Game: Wings of War: Burning Drachens
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Number of players: 1 - 2 (basic box, additional players with additional material)
Solo play ability: High
Typical Playing Time: 30 - 60 minutes
Game Type: Tactical turn based WWI dog fighting, strafing, and balloon busting


At Origins 2005 we met with Roberta from Fantasy Flight Games and had the opportunity to review Wings of War: Famous Aces. I'll save you some time, I loved the game. Read the review later, after you finish this one. After all, I've worked very hard on this, as you can tell from the eloquent and in-depth sentence structure and vast use of words.

At the time of our recap, we'd only seen the Famous Aces game and one of the things that struck me as odd was the inclusion of game parts you could not use. These game parts are the equivalent of booster packs should you decide to purchase additional games in the series.

I don't have a lot of faith in interlocking games. Back in the 1980's I was addicted to a computer game from Omnitreds by the name of Breech. Breech 2 followed, then Rules of Engagement, and some promise of interlocking between the two that was never fully realised. Rules changes, focus changes, art changes, hell, humidity changes seem to affect the whole concept of interlocking games no matter if they are computer or board or collectible card (CCG). So, as you can see in my review of Famous Aces, I was not ecstatic about the added parts you could not use. LATER DAMN IT! Stay focused!

And I was wrong.

I opened the box of Burning Drachens and reviewed the same high quality counters and cards that I'd seen before in Famous Aces. These are heavy card stock, full-color, die-cut counters. With the cost cutting measures in many games giving us components we are afraid to use, the Wings of War components continue to be a welcome throwback to the hay days of the 1980's. Full color, durable, great artwork and sized appropriately.

This time I only had to glance through the rules to refresh my aging brain and dig right in. Burning Drachens can be played as a standard Wings of War dog fighting game. It also adds elevation to the game, and ground fire and landings and take-offs, and solo play.

All of these make the game more complicated, of course, but not unbearably so. After all, the game is constructed to allow you to play with any of the rules you like. The more I see of how these rules interact the more I am impressed by the thought and planning that went into this series. Even with the new scenarios, even with the solo play, even with the new rules addition, you still have a game that will take you less than 45 minutes to go from box to play, including punching out the die-cuts.

The addition of solo play is very welcome. I admit, I love solo play games; and it's not only because I am a pathetic loner who is shunned by society, that's just a side benefit. I love solo play games because I can take an hour and enjoy a game genre that may not appeal to others in my household, ungrateful ingrates that they may be. Solo play also allows me to hone some strategy, to dig into the rules, and see what may work and what may be the epitome of stupid, all without undue embarrassment.

So when I saw there was solo play, I was very happy. But how well was it implemented? Would it be just a brute force thing like playing solo chess on a board? Would it be the equivalent of pasting "USER FIRENDLY" on a software box? Would it be an implementation that would have me shelving the game after one frustrating experience? Not even close.

There are three (3) solo scenarios:

Into the Mud and Look Up! are strafing missions. The setups are different, victory conditions are different, and the play is different. Fireworks Over the Front is a balloon busting mission and allows the use of plane mounted rockets. The trench strafing scenarios can be played with one or two players, thus expanding the available scenarios and, at the same time, demonstrating the versatility of the game and game system.

It's tough to do solo dog fighting, so they didn't waste their time trying to accommodate it. With the inclusion of artillery, trenches, and ground fire (machine guns and troop rifle fire) they constructed a number of sceneries where you have an established goal of going from point A to point B without dying. That can make for a certain amount of "flying high, you can't hit me" silliness so rather than allow this sort of shadow to be cast on their game, all of the scenarios come with major and minor victory conditions.

These victory conditions force you to expose your fragile plane to harm and possible destruction and ramp up the planning and, I admit, excitement. Along with the ground attack options there is the reason behind the game. Balloons. Balloons as observation platforms, certainly, and balloons as anchors for cables to shred your plan into small pieces. You can attack the balloons, of course. In this game you can attack just about anything. And that's good, because it's all attacking you.

Additional multi-player scenarios are available within Burning Drachens. But the fun does not stop there, not if you have any sort of imagination. With a solid set of rules and an interlocking game system that actually works, you are limited in scenarios only if you stop thinking. Dog fights, raids, hunts, balloon defense, if you can imagine it, jump in and make it happen.

Recommendation

Burning Drachens is a great addition to the Wings of War series and one more example of the best and most thorough interlocking game systems I've seen to date. If you enjoy dog fighting and enjoy miniatures, this game will give you a lot of good times with minimal fuss. If you own any of the Wings of War series, Burning Drachens delivers on the promise. If you don't own any of the series, what are you waiting for?