the flight stand and the cards related to that airplane. The Bombers rules pack, which provides the rules and counters necessary to play with the models, will be sold separately. WW1 bombers and their rules are scheduled to be available worldwide at the beginning of 2012.

Ares Games already announced in August the upcoming release of four airplanes for the WWII game series (P40, Yak-1, Ki-61 and Re-2001 Falco) and a Starter Set with these four models, containing the introductory rules and all other elements needed to start play.

About Ares Games
Ares Games is an Italian board game publisher established in 2011 to create quality hobby products for the international audience. Ares Games is the publisher of the award-winning “War of the Ring” board game and of the “Wings of Glory” range of airplane combat games and miniatures, recreating aerial warfare in WW1 and WW2.

Nexus Games had some financial issues recently and there was concern that the “Wings of War” miniature game may suffer a dire fate. Good news! I received the press release below indicating that the game will live on with a name change, “Wings of Glory” and a new publisher, “Ares Games.” There is no functioning website yet for Ares, but I will let you know as soon as it goes active.

Trask is happy.

Here is the full press release:

Ares Games reaches an agreement with Andrea Angiolino e Pier Giorgio Paglia to publish the game “Wings of Glory”

The best selling game of WWI and WWII aerial combat comes back with a new name

Camaiore, Italy – September 2, 2011 – Ares Games, a Tuscany-based games publisher recently established, announces an agreement with Andrea Angiolino and Pier Giorgio Paglia, the authors of the best selling game that recreates aerial combat during the WWI and WWII, formerly published with the name “Wings of War”.

Ares Games will publish the game under a new brand, “Wings of Glory”. Wings of Glory will be published with a new rulebook, while maintaining compatibility with the previous Wings of War products already in the market.

“We are happy to be partnering with Andrea and Pier Giorgio to bring this wonderful game system to market.” said Christoph Cianci, CEO of Ares Games, “Thousands of fans worldwide will be pleased to know that their planes and maneuver cards from Wings of War will be compatible with the new Wings of Glory.”

Initially, Ares Games will focus on developing new miniatures for the game, but also plans to release new starter sets.

“This game has a very strong and loyal fan base around the world, which gave and will surely continue to give a great help to the success of our game with their support and creativity. They have high expectations of it, in spite of several attempts to imitate it with other settings and chrome,” stated Andrea Angiolino, co-creator of the game. “We chose to partner with Ares Games because we believe they understand our game, and that they will take care of the wishes of its fans, as well as be respectful of its creators.”

The first Wings of Glory products to be released will be four airplanes for the WWII game series: the American P40, the Russian Yak-1, the Japanese Ki-61 and the Italian Re-2001 Falco. Ares Games will publish a Starter Set with these four models, containing the introductory rules and all other elements needed to start play. The complete schedule of the next releases will be announced soon.

With this announcement, Ares Games now publishes two important games from Italian creators that have achieved international recognition. In July, Ares Games aquired the rights from Sophisticated Games to publish the award-winning board game “War of the Ring”, based on the J.R.R.Tolkien’s trilogy, “The Lord of the RingsTM”, and created by Roberto Di Meglio, Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi. A new edition of the game, in English, will be available this Fall, with other language editions forecasted for Spring 2012.

Which brings me to “Force on Force:Modern Wargaming Rules” from Ambush Alley Games and Osprey Publishing. This is a hardbound rulebook of 220 glossy pages. Book printing quality is excellent and Osprey provided much of the art. If you a familiar with the Osprey line this is good news. Osprey has some of the most consistent, high-quality art in its reference materials and games of any company in the gaming industry.

“Force on Force” is a miniature game and Elhiem Figures produces an “official” line of 1/72 (20mm) miniatures, but just about any miniature will work. I received the store demo kit which included  some US Marine squads, a pilot and a set of Taliban insurgents.  That said, any miniature you can stomach looking at will work just fine. Stuart picked up a set of green army men for $2.00 and they will make great marines! Different unit types comprise a squad (leader, squad-assault weapon, trooper, etc), so whatever miniaturesyou pick need to vary to make casualty tracking easier.

I did a quick read through the rulebook and decided to give it a try. To give myself a bit of perspective on the game, I chose not to play the review game. Instead I rounded up two-players and ran them through a scenario, marines  rescuing a downed pilot in an Iraqi village while fighting insurgents. Since all of us were totally new to the system, I played judge and rule-monger to keep the game moving.  We set-up at a local game convention (Rincon) and went for it!

Werlen drew the short straw and played the Taliban, Stuart got the Marines.  The scenario defines where each unit starts (called hotspots). When the units are in place, the battle begins!

FoF uses different dice types to define the ability of a given unit. A poor quality military unit like armed civilians or insurgents are “D6″ units. That is they roll die six for shooting and initiative checks. Unit quality advances through d6, d8, d10 to d12, with d12 units equivalent to SEALs and other elite military units.  This is the “Troop Quality” die.  A separate die represents the unit’s morale, with d6 barely holding on to d12 warriors willing to stand in the face of certain doom.  Combat uses these dice to generate dice pools, with rolls compared against a defenders dice pool. As an example, as squad of 4 (d8)marines with a heavy machine gun has a total of 5 d8 in their dice pool. The player rolls and every roll above a “4″ on the die counts as a success/hit.  Our marines dice roll  8, 7,5, 2,2. The five defending Taliban are rabble and only d6 quality and have no heavy weapons.  Their d6 roll produces 6,6,5,2,1.

Both players immediately throw out any die result under “4.” This leaves the marines with 8,7,5 and the Taliban with 6,6,5. The Taliban player arranges his dice as best he can to block the Marine’s shots. The 8 and 7 are unstoppable, but a Taliban “6″ can block the Marine’s “5.” This leaves two hits unanswered and the Taliban player removes two miniatures. Next turn, that unit will have only three dice to throw. Life is hard for the Taliban.

Yes, the dice are totally unfair, but the game tends to make up for the differential with scenarios with many more low-quality troops. Just like the real world, no matter how well you train and equip your army numbers still matter.

Combat rolls are fast, but one of the more interesting aspects of the game is the initiative system. Rather than an “A goes, then B goes” model, it is far more fluid.

Marines win initiative and as a first action move across a street in to cover. By doing so they move into line of sight for a Taliban unit. Before the move completes, the two units have a reaction check (initiative) to determine who acts first. The Taliban win and get a shot at the marines before they reach cover. The marines reach cover, but then discover a group of Taliban concealed in a nearby building. This sets off another initiative check which the Marines win. They got the jump on the surprised Taliban and get off a round of shooting. The Taliban die to a man.  That unit is now out of combat.

Once that player’s turn is over, the second player takes his turn and the process repeats itself.

This example “chain” is very simple, but in practice we had four or five units slinging lead and running around the battlefield.  It takes a couple of rounds to get the hang of it, but it was not overly burdensome.

The reaction tests occasionally set off a “fog of war” card. When you roll a one on the reaction test die, you draw from this deck of cards that comes in the back of the book that you photocopy and cut out or as a printed deck available on the Ambush Alley website. These random events range from the harmless to the lethal. Sometimes a vehicle breaks down or a sniper team arrives to help. However, the fortunes of war are fickle and sometimes the airstrike lands on the unit that called it in!

This is just the basic game, the very basic game. FoF rules are quite modular, so you bolt-on as many or as few as you like. For the hardcore miniature war gamer, there are very detailed rules for vehicles, air strikes, raging mobs and even cocaine use by units! If you can think to do it, there is probably a mechanic. I cannot tell you how very happy this makes me. I know that players always have the option of ignoring rules, but memorizing the book cover-to-cover to play the beginner game is silly.  I got the game up and running in under an hour of skimming and it was very playable.  That said, I am interested in trying the some of the advanced rules, especially in regards to first aid and healing damaged soldiers.

The manual is also packed with stats for different types of units from many nations and periods (post WWII) and rules for making your own units. There are also supplement available for specific conflicts, such as the Iraq invasion.

Although the game is clearly built for serious modern combat, Ambush Alley put out a line of zombie fighting! I am very interested to try this as I am a huge “World War Z” fan and testing a SEAL team against a horde of undead sounds like a blast.

“Force of Force” is great fun for anyone from a miniature beginner to the most wizened grognard.  It is well worth your time.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

This mail address is not active anymore.
To contact Andrea Fanhoni, please contact [redacted] @hotmail.com

I earnestly hope this is merely a vicious rumor with no basis in fact, but the response above lends some credence to the rumor.  I will stay on top of it and keep you apprised.

UPDATE: Got a similar email from Roberto Di Meglio, Nexus’ publisher. Hope is fading…

UPDATE 2: This just popped on the BGG thread from someone claiming to be Mr. Di Meglio, so take it with a grain of salt. That said, it sadly does dovetail well with my rudimentary research results:

I won’t comment about the financial status of NG International.

However, I can confirm that I have now left the company – last week, to be exact, after resigning on june 28th with a 30-days notice, the same day that the last two employees of the company were fired.

I just want to say that the problems were not related to the results of our latest US releases without a partner – Whitechapel was great, selling out in 2 months, and while neither Magestorm or Dakota were huge successes, they did fine from a financial point of view.

As it happens, games are tougher than companies, so I am sure that any good game which was in Nexus’ catalog will show up again somewhere else, sooner or later!

Thanks to everybody who had nice words for us.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Regardless, I think the “digital+tabletop miniature” game model has legs. I believe someone will pick up the torch and carry it forward.

In either event, I wish the Bastion team luck and hope they flourish in their new endeavors.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

I was never a fan of the miniature game, but the miniatures did see a lot of use on my game tables. Primarily because they were themed correctly, pre-painted and cheap.  I am in the market for alternatives and a find from GTS 2010 came to mind.

Legendary Encounters pre-painted miniatures from Reaper Miniatures

Nice miniatures, decent paint jobs and sold in open packs make these a viable option. They are more expensive per piece than the WOTC offerings, but the lack of “blind” packs make it a wash in terms of cost. I know the current catalog lacks depth, but perhaps demand will drive more offerings.

This was just my first thought. If you know of any other cheap, pre-painted miniatures for tabletop RPG gaming, please post the link in the comments.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

If you are not familiar with this game, I highly recommend you check it out. Wings of War combines dead simple tabletop miniature mechanics with fast-paced aerial combat.  If nothing else, the miniatures have great utility for early twentieth century  role-playing campaigns or even steampunk. Might make a fun “Call of Cthulhu” encounter…

I leave you with a few shots of the included  miniatures.

Last, but far from least is the Red Baron himself!

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

I do not buy or use miniature transport cases, so I have no personal interest in the Battlefoam v. Outrider case. It is just a noteworthy legal issue in the gaming community, so I write about it.  I bear no particular malice or even interest toward either party. I have more important things to do with my life than fret over the behavior of some game accessory makers.  I really strive for fair and accurate information when reporting business or legal issues (see my rant posts for my opinion) on Livingdice.  For as much as I do not care, I know some people do care and bear real malice towards Battlefoam. I had to shut off comments to extinguish flame wars that rarely break out on LD.  Apparently one of these zealots decided to take action using my site as a weapon, so on to the astroturfing!

Two days ago, I received an email from “Mark”  through the LD contact form informing me of a similarity between two web sites. One is the new Battlefoambrigade.com website and something called “Special Ops Brigdade,” a site for paintball enthusiasts. I took a look and they indeed did look similar, but so do many web sites, so I did not consider it newsworthy. Here is a side-by-side image of the two sites to save you some time.

Though I thought it a trivial issue, someone believed it worthy of my attention and tried very hard to interest me in the topic.

A day passes and I get another email from someone named “Doug” about the same issue and a link to a Special Ops forum discussion. (Update: the forum is no longer available, not sure why.) I took a look at the forum and noted the first poster was a new forum member with only a single post to his name.  At this point, I grew suspicious. I smelled an astroturfing attempt.

A quick check of the two IP addresses provided by my contact form revealed both initial emails came from the same general location (a town north of Atlanta, Georgia).  I also responded to both emails and they bounced as invalid.

Do I have direct rock-solid proof of astroturfing? No, but there is enough evidence for me to believe there is and since it is my site, that is enough.

So, I have a message for potential astroturfers out there seeking to use Livingdice.com as a forum for your propaganda. Keep your petty flame wars on the forums. I want no part of it.  Oh, and go straight to hell.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer