Cracking the box on Gotha G V from Ares Games

First off let me set the stage.  I was a big fan of Wings of War, the precursor to the new Wings of Glory game.  No, I didn’t like it because it was painfully historically accurate.  Wings of War/Wings of Glory was never designed to be some cumbersome, slow, ponderous but nauseatingly accurate game recreating WWI aerial combat.  It is best classified as a ‘Beer and Pretzels’ war game.  Fun, fast, and more playable than accurate.  It’s the kind of game you can teach a seven year old to play.

I took my minis to a recent meeting of the League of WWI Aviation Historians group at the Smithsonian for a nice battle.  It’s the kind of game where you could teach the rules in about three minutes.  In our fight we had Ernst Udet tangle with Eddie Rickenbacker.  It was fast (17 minutes of play) and fun.  If you want to get a child or grandchild into WWI gaming, this is THE game system for that. 

When I heard Wings of War was dead I was hoping someone would carry the torch.  Wings of Glory has continued the tradition of the game system…thank goodness!

Okay, I purchased the Oberleutnant Walter Aschoff’s  Gotha bomber a week ago and wanted to share it.  First off the bombers are big in keeping with the scale of the game.  The wingspan on this miniature is six and a quarter inches!  The base is much larger to support the miniature.  With it you get the rules addendum, appropriate counters, a special bomber maneuver card deck – basically everything you need to take this bad boy into the skies.  Ares Games has released another Gotha and two Caproni’s in this bomber release. 

If you have not played bombers in Wings of Glory/War, they are slow, cumbersome, and dangerous to engage.  They bristle with machineguns and can take upwards of twice the damage that a fighter aircraft can.

The paint scheme looks good on this model.  Bear in mind I’m a biographer of WWI aviators, not an expert on the aircraft itself.  The miniature is mostly metal and has the same level of details common with the others in the series.  There is something almost hypnotic about this beast, especially when you add in other (smaller) fighters. 

In my solo playtest I discovered that tangling with a Gotha was costly – mostly in the form of a Nieuport that went down quickly.  It takes 2-3 fighters against a bomber like this. 

The series is adding a new batch of fighters in June including the Fokker E series and some DH-2 minis.  If you haven’t tried out Wings of Glory yet, now is the perfect time to jump in.