mojo1
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« on: July 15, 2014, 05:07:22 pm » |
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Hey there, I've had Bloody April for some time now and wanted to know if anyone else is playing it and their thoughts on it. What's the learning curve for it? Thanks B-
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Calandale
Mockingbird
Wyrd
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« Reply #1 on: July 15, 2014, 05:14:12 pm » |
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In the same shoes here really. I've read the rules, but just haven't gotten to it. Hoping to use it as a campaign driver for Wings.
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Sluggonics
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« Reply #2 on: July 15, 2014, 05:32:57 pm » |
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Ty Snouffer on BGG did some nice tutorial videos for the game...
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Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology!
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mojo1
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« Reply #3 on: July 15, 2014, 05:49:14 pm » |
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In the same shoes here really. I've read the rules, but just haven't gotten to it. Hoping to use it as a campaign driver for Wings.
I'm a big fan of WWI Dog fighting- what's wings?
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Ashiefan
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« Reply #4 on: July 16, 2014, 03:56:03 am » |
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I played it on Saturday.
From reading my caveats you may be surprised to learn I quite enjoyed it, but I did - maybe because my expectations were very low as WWI air combat isn't really my bag. The rules are moderately complex but the actual game play was quite straightforward. Essentially you choose a scenario, assign mission hexes to the attacker and off you go. There is definitely some tension in trying to complete that mission with enemy planes swarming all over you and some tactical thinking in where your missions are going to take place. The fact that the make up of flights is concealed until 'spotted' and the use of dummy flights definitely introduces an interesting element of FoW. The factors involved in combat - height/wind speed-direction/relationship to position of the Sun (when relevant) seemed all very plausible. The playing pieces are very cool (the fact I was playing it with Ian Wedge who created them had nothing to do with it!).
Caveats - You have to track the change in heights between up to four different bands depending on the climb rate of your plane from 'deck' to 'high'. Some of my British planes took around 8 turns to go from low to medium so this can be a bit of a pain.There was some variety in terms of missions for our scenario but they essentially involved the same thing - visiting particular hexes on the opposition's side of no mans land. The only real variety was that on certain missions you have to go over the same hexes twice (there and back again). The movement of the planes is an average of 2-3 hexes a turn which felt slow. Drawing chits to see how many planes you move every turn started to irritate after a while.
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You can never have too much of something you didn't need in the first place
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sparty
I can't wait to play that ... someday...
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« Reply #5 on: July 17, 2014, 08:07:46 pm » |
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I did 24 hours of one of the long scenarios with a buddy this winter. It was A LOT of fun, but I have to say that the time covered was about 3 or 4 hours of game time in those 24 hours of effort. That kind of payoff kind of sucks. The game was not playtested for the larger scenarios and there are some mathematical issues with your ability to complete all the taskings which just screams lazy playtesting to me. The game was playtested via VASSAL so the physical game lacks sufficient informational counters (Terry Simo and I worked on getting the right counter mix fixed so that when Eagle of Lille gets printed it'll all be squared away!).
It feels like Downtown or Elusive Victory shoehorned into WW1. There are AA rules that very closely mimic what you see in the other games. Likewise, the rules for bumping out of dogfights is virtually the same. What works for jets in jet timescales and movement factors doesn't necessarily translate to WW1 unfortunately.
Another gripe is that you have all these pilot named counters...you RARELY see them because of the times when they're actually accessed. You're typically referring to the names on your flight tracking pad during combat losses...so the counters with their names is hardly necessary.
That said, if you want an battle level game rather than a plane vs. plane game - Bloody April is admirable.
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