Hello fellow Game Geeks and the Curious,

What exactly is the Whistling Death Game? On the surface I could say it is basically a wargame about WW2 aerial combat. But that is not quite right...its much more. One moment though -

First let me tell what Whistling Death (WD) is not.

It is not a family game for simple entertainment.
It is not a game that can be played in an hour or less.
It is not a game with simple rules that are fast and easy to learn.
It is not a game that is cheap (costs $60 to $80 bucks).
It is not a game with fast player turns like Uno.
It is not a video-arcade game, or computer game.

So given the above statements who plays, or would want to play this kind of game and why? This must wait for a second.

First, as the designer, I will tell you what I believe this game really is!

It is a history lesson wrapped in a game box.
It is a laboratory of WW2 aerial combat tactics.
It is a demonstration of how, and why, aircraft fought the way they did in WW two.
It is a comparative analysis of opposing aircraft capabilities.
It is exhaustively researched (ten years in making).

In short, it is a richly detailed, fact filled, war-simulation-game, aimed at the mature serious gamer.

So who does buy this game and why? My observations have been that the game is most popular with middle aged males, 20-50 years old, with an intense interest in aviation, specifically world war two. They tend to be either involved in aviation professionally, or as a hobby (modeling, sport flying, or like to read a lot about it).

They are generally enthusiastic and serious students of air warfare and appreciate the level of detail that the wargame goes into as it helps them visualize why a fight develops the way it does. WD was designed by a former Navy/ANG Jet pilot in such a way as to allow the three dimensional development of a dogfight to be depicted.

They are detail nuts - who care that an airplane with 1100 horsepower will be rated differently than one of similar size and weight with 1350 hp. They care that 20mm cannon have more destructive capability than smaller machine guns despite the fact the smaller guns are putting out more shells in a two second burst and therefore they like the fact that WD's designer takes into account rate of fire, weight of fire, bullet spread and destructive power of individual weapons in his game ratings.

They are aviation intellectuals. This isn't a game for the casual passer by. You would have to be seriously interested in the topic to wade through the 80 page rule book (flying only involves the first 18 pages, bombing and other stuff take up the rest). And those who buy the game generally are.

They are niche gamers... aviation is a main focus, although many also have interests in tank or naval games; basically - they like games that are vehicle technology oriented.

They like the Whistling death, Achtung Spitfire, Over the Reich series games because they are games for thinkers. They are not interested in the unrealistic split second reactive and usually badly modeled video arcade or computer air game. When they move a piece in a fighting wings game, they will get a feel for the effect the maneuver had on the plane's total energy state, note the change in relative geometry of the fight their move had and note the impact of their move in the thoughtful reactions of their opponents.

It is akin to watching a fight develop in a slow motion freeze frame environment where you can stop the picture and analyze each step. From this, a distinct level of understanding will develop. With practice your play will improve. More importantly, you will be driven to use the actual tactics pilots in the war used, because they worked the best and the game brings this out. The experience will tie in with what they've read in the history books or experienced while actually flying.

The entertainment value in this kind of gameing is multi-layered. It comes from a combination of trying to fight your best fight, and using your aircraft's capabilities in the best way against an enemy's. It comes from watching a dogfight unfold in easily digestible pieces and then grasping the signficance of each move and how it helped or hurt your strategy. It comes from taking on someone equally enthusiastic and analytical and emerging victorious. It comes from having a vehicle (the game) that exposes and validates or invalidates your understanding of what air combat is really about.

Fighting Wings series Air Game geeks are therefore a slightly different sort of game geek. Intense and obsessed with accurate detail and modeling. We are also few in number. Only 1500 WD games printed, 900 sold as of one year from publication. Probably 500 active FW gamers in the USA. I told you this was a niche part of the wargame hobby. That is why there are so few players rating the game (few have it). That is why the ratings are slewed high. Those that have it, like it. Those with only a passing interest in the topic, passed it up. Those with no patience for learning a complex detailed simulation game avoided it.

Family games like Puerto Rico probably have many thousands of players world wide. Simple games like risk have tens of thousands of players world wide. WD is not in that league.

Well I hope this explains something about what WD is. Below a just some comments about how it works.


Game Scale Notes.

Each piece represents one airplane. The movement system is relatively intricate and, while using a hexgrid map, still allows you to change an aircraft's pitch in 30 degree increments or to make facing changes on the map in 30 degree increments, but those changes take time to accomplish, measured in distance moved across the map based on the aircraft's speed. Each plane speeds up and slows down according to how many acceleration points or deceleration points it accumulates in a turn. Decel offsets accel in this matter. Your selected actions will have a direct bearing on this. One accel/decel point represents about a 5mph change in speed.

Individual aircraft performance is measured in such a way that small differences in capabilities will be noted in play over time. The scale is 100 yards per hex, four seconds per game turn, 100 feet per altitude increment and 50mph per movement point with speed broken down to 25mph (or half MPs) increments.