Hi folks,

I hope I'm not violating any board ettiquette here with this post. If I am, mods, please delete, apologies.

I've got the Dawn of War set and I recently picked up the Check Your Six! rulebook. I have, at this point, played one demo game of each ruleset. Frankly, I enjoyed them both, but as a beginner, I could only draw the simplest of comparisons. Example:

WoW - I liked the card based maneuver system much better, as well as the two planned move sequence better than CY6's chart based move graphs. I like that both rulesets let you make your maneuvers simultaneously and then fire is workedout. No need for a hex based system makes it easier to play the game on any surface/terrain/whatever.

CY6 - this is nitpicky, but I liked the gun detail a bit more - for instance, when firing a Messerschmitt, I was firing machine gun as well as a low velocity cannon. However, in Wow, this is simply referenced as one C chip and two A chips (or whatever, I'm just using basic examples, sorry if it's not perfectly accurate). Also, I liked the scenario system much better with CY6.

But that's it, those are my basic observations. So, to the ace pilots out there, how do the two systems compare? Obviously, I can buy prepainted minis for either system. The WoW planes are very easy to get started with, but truly, what are WoW's strongest points?

Any thoughts or advice are appreciated. Thanks folks!

Steve B

Honestly? Nobody in two days?

If I had violated forum ettiquete then it's not completely clear why, since I'm simply asking for someone else's opinion of the "good points" of Wings of War.

Or is it simply that not a single member of this forum has any experience with another game system that happens to cover the same time period and is played with miniatures?

There's been enough views of this that I would have thought one of you would have had something to say. But I suppose not, I'll just have to playtest WoW enough (since I can play it without models) and then decide if this is where my investment will go.

Hi Rattle,

I just recently picked up the Check Your Six rules as well, and comparing them to Dawn of War is not an easy task, as they really have different goals as simulations and use different methods to get there!

Check Your Six clearly has more detail in many respects, particularly in representing weaponry and altitude. The movement systems are remarkably similar, though one uses hexes and the other uses cards, but they produce a remarkably similar result.

Dawn of War is a bit more accessible, and the visual aspect of the cards straight out of the box is great for starters, and doesn't require time or painting skill to go with the miniatures.

I like them both. In fact, I intend to use some of the Check Your Six aircraft statistics to port into Dawn of War , such as the Fokker D.XXI

Hi Schoon, thanks for responding.

Yes, I'm finding the comparison very interesting. I suppose the real question is what do I want from my gaming. Painting miniatures is not an issue as I've done that for many other games, and may just as likely paint my own for WoW if I so choose it. The fact that I can play right out of the box and save time on painting by buying the WoW minis is definitely a nice time saver. If only they had the P40... I'm dying for the Flying Tigers!

But I digress. I suppose the real question is what do I want from my gaming... more "realism" in terms of weaponry, altitude, etc which is nice. But that's not to discount the ease of use and flexibility that Dawn of War gives me. I suppose I could use the CY6 scenario ideas (of which there are many) and simply use the Dawn of War rules and miniatures... that would definitely lead me down the road of buying and painting my own as I don't think the Dawn of War release schedule would keep up with the fleet I'd likely amass.

I havn't played "check your six" but heard some rather good things about the game.

Many good air sims, particulary GWs Blue max (today the free game Canvas eagles) and FASAs brilliant "Crimson skies" used hex and it works very well.

The good things with hexes is that it is harder to cheat and easy to measure any distance. The bad thing however is that it doesn't look as good as when you use cards.

You could of course make some kind of middlething, like having movement arrows with a unique name instead which makes it possible to write the name down and then move after an arrow which could differ a lot more in size, that would work well for jet fighters and things like that which can go really fast.

But if both games are really fun to play, why not play them both? We actually have some Wow/Canvas eagles conversation rules for campaign playing so you can run the game that fits the scenario best, I will publish them sometime in the future...

It might be that one game is better for combat between fighters and the other for bombers. Also using simple rules are not always bad, the simpler the rules, the bigger scenario can you run in a certain day. But of course advanced games have their points also, as long as we are not talking about "Phoenix comanda" (a friend of mine spent 3 days playing 15 seconds during WW2).

Hi Rattle,

I agree entirely, the Check Your Six scenario books are really amazing in the breadth of interesting (and often surprising) situations they cover, and even if you never play the game they are worth their price for that alone. They will be especially useful as Dawn of War expands its aircraft selection (or if you're willing to create your own.

On the other hand, it's a fun game in its own right, and well worth playing.

Yup yup... Thanks Schoon and Pour Le Merite. The more I think about it, the more likely I am to use the Dawn of War (and Fire in the Sky) rulesets, but inspire many games from the scenarios in the Check Your Six books.

Wings of War is simple, accessible and easy to pick up for a quick game or a long one. Again, there are only so many planes they've put out, but I can always suppliment from other companies that make planes for the same scale. But the ease and accessibility that WoW brings to the table, I think, is really what I need from a game at the moment.

Pour Le Merite, I agree, if the game at it's base level is simple, then the scenario can become as complex as we want to make it.. But, wow, that Phoenix Comanda game does NOT sound like something I'd want to play. I'm all for detail, but that sounds really horrible.

As for why not play both games? Well, I'm already involved in plenty of other games and I'm sure that I'm not the only gamer out there with a budget. Not playing CY6 means I don't need a hexmat. Not playing both games means I don't need bases for each plane that is compatible for each game system (hex bases for CY6, the WoW ones for ... WoW). Little things like that.

In the end, at least for me, I need to make an informed choice and stick with it. My gut is telling me to use Dawn of War/Fire in the Sky and supplement from CY6 for scenarios and perhaps even for various planes that Wings of War doesn't cover yet.

Steve B

Rattleshirt said:

You don't need any hex bases, we use the regular Wow bases for our canvas eagle games as well as for Wow. Same bases and same planes are perfect.

The mat is another matter. You will still need a good mat for Wow so I reccomend this map: www.hotzmats.com/mat_1-euro_field.html To get it double sided with hexagons on one side isn't that expensive at all (3" hexagons are perfect for the Wow stands). That makes things simple, you use the same models and same mat to play, and you can pick the game that fits the scenario best.

In our campaign we even have conversion rules between Wow and Blue max so you can use the same pilots with the abilities you bought for your xp for both games. The same should be very possibly to do with Wow and CY6.

I mean to publish those conversion rules together with my Wow campaign rules here. Unfortunatley my computer totaly crashed so I spent a few days rebuilding it with 4 SSd harddrives in RAID 5 instead of the old SATA things. I am still installing stuff and need to recver my files from the old sata disk and I also needs to translate most of the stuff but I will post it in the WW1 forum in a while.

Rattleshirt said:

That's exactly what i was thinking of doing myself!

kaufschtick said:

It is not bad thinking, Wow and DOW should also make a lot nore scenarios, it is right now the weakest point of the games together with no experience system.

Borrowing rules and scenarios from other games might spice things up