Sails of Glory . . . Huh.

Anybody have a play in? I'm curious about first impressions. I got a demonstration game in this past Sunday at the local store with about eight other players on two different boards.

S.

I haven't played it but three things I'm very curious to know:

1) Is it different enough from Star Wars/Star Trek/Wings of War to justify the investment it will require.

2) Do the ships available feel unique and play differently or are they pretty much the same thing with a different sculpt?

3) What does this game do that other Age of Sail games don't? I'm thinking specifically of Flying Colors which is a simple yet engaging sail game.

I' ve played once 2 players and once solo. Frigates feel complefely different then a ship of the line but individual frigates don't differ very much. A ship of the line can take twice the damage and can deal twice the damage as frigate but it cant sail into the wind very well and it's slower.

I don't think anyone needs to own this and xwing and starwars. They all fill that same need or itch. They are all very different which is cool and I enjoy each game. Sails of Glory does a good job with the feel of sailing because the wind direction is so important. I like in sails of glory that movement and firing happens at the same time. Doing thing in pilot order slowed xwing down. Sorry I'm typing this from my phone. I will clean it up later.

The idea of simultaneous fire seemed novel to the other players. I'm so accustomed to it with WofG that I didn't consider otherwise.

My battle was two on two, four SoLs. I didn't last long so I didn't get to play around with the wind issue very much. It's omnipresent in Wooden Ships & Iron Men. I got snookered by a ship that turned upwind in front of mine and as best I can tell I was at least two turns away from moving again, and depending on how he dug himself out maybe longer. The rules for interference didn't make logical sense to me. I'd rather they used something more similar to WofG.

S.

Alright, these were my initial impressions. I'm pretty negative, but mostly about implementation, not the core of the game itself. I'll need to play more to comment on the game itself.

There's a part of me with a finger hovering over the Google button to see if I can find a hex grid big enough to play Wooden Ships & Iron Men with the ships from this game. The ships are really, really pretty, and that may be a viable alternative once there's actually ships available in the market to purchase.

I think there's game here, but for the moment I'm very glad I didn't purchase via Kickstarter for $150. I got a chance to purchase a starter kit at retail this past weekend and passed it up as well, because I'm not confident that I'll be able to get it on the table with my buddies and pretty doggone confident I won't be able to get others to play (anyone at all) when I'm considering modding the rules right from the get-go. Mods would all but rule out sessions at game stores and conventions.

Rating based on one play only, so take with a grain of salt. But -- this is coming from a die-hard Wings of Glory fan and avid chit pusher.

Overall I think this is a fine game, but I'll be honest, there's parts that felt very clunky.

The movement mechanic needs a bit of tuning but is fundamentally sound. It's descended from the Dawn of World War II side of Wings of Glory and elicits the same heads-down sort of feel as DoWWII does, as opposed to the WWI version's more chatty, social nature. I prefer the original, but given this game's prospects for a deeper play the choice makes sense.

When ships occupy the same space odd things happen that don't make a lot of sense. I appreciate sometimes you get snookered, but in close quarters the adjusted movement seems to make no sense. You start considering rules instead of reality, and my concern is that people will start using these exceptional cases as their favored part of the game. Odd rules. I think movement is mostly there, but not as good as it could be in this one aspect. House rules will likely fix this.

The chits are . . . well, clunky. The way they're placed onto the console for your ship isn't very friendly and is prone to a bump screwing up your entire status (especially with the way the consoles are designed, more on that in a minute). Honestly, throw the drawn chits in a discard pile and mark the position on the damage tracks with a single chit each. Done. Fix two complete.

Chit pull is OK. (The bags are very pretty; get Dixie Cups.) But pulling six and seven at a time and only having the damage on one side is a hassle. Print on both sides so you can throw them down and see what happened in a flash. More dramatic, more exciting, easier to do, speeds up play. A minor thing that could be made to work better with a simple change. (An aside -- the only reason to print information on only one side of a chit is if it's going to be stacked next to the board for a blind pull. The chits in Sails of Glory are too small and too numerous for this to be a consideration let alone a preference, so printing on only one side is just a non-starter. Mark the different chits with colors or borders or a smaller letter in the corner or size or shape.)

The consoles -- ugly design. Stop making consoles with cutouts! They suck in Wings of Glory too! They warp faster and warp more, and then they want to spin. In this case it's worse than most because you have other console pieces inserted in a hole in the top that have chits piled on them, so the spin can screw up your record keeping. The base console should have been a square piece of cardboard that you lay pieces on top of like the old Wings of War (i.e., if it spins everything spins and nothing gets bumped). Instead, you get a gee-whiz ooh-pretty board with nifty snap in pieces that isn't effective and can bugger the game. It makes people buy (pretty!) but it doesn't work as well. Simple would have been better. (Simple is virtually always better).

We were already redesigning the information record-keeping on our first play. The "spare" crew counters to replace broadside crew damage is contrived and unnecessary -- just move a single counter down the crew line like every other chit-implemented game with a console. Throw your pulled chits in a cup instead of piling and stacking them on the console. A die on the ship's damage track would show position and amount of damage simultaneously. Seriously, this game would run twice as fast with a wipe-able pen and a slick sheet on a spiffy paper log sheet. But I know -- it would kill sales because people want pretty-pretty, and slicky-slicky, and no-writing, and super thick cardboard counters in earthy shades of brown and red with stately but cartoony art on it with lots of "icons". But it would be so much simpler and more manageable with a log sheet, and you would never have to worry about bumping your chit-laden four-piece ship console with your shirt sleeve as you work the tight corners on your maneuver.

Leave it as is. Serious players will replace all of the clutter on their own. Problem solved. We had already simplified the console on our learning game, about four turns in. This will happen on its own. (None of my friends use the consoles in Wings of Glory either, so I suppose this is inevitable.)

I think there's a good core game here so I'm interested in playing again. But my cunning plan is to have a sheet and a pencil handy instead of the current console, and if I'm calling the tune a rules revision as well, to how movement handles ships trying to occupy the same space.

Were I king of the world damage would have a dependency-based cascading effect so that damage would be more coherent and tell a better story. There's a name for this concept that makes people angry, so I won't use it. When boiled down, people would only be interested in this idea if it ran on their iPhone, and I don't own one. So chit pull it is, and that's a fine solution.

One last thing I didn't mention in my comments -- why oh why did Ares not consider making the post under the ship a shape other than round? Or not use two? My ship spun like a cheap compass needle on its base. Two posts or a slot-post would have completely eliminated an issue that they've known about with Wings of War since 2007. Just an odd miss.

S.