The Duke Boys, Kevin and Steven Duke, hosted demo games of Wings of Glory at Nashcon 2012, in Tennessee, on May 26th. See here the report of the event, by Kevin Duke.

"Saturday, May 26, at the HMGS Mid-South convention, known as 'Nashcon', saw my first 'two-fer' demo session, where I used both WW1 and WW2 planes in a single time block (but not on the table at the same time!).

My brother and I booked the 'prime time' Saturday night demo slot, hoping to show off the new WW1 bombers. The guy organizing the events had seen my report the WW2 planes at MidSouth Con and asked if we could bring those, since he already had some other folks doing WW1 events and no one was doing the new WW2.. We were tempted to limit ourselves to WW2...

And then the bombers DID arrive in time!

Demo di WW2 Wings of Glory at Nashcon 2012

So we opted to do both.

We began with the WW2 planes first, using all the new Wings of Glory planes, plus some of the older models from Wings of War to give more variety. We varied from 5 to 8 players for a couple hours, keeping some through the whole time but others who were involved in something else but came over to play one scenario and then go back. Fortunately, the Wings series allows that.

These opening sessions were a bit unusual since we had a girl playing. I say 'girl'. She was maybe mid teens (that is getting harder for me to tell these days!) but she was very much a veteran flyer and enjoyed the game a great deal. She was also ‘expert’ at drawing zero damage chits, making her very dangerous indeed!

The early moves of the WW1 demo

After about two hours, a bunch of kids (I mean under 15—that’s ‘kids’ for me!) descended and one father among them. “We thought you would be using the bombers,” he said, and I explained that I was about to break them out right now. I’m not used to statements like that drawing a cheer but they did.

I had seen some other reports of people using Gothas and I had a particular mix of planes that made me want to make this an Allied mission. So the Capronis were escorted by Breguets, plus a Caudron R-11 (from Shapeways), against a force of mixed German fighters, all flown by the kids (with some parent support.)

Though the Germans presented a lot of firepower (6 As, 1 B, 1 flex B) the Allied were pretty good too. The German planes came in from all directions and soon found themselves delivering one shot but taking several in return.

First one German fighter fell, then another, then another, until they were all gone. On the Allied side all planes were still flying. One of the Breguets had taken more than 50% damage and so had the R-11, but none of the other Allied planes were in serious difficulty. By now it was past 11pm. I had thoughts about the bomber formation having to reverse course and ‘fly back home’ against more opposition, but there were young eyes beginning to droop (as were the eyes of the GM) so we called it to a natural halt then, knowing the clean up would take us awhile.

A group of kids playing at the WW1 demo

I want to thank my brother for helping with the demo, both in keeping the kids in order (and keeping me calm!). He realized we had something special going here and took plenty of photos.

I also want to compliment the kids, who played well and, except for one measurement ruler mangled by an anxious pilot, the equipment saw no damage. That was a real relief to the GM!

Wings of Glory remains one of my very favorite games, both to play and to administer in a demo. It’s easy for VERY new players to get involved but has layers of complexity that can be added for seasoned veterans. I’m very relieved that Ares has picked up the Wings of War franchise and will continue. I very much look forward to demoing early war planes for WW1, and adding bombers to WW2. (There is a Battle of Britain demo somewhere in my future, I hope!)"

Ares Games thanks Kevin and Steven Duke for the demos at Nashcon 2012 and for the report and pictures.

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