Bat in the Attic: D&D Attack Wing Review, Awesome Dueling Dragons

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

D&D Attack Wing Review, Awesome Dueling Dragons

Short and Sweet: The core game is simply a awesome game of dueling dragons. As I will show you the mechanics really capture the essence of two or more dragons fighting. However the physical miniatures have some major headaches. The individual components are of high quality the problem comes when you have to assemble everything and the setup is not that durable. Particularly the Blue Dragon in the core set.

As a general purpose miniature combat skirmish game it pretty much sucks when start adding the other figures beyond the dragon. It becomes intensely fiddly with multiple components all over the place. Mainly due to the numerous tokens.

My recommendation is to get it for the dueling dragons and ignore the rest of the line.

Details

My friend +Daniel McEntee bought the core set for DnD Attack Wing and wanted to try it out. I bought some wraiths and hobgoblins figuring I could use the miniatures if the game didn't pan out. Dan bought an angel and some arrakoca. After reading the rules we decided to use the quick start with dragons only, then the regular rules with dragons only, and finally add in the extra troops.

There is no map or battleboard. Instead use a flat surface and the included rulers for movement. You first lay out the stat cards for your creatures. Along with the stat cards there are various special abilities you can add in.

Every thing has point value that you add together. Some special abilities can only be used with certain creatures or types of creatures. I had cards that could only be used with undead, then there some for undead, and finally some for unique named creatures only.

Initiative is handled by having the lowest level creature go first. If both side have the lowest level then it alternates turn by turn as to who goes first with tied level. Mine you it not the side that has the lowest level that goes first but the creature. You walk up the levels regardless of which side they are on.

Next is movement. Now Attack Wing has a nice setup where you preselect your movement before executing a turn. This is done and hidden before any thing is moved or resolved. It is done by using dial and turning them to the desired movement.

When the creature turn comes up, you then flip the dial over and reveal its movement. You lay the correct ruler on the table and move the creature.

At the start of a 2" 90 degree turn

At the end of the move

This is the best part of the game and takes some serious thinking to outwit your opponent. Also screwups can happen resulting in traffic jams among your own forces if you are not careful. I thought I did generally better than Dan in this however he outwitted me several time particularly when a bad choice on my part left his copper dragon facing the side of my red dragon. He was able to unload everything and I could not do a thing.

Combat is done in the same order as movement. You use the blue range rulers to see if you are in range of a particular attack. You roll a number of red attack dice and compare to your opponent's defense dice. There are regular hits which armor soaks up and critical hits which armor does NOT soak up. The following show the dice and range ruler.

Like I said in the short and sweet section. The dueling dragon portion of the game is outstanding, As a miniature skirmish game overall it not so good.

I will end the review with a series of pictures showing the full on skirmish. (Dan won)
It is underneath the fold.