The game's first year in review

So as we're nearing the end of the inaugural year of the game I thought I'd have a little look back as this time last year I was eagerly awaiting my pre-ordered christmas present!
Unfortunately, we were off to a rocky start as the shipping date was pushed back till the spring, but it didn't appear to dent enthusiasm too much as all the initial wave sold out.
To start with we had spitfires, 109's, yaks, p51s and a6m5 Zeros and a singular named ace for each faction.
With the huge upswell of demand, Warlord partnered with Zvezda for the planes from their "art of tactic" game, bringing 1:200 scale Blenheim bombers for the brits, SB2 and Li2 bombers and transports for the soviets, ju52 and ju88 transports and bombers for the gerries and the c47 skytrain transport for the americans (minor mod to the li2 model required).
We settled in and played for a few months before the next set of releases came out, this time in metal
much the the shock of some, but they came with the extended "sabot" (bomber) bases and this time expanded options for the pacific theatre of operations, introducing the F4F wildcat and named ace, plus "Kate" torpedo bombers for the japanese to give them a bomber option.
These were originally made in-house for the huge Carrier game launching the game at the Salute! show

Yes that really is a 1:200 carrier!!

and opened up more fighter options for the commonwealth as well as it was widely used as the Martlet in commonwealth forces, serving in north africa and elsewhere.
Packing errors marred the release however with a lack of skill disc for the named ace and a delay in general release of the Kates but on the whole, the new planes have been well received and for a while they put the Americans at the highest number of "home grown" fighters out of all the factions.
A steady release of "beta" cards has been released throughout the year onto the facebook group "Blood Red Skies: Ready Rooom" and the Warlord official forums which has opened up quirky planes and different variant cards of the existing models to give players more scope for using their collections in different theatres/eras.

Then the good news came out, new release waves would primarily be in hard plastic, the first of which being the Mosquito and Hurricanes for the commonwealth with the Bf110 and FW190 in short succession (subsequently delayed until january however) and test shots were shown at the Warlord open day (the tournament players all bagged one as a nice attendee bonus!) but some of the errors picked up on the test shots weren't corrected for final production, leaving a few extra marks on the hurricane and some mild pushing, sprue clearing and glueing needed on the mosquitos. Further packing errors were noted on the named aces of this wave, skill cards being different to the base planes relating to a change by the dev not being carried through to production.
I'm not yet at an "upset customer" stage yet as I know customer service is excellent and will resolve the issues swiftly, but Warlord admitted at the open day they've been swamped by demand for the game by "harcore" gamers rather than the museum-shop market they originally pitched for and there seems to have been elements ofdelays, rushing and poor QC throughout the year's releases as they've struggled to meet demand.
Hopefully lessons have been learned and the January release of the 110's and 190's goes swimmingly!
With no discussed official releases in December to anticipate, the current list of available official planes at the end of year one is as follows:

Commonwealth:
Spitfires mk2 and mk5 (card in named ace pack) + named aces
Hurricanes mk2 + named aces
Mosquitos mk2, mk4 (both cards in base box) + named ace
Martlets (F4F box, Lend-Lease)
Mustang mk4 (P51-D box, Lend-lease)
Defiant (limited run in resin)
Blenheim Bombers

American:
Spitfires mk5
F4F Wildcats + named ace
P51D + named ace
C47 Skytrain transport (minor mod to li2 transporter needed)

American spitfires!

Axis:
BF109E + named ace
Ju52 transport
Ju88 bomber

Japanese:
A6M5 "Zero" + Named ace
B5N "Kate" bombers

Soviet:
Yak 1 + Named Ace
Hurricanes (Lend-Lease)
Spitfires mk5 (Lend-lease)
SB2 bomber
Li2 Transport

Chinese: (For funsies!)
P51D (Lend-Lease)
SB2 Bombers

So as we can see the Commonwealth finished the year in top-dog position thanks in no small part to their American allies for the Lend-lease equipment! There are still some holes in the range however, the Americans requiring a conversion on a transporter (however minimal) to be able to run the "escort duty" scenario isn't fantastic and the Japanese are lagging behind in terms of fighers and have no multi-engined options for "escort duty" either.
Thankfully, the Beta cards/leak-of-the-week on the group and forums plugs all of these holes excellently and a huge range of 3rd party models exist to round out ranges (see my earlier post on how to prep them for BRS: here)
To put all these shiny planes into action, Andy Chambers has written a campaign set up to track pilot progression and includes rules on upgrading planes as the campaigns develop. There are also campaign rules written up by beta testers on the Facebook group (Battle of britain and Heroes of the Pacific) with missions, bombing rules and torpedo rules!

On the whole, as launch years go, I think Warlord will be happy. Though they've had the odd mishap here and there, by and large, the game has rocketed off shelves and has been met with positive reviews. It has engaged far beyond their original target market and already stretching the scope of "fighters" with the upcoming release of the ground attack pack (talked about in this article here).
I'm excited by the game and it has rapidly spread in my local scene amongst avid historicals and people that are casual. That's got to be a ringing endorsement in my book!

Next year is shaping up to be excellent for BRS too; the delayed german release gives the Axis some multi-engine fighter power with the bf110 and a later war fighter in the fw190 in January and new card decks are going on sale containing cards for alternate plane variants, new planes, new theatre and doctrine cards and additional equipment (like underwing gun pods!!).
We're due a new starter box themed on the battle of Midway mid-year and all the planes from Cruel Seas are getting upscaled in metal and released for BRS!
That should get us the Beaufighter (Commonwealth), Stuka (Central Axis), D3A "Val" (Japan), F4U Corsair (Commonwealth and USA) and later fleets will feature Soviets (Lagg3) and Italians (Machi 202). The defiant is also due for a resurgence in metal form after its limited run in resin.
These were all discussed as "the plan" at the open day developer talk and you can see the write-up I made here.

As for hard plastics; the P38 and p40 Was originally discussed as the American "hard plastic" wave early in the year, but things have gone rather quiet on that front so it will be interesting to see how that develops as they'd add massive amounts of flexibility to multiple factions.
Hope you've enjoyed year 1 as much as I have!