Today I saw the future. It was magnificent. It was fast, quick to learn, easy to understand, difficult to master, it had a rich lore and could be packed into one relatively small box. The biggest surprise was that it had Dragons, which did not needed thousand special rules, and could operate on same principles as any other unit in the game. Other surprise, was that i did not needed 50+ hours to assemble my army and crash course in miniatures painting in order to have ONE HOUR OF FUN. All I did, is opened the box, put some models on a base and learnt how to plan, move, and roll some dice to see who wins the fight. Was it easy? No! Game has a tactical depth, asks for a great deal of strategical thinking. So as any other wargame, you may say.
You would be absolutely right about it, but what make DnD Attack wing special, is that frees your mind from huge amount of needles work like calculating number of shots, number of inches travelled, bonuses for charging, special rules, stupidity of sword challenges in plasma-gun firefights and loads of other geek pleasures. (Yes, Warhammer 40000, I'm talking about you.)
What it offers in return is game play where almost everything is automated, except process of making decisions and dice rolling. your movement follows template pathways, allowing for flanking and tactical retreats when necessary. Movement itself is very important, as it places you models in more favourable position if you are able to outflank enemy outside of his firing ark.
Combat is surprisingly simple and interesting. Attacker rolls his dice if target is in firing arc, defender roll his defence dice and possibly spends his Evasion tokens. Terrain, items, like shields, spells and other abilities may add more dice to your roll. Then defender cancels number of attack equal to his evades. On top of that, if defender has got an Armour, he automatically cancels one attack for each point of armour he has.
Armour saves? Cover saves? Invulnerable or Feel no pain saves?! Please.
Armour, however is not unbeatable, if attacker rolls a Critical Hit, then it will bypass armour and will inflict a face up damage card. My luck was such, that in my first critical was "Shattered Armour", which successfully destroyed my one point of Armour. In some cases, just concentrating firepower of your units on one Dragon, or most dangerous opponent will bring it down, without need of Critical hits.
Magic, has its own simple and beautiful rules. In essence, there are one-shot spells and items, which act as normal attack with some additional effects. On the other hand there are timed weapons, like Breath weapons for Dragons. After they are used, in the same fashion as any other attack, player places several time tokens. Each one of those tokens is removed at the end of the turn. When no tokens left, you may use weapon or ability again.
Let's talk about ground troops. They are represented by models in your unit, card and several tokens which has Firepower, Defence, Life and Armour values. The biggest change and innovation is how units stats change after it takes casualties. Meaning: when attacks and life points go down, Defence goes up! This is an ingenious solution representing lonely troopers trying to survive under fire breathing Dragon! Smaller targets are much more difficult to hit. Each race, of coarse gets its special fantasy abilities, like free focus, or charge. But I'll let you discover details for yourself. Just, watch out for Giants, they are nasty.
There are several actions your unit may take, each one giving you a specific bonuses.
Focus: lets you change focus result into a hit or evade
Aim: lets you re-roll dice when attacking target
Evade: gives you one automatic evade result when being attacked
Charge: lets your unit re-roll attack dice in close combat.
Wait, you may ask, where could I've seen that? X-wing miniatures game and Star Trek attack wing are using essentially same system designed by FFG. So why this system is a next step in wargaming evolution? Is it so new that makes all over systems old and useless? Short answer is no. But what x-wing system does, is truly an evolution: it takes most common elements of any wargame and makes them so player friendly as never before. I'll compares some of the most important elements of x-wing system with some of Games Workshop products.
Lets start with units movement. Pre-made move patterns use in X-wing, Star Trek and DnD Attack wing are not so new, Aeronautica Imperialis have used similar method, with manoeuvre cards, however it save player a huge amount if time, as it removes measuring with builders measurement tape, and then dragging all of your models to a new location.
This is followed by positioning. With exception of fantasy warhammer, positioning in 40k did not really played such an important part, as most unit had 360 degree firing ark, unless designers artificially denied it, like they did to Storm Talon. Here. positioning becomes paramount, as one millimetre out of firing arc may sometimes cost you the game, thus adding an extraordinary level of tactics, not usually seen in most other games.
Most important is secret planning and alternative activation. When size of the table-top army reaches hundreds of models just waiting until opponents finishes all of the planning in his head, then movement, then rolling bucket of dice to see if anything hits will take a long time and will put opponent under stress and boredom. With secret planning, you choose your movement on a dial and then alternate movement of your units in order of initiative. If models overlap they either stop or engage, in any case this keeps BOTH PLAYER PLAYING, and paying attention to what happens on the table after every move. Perhaps, Lord of the Rings would be able to find itself on positive side with this aspect.
Finally, simplified damage and combat system. Only one roll made by each player for each combat. ONE!!! Compare that to this procedure: roll to hit, to wound, roll to save, roll for invulnerable save, roll for cover save, roll for feel-no-pain save. If its a vehicle, then roll on a damage table. When Warhammer was born, it was pioneering ways for other wargames, and being drawn around small, platoon sized engagements, this complication was acceptable. But these days players will spend an hour just setting up the models! Then another 4-5 hours rolling those buckets of dice. What x-wing did, is just simplified the very same system to one roll and deck of damage cards. And I firmly believe that DnD attack wing will become a new standard for wargames just because of this elegant simplicity.
One more thing: becoming best seller. Despite all odds, huge controversies like practically terminating relations with brick-n-mortar game shops, oversized and overcomplicated rules Games Workshop is still a leading company in wargaming. For now. (muhahahaa!) GW main product Warhammer and Warhammer 40k became icons and standards for this industry when no other opponent like that existed. With careful marketing and expansion Warhammer became a bestseller and system copied and followed so many times, that none cares to count. Every time you look at some other rules for fantasy or sci-fi games you will find a resemblance to Warhammer by Mr. Rick Priestly.
One of the biggest reasons for that is "stealing" gamers from GW by a new upstart. This rules similarity allows players switching to something new to shorten their learning curve, as in essence it promises to let them do something they were not able in Warhammer. One of latest examples is Dropzone Commander, which despite its small scale, elegant modelling is still a clone of W40K, modified, upgraded with command cards but essentially a clone. Does it sells? yes it does. Is it a great game? No.
So when x-wing in less than 2 years became a world phenomenon and created portfolio of order for 3 years ahead, Games Workshop kept losing its market, its customer base and profits. Current half a year financial review shows that despite bringing so many wonderful coloured books, card, new edition of rules people are gradually losing interest in Warhammer. Will GW fortunes change for the better? I doubt that. The simplest reason for that is both systems needs to be replaced with something completely different, modern and quick and GW is not a company know for drastic innovation.
So, the new king has arrived, and his name is X-wing. Now relax and watch other copy its ideas, spreading them around and slowly eating away what's left of GW share of market.
Your megalomaniac,
Mark-Paul Severn.
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