Blood Red Skies

Evening chaps, picked up Air Strike! and Close Quarters(CQ) at vapnartak the other week and had a bit of a peruse and a play through of the new rules. Today is the turn of Air Strike! (AS) to go under the lens. Overall this book feels vastly more fleshed out as a ruleset than CQ. CQ felt more like a series of suggestions with some fleet lists chucked in whereas AS is a rules redux, Mig Alley/Korea, and ground attack all rolled into one. Basically, a new player could pick up AS, a squadron box, 3rd party measuring gear and be away without touching the core box. As seen in the pictures, the first few pages show the consolidation of the 3 separate books from the starter into one book. It cleanly collects all the info into one spot and clarifies a few bits along the way including turrets, traits, firepower, cards and such. It also gives some alternative options for managing cards too. The most contentious part here is the optional "heavy fighters" rule whic

Morning chaps, at vapnartak the other week I picked up Air strike! and Close quarters expansions for Blood red skies and Cruel seas. I'll review both but for now, here's the rundown on Close Quarters. Firstly: Art. Its the same gorgeous layout as the main book and features lots of bright colourful pictures. it reads well and is a good depth of pages for an expansion (68) It is however an expansion, not a revised core book. for those of you out there who don't like the turning/torps/etc, none of that is changed here. Content: The book starts off with a "scenario generator" that allows you to play pickup games. By default it wants you to roll for everything off of a million bazillion tables which is gonna get old pretty quickly. The victory conditions and force generators are gonna be good for "generic games" though and the mode is definitely welcome even if it is highly unlikely to make for "balanced" games between mates. It then mov