Balloon Busting

Garrett (aged 7) and I tried out the new WINGS OF WAR expansion, BURNING DRACHENS, yesterday.

Gar loves this series and suggests it frequently. He is comfortable enough with the game to know what plane to pick ("the one with all the damage points, daddy!"), and he knows what a maneuver and a damage deck is (see previous games with "Watch your Back").

Drachens introduces strafing, altitude changes, barrage balloons, and artillery. The only new planes are the Nieuport, the Pfalz, and the Albatros.

We chose the scenario where a single Nieuport tries to take down a barrage balloon protected by two AA guns. A single Alabatros is protecting the German side.

I flew in from the left, dodging the AA (interesting mechanic here.. the shooting player has to guess where the plane will fly and try to land his arty shots there on the third execution of movement cards). This turned out to be easier to do than it looks, but then again I was outguessing a seven year old.

So none of the arty hit me, and I got inside his AA arc close enough to get two ROCKET shots off to hit the barrage balloon squarely. Alas, they didn't do near enough damage to take out the balloon (9 out of 22 points) but it DID start a fire. So I pulled out of the stall, banked left, and got riddled with bullets by the Albatros, furiously defending his charge. That jammed my rudder left, and I had to fly in circles.

Gar made some mistakes here and maneuevered in the wrong direction... this resulted in me lining up on him ONE more time, to devastating point blank effect (but it also did for me). I was down quite a bit and flying in circles; Gar eventually crashed. Since a fire draws a damage card once per turn, it took 8 turns to blow it up..

A victory of sorts, but not a very decisive one.