Dungeons & Dragons: Attack Wing First Impressions

Turns out, those great-looking models I’ve had sat on my bookcase for 7 months are actually part of Dungeons & Dragons: Attack Wing!

I finally get to play it…

Dungeons & Dragons: Attack Wing uses the core rule set of the FlightPath game system, but with a Dungeons & Dragons twist as the players now control dogfighting dragons, while also having forces on the ground such as giants and magic users.

We played a 4 player game with all of us having a 120-point ‘Legion’.

They were all built by me and I tried to be as fair as possible (while not fully understanding how the game plays) to all teams. I’ve been wanting to play with the Elf Archers, Elf Mage and Angel since I got them so that’s who I used…

Each unit has a card with its stats and abilities on it. It also shows how many upgrade slots it is allowed for each type. The cost of the Unit and each Upgrade all count towards your total for your Legion.

Obviously, there are lots of little rules about Legion building and gameplay aspects that I won’t go into… We even played the rule wrong when units on the same level (Flying/Swooping/Walking) walk into each other… oh well, next time 🙂

You can play a scenario or something but we just played until one player was eliminated and we picked a winner from that.

Programming

So once everyone has everything you set up on the board and you’re good to go. Each unit has a manoeuvre dial that you set and place face down…

I have a 3’x3′ play mat (the size of the play area you use) showing a forest scene blu-tacked to a 1-meter square board and it works quite well, even if it does hang over the edge of my table a bit 🙂

Back to the game, in order of unit Level from lowest to highest, each one moves using the movement selected on their dial and completes an action.

An action can be a cool unit ability, like my Angel who could heal damage… (That is awesome!)

But generally, it’s to pick up a token that lets’ you do something later in the round. Concentrate lets you change die results, Aim lets you re-roll missed attacks, Dodge grants you one automatic dodge when hit etc…

You can also change altitude if you like.

Once each unit has moved and taken an action, in decreasing turn order units attack…

Combat

This is simply naming the attack you’re using and declaring the target. You can use either the unit’s base attack on their card or a special attack on an upgrade but either way combat is MOSTLY the same.

You’re not allowed to pre-measure your attack so if you come up short, it fails…

The attacker rolls red dice and counts the number of hits, the defender rolls green dice and counts the number of dodges…

Then Hits – Dodges – Defenders Shield Value = Damage Dealt

That’s the basics but actions and abilities could allow you to re-roll attacks, change misses to hits, change misses to dodges etc Also, there are two types of damage.

Regular damage, for each one of these, dealt you give a face-down card from the top of the deck. This will show how much damage that unit has taken.

Critical damage means you get a face-up card and you get a penalty. The text on the damage card could disable some of your armour or even prevent you from taking an action!

After everyone attacks, you have a clean-up phase and start a new round.

Dungeons & Dragons: Attack Wing Summary

I really enjoyed this. I wasn’t sure how well it would play with 4 players controlling a total of 22 units on the board. It actually worked quite well. Everyone had a mix of levels and was being attacked regularly. You weren’t sat out of the game for long.

The size of each unit works well too. I felt sorry for my 6 tiny Eleven Archers. They came in base to base contact with a Stone Giant. Half were squashed from one hit by a giant wooden club…

I’m Not a fan of Star Wars, a huge fan of Star Trek or a fan of Sci-Fi in general. The theme of this game really appeals to me. I prefer a Magic Missile over a Blaster… but I also like the mix of Air and Ground units. That seems to add more to this type of game than the space ones do.

So, ‘money spent’ is justified… Looking forward to expanding my collection and getting more games of Dungeons & Dragons: Attack Wing in.

Jesta ThaRogue