This is my first BGG review. I'm a long-time lurker, first-time poster, so I should probably start out with a caveat.

I think Wings of War is a great game. I own all three WWI game boxes and four of the Series 1 minis, with plans to expand that collection. Given that he posts and reads here, and this is an excellent way to speak to him directly - my congratulations to the designer.

I'm going to assume that of you're reading this review, you've read one of the other good ones on here that summarises the game mechanics, rather than repeat how they work.

My preferred war (what an outrageous concept - a preferred war!) has always been WW2, so I really wanted to like this one. In a nutshell, my hopes were disappointed for a number of reasons. I'll summarise them here:

First up, the revised manuever mechanics. My father (a WWI buff from ages back) said he would have preferred to play single cards rather than three in a row. We'd tried this variant on the basic game with pretty good results (testament to the solid mechanics of the original), so I was expecting the WWII version to play well.

In practise, I liked the two-card conveyer-belt mechanic. What I didn't like was the speed chits. Firstly, the rules were unclear as to how the basic version of the speed rules worked - you take four chits, but the diagram shows one chit face up denoting 'current speed'. That only leaves three chits in the pool, which means you are forced to change speed every few moves. We quickly realised that this face-up counter is only used in the advanced 'acceleration' rule, but it could have been stated clearly to avoid confusion.

But the main problem with the speed chits is that they are unnecessarily fiddly. I concede that a set of counters is cheaper than printing a set of 'fast' cards and a set of 'slow' cards, but that would have been preferable. This is exacerbated by the fact that it seems unnecesary - only engine damage and special rules like fuel even interact with the speed mechanic, which could have been achieved by putting the fast/slow icons on the bottom of the card (like steep, straight etc.). In a nutshell, I guess I just don't see the point of the separate counters.

On a related note, I would have preferred to see larger manouevre decks rather than the multiple copies you do get. Thinking the multiple copies would allow it, we first tried to play two Me109s versus a hurricane and spitfire (a historical and legendary matchup), and found we couldn't out of the box - the deck combinations wouldn't allow that particular combination. Thus, we've found the multiple decks next to useless.

My second issue is the damage counters. I like the fact that planes now do damage dependant on model and range - this gives each different model its own unique feel. But, like the new manuevre mechanic, it's marred by poor execution. At first I liked the counters - on the ariplane dashboards they are smaller and less obtrusive than cards, and easier to shuffle. The problem is they take up much more room on the playing surface, are difficult to handle in quantity, and small enough to easily get lost. Then I tried to put them into the box. There is nowhere near enough room! The central well can't hold them all, and even if it could, they'd all be lumped in together. If you put them all in different card wells to keep them separate, they get mixed in together. It's a small niggle, but enough small niggles can break a good game.

Thus ends my objective issues with the game. The final issue is subjective. My long-time WoW opponent and I just found it somehow less... fun thank its older cousin. The planes spent a lot more time zooming past each other and wheeling around for another pass, and a lot less time engaged, and there was none of the laughter and jesting that accompanied the WWI version. Accurate, perhaps, but less enjoyable. Perhaps if this had been the first version, we would have enjoyed it more, but with WWI to compare to, it suffered.

My advice - contentious as it may be - is that the WWI version is just better-executed. I like the era and the planes better in this version, I like the smaller plane-boards, I like the look and feel of most of the components better than in the original, I like the two-card rolling conveyer-belt, I like the new damage system... I just don't like a couple of little things that mar the overall experience enough to drive me back to the older version.