Wild Blue Yonder Board Game First Impressions

Wild Blue Yonder gives you card-based dogfights.

You can be my wingman any time.

A true deluxe Down in Flames product. It contains a dozen full campaigns, over 200 aircraft cards, plus all of the necessary targets, resource sheets, and play aids needed for play. All of this is packaged in a large box similar to the ones for the Combat Commander games.

Wild Blue Yonder Board Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

Players each have multiple pairs of fighters and a hand of cards from a particularly large deck.

On their turn, they activate their Wingman which doesn’t use that hand of cards at all but instead draws a fresh mini hand to attack with. A defending wingman will also draw a fresh mini hand to defend with.

Combat is done by playing an attack card, then the opponent playing a card to defend it, and then the attacker playing a card to cancel the defensive card etc This goes back and forth until the attack either fails or succeeds and deals damage.

Then the player can change altitude and fighters need to be at the same altitude to fight each other.

Then combat is repeated with your leader this time using your real hand of cards. After that, you draw a number equal to a stat on your leader’s plane.

Played cards can also make you advantaged, giving you a bonus in combat and making it harder for the opponent to disengage. If you get a further advantage you tail them and each step gives you that bit more of an advantage.

How do you win?

After each squadron activates it completes a round and after several rounds the game ends. Players get points for destroyed and damaged planes and the most points wins.

Main Mechanisms

The main mechanism is hand management. You can attack as many times as you have attack cards on your turn. You can defend against one attack several times, again, as long as you have the cards to do so.

But you only draw a number of cards stated on the leader’s aircraft and up to the hand limit so overspend and you leave yourself short in future rounds. You need to know when to give up and when to just take the hit and move on.

USP

This was released in 2017 and is the newest (as far as I can see) update of a game from 1992 so there is no USP here.

Theme

The thematics are good. The cards represent the planes twisting and turning, avoiding being hit. Altitudes, tailing, the stats, engagement etc all make sense.

Setup

Get the planes out and shuffle the deck, that is all for this simple game.

There are campaign rules but I have no idea how that setup is.

Components & Artwork

The cards, chips and artwork are all very GMT.

Ease of Teaching

The game is easy to teach. Most of the cards just have a list of words they counter and very little else.

Similar Games

I recently played Undaunted: Battle of Britain which is also a card-driven dogfighting game and is much more fun.

In my review of that game, I mention Talon which is a PvP space battle. It’s not as similar, but it’s an option.

Wild Blue Yonder Board Review

Positives

A decent, thematic simulation of a dogfight.

The “stick or twist” combat is more fun than it sounds and is actually quite challenging.

There is a campaign and various bomber-based missions which is something I didn’t get to explore (yet) but would interest a lot of people.

I only played this with 2 but it plays up to 8 players which sounds interesting, and very confusing!

There are plenty of aircraft to pick from…

Negatives

…but a lot of the aircraft are very similar, they don’t feel very different.

You can get lucky with card draws. For example, you might draw 1-3 cards for a wingman attack and happen to get one that your opponent wasn’t able to block… Other times, you draw just defence cards and nothing happens. I always say that I like randomness in battle but this is pushing it a bit for me.

It feels and looks quite dated, but that’s quite standard for a GMT game.

Summary

A decent simulation of a dogfight.

Jesta ThaRogue