Critical Component Comparison: Wings of War and Wings of Glory

Critical Component Comparison: Wings of War and Wings of Glory.

The boardgame Wings of War has been out for some time and proven to be extremely popular. After Nexus went out of business, Ares took over and continued to release the game, albeit with a slightly different title and a few minor tweaks. I will not go over the game again, as I have discussed it previously on this blog. So let's dive right in! 

So how does these games compare?

Wings of War: Famous Aces (WOW)

Players: 2 – 4

Publisher: Nexus

Year: 2004

Wings of Glory: Duel Pack (WOG)
Players: 2
Publisher: Ares Games
Year: 2013

I own both Wings of Glory duelpacks, but for the purpose of this review only one is used. 

The biggest difference is that Wings of Glory can only be played with two players, as there are only two planes and two movement decks. So if you want to play with more people, you need to buy more duelpacks. However, in exchange, you get two miniature planes, which were not available with the Wings of War set. 

The planes that come in one of the duelpacks

Let me start off with those, as the planes are an incredible addition to the game, compared to the cards that were used previously. Also the planes are more sturdy and less likely to shift during movement. They really add something to the game, as they are zipping around the battlefield, diving and climbing to attack one another.

The Albatros in WOW and WOG 

The  Spad in WOW and WOG 

That leads me to another comparison, the movement decks. There are only two included of course, but that aside. The WOW set had a much lighter background and a black arrow. The WOG set has a much darker background and a blue arrow. This is where WOW is simply much better than WOG and I don’t really understand why they chose for such a dark color and dark arrow.

The promoplanes

The objectives

Wings of War featured two promocards, the Ufag and the Nieuport 17. With a little bit of tweaking, these could be incorporated as their movement decks are similar to some of the ones in the Famous Aces set. WOG comes with several potential objective cards. These can be used for missions.

The playerboards

The playerboards are different. Wings of War comes with a full player board where all the cards could be placed on and everything can be neatly sorted and placed upon. The WOG set comes with a much flimsier board, where everything needs to be placed in certain brackets. However, during movement it can easily shift or cards can slide under it. It does the job, but less good than the WOW set. As you are moving across the table, this board can easily be moved with it. The WOW set was more compact.

The (damage) tokens are roughly similar and I don’t think it’s necessary to comment much on them. The same goes for the (damage) cards, which have appeared above.

The damage tokes, left WOW, right WOG

Overall, the planes are really an improvement. They really add something extra to the game. However, the movement decks are not as good as they could have been. I can understand some of the decisions that were made. Some elements needed to be cut to keep the cost down or to make one big set with four planes would have made this game tremendously expensive. On the other hand, people that want to play with the four planes now have duplicates of the damage deck, the tokens and various other stuff. Some of these materials can be used, but others cannot. Overall, the WOG set is better, because of the miniatures add so much more to the game, however, if you leave them out of the equation WOW is better. Despite that, as I said before, the planes make this game really shine and I would recommend to go with Wings of Glory over Wings of War (But that’s just my opinion).