My Aeronautica Imperialis Collection

Tau Air Caste

The Tau planes are the real gems of the second starter set with sleek beautiful lines.

I assembled them with a variety of weapons purely for modelling purposes: WYSIWIG isn't really an issue at this scale.

I used a grey contrast paint laid on fairly generously so it pooled in the middle of flat surfaces giving a mottled camo  appearance, rather like that used on  modern US Navy aircraft.

Imperial Navy Lightnings

I must admit the Voss pattern Lightnings do look quite neat when painted. I had a bit of a downer on these when I opened the box but, okay, maybe I was a bit harsh.

Imperial Navy Ground Support Wing

The Marauder straffers and Valkyrie 'mud movers' are camo'd for flying low over the desert. The Lightnings are more dual purpose ground-strike and ground-strike escort so I gave them a more multipurpose biscuit-coloured camo.

Imperial Navy Strategic Wing

These are my high altitude strike force of Marauder bombers and Thunderbolt air superiority escorts. I envisage them dropping from spacecraft in low orbit to penetrate deep into enemy territory to hit strategic targets.

Da Orky Flyboyz

My homage to Deff Squadron, da Orkiest, shootiest flyboyz in da whole galaxy. They use an eclectic mix of single seater and two seater shooty planes and a giant heavy boma.

And that's all folks, until the next set of releases.

Aeronautica Imperialis: The Valkyrie

Valkyrie Leads A Vendetta

I have finished the first couple of planes from the latest Aeronautica starter kit. I have kitted out the first one as a bog standard Valkyrie troop transport with a multilaser and rocket pods.

A Vendetta gunship completes the pair with triple twin-lascannon weapon load-out.

The Business End

Skies of Fire: Model Review

Skies of Fire

Skies of Fire is the latest Aeronautica Imperialis 'game in a box' supplement, based on an air war between The Imperium of Man and the Tau Empire. The idea of a game in a box is that everything one needs to play is, well, in the box: a hexgrid map - small, paper but usable, models for two sides, counters and dice, and a core rulebook with datasheets for the new Tau and Imperial planes.

I suspect most people will buy it for the models: three Lighting , two Valkyrie assault carriers, three Tau Barracuda, and two Tau Tiger Sharks.

Let's start with the Lightnings.

Lightning Air Superiority Fighter

The Lightning Fighter comes in two forms. The first is the standard air superiority model, an elegant design with forward swept wings and a fearsome battery of lascannon and autocannon.

Lightning 'Voss Pattern' Strike Plane

The second is the Voss pattern version which loses some of the firepower in exchange for more ground attack hardpoints under the wings turning it into a multi-role strike plane.

Given that the game already has heavy Thunderbolt multi-role fighters that are used for both air superiority and ground support, obviously it was a no-brainer which of the two Games workshop would choose to model - especially as the Voss pattern is pig-ugly......

Very Frightening

Yup, they gave us the Voss pattern - the ill-graced multirole strike fighter.

You can swap use lascannon or multilasers on the nose and skystrike or hellstrike misssiles under the wings to optimise the model for its different functions.

But, God-Emperor, it's ugly!

Avenger Tank Buster

Still, could be worse chaps. They might have given us Avengers.

Valkyrie Assault Carriers

Valkyrie are the helicopters of the Imperium and, like helicopters, can be configured for ground support, anti-tank, troop transport or even point air-defence.

This is a really nice model and it comes with all sorts of weapon choices for the four mission types listed above (Valkyries or Vendettas in 40K lingo)

One point is that although the weapon choices on the model are a nice touch, one can’t really see them while playing because the distinctions are too small or hidden under the wings. This does mean that players can field their Valkyries with different weapon loadouts without needing alternate models. WYSIWIG, for once, isn't an issue.

Tau Barracuda

I really like the Tau Barracuda flying wing air-superiority model. Again different weapon loadouts are offered - ion cannon, burst cannon or railguns with seeker air-to-air missile as an optional extra. And once again, the actual weapons modelled is not critical when playing as they are not very noticeable.

Tau  Tiger Shark

The Tiger Shark bomber is also a great model and quite big. Here it is alongside a Marauder for scale. It just screams Tau to me: high tech, sleek and deadly.

You get the usual weapon choices but, of course, more of them.

Tau Flight

So first impression, the models fit together well and are easy to make. The instructions are basic and could be more helpful, especially over which weapon loadouts are on offer. Deep indentation should make inking easy and, I suspect they will paint well with a single coat of Contrast.

Only one I don't like is the unlovable Voss. I really, really, wanted a proper fighter for the Empire instead of a poor man's Thunderbolt.

Well you cant have everything.

At £55 this box is good value just for the ten plane models and stands.

Review Aeronautica Imperialis: Wings of Vengeance - 2 The Models

Fly Boyz

Inside the starter set are models for two factions. Lets start with the Orks. Inside the box are two Fighta-Bombas and three single seater Dakka Jets.

The models are easy to assemble unlike some of GW's recent offering. Details are astonishingly crisp with wing panels well delineated. The Dakka Jets, in particular come in modular form giving a huge potential variety between planes. There are also a variety of rockets, bombs and shootas to hang under the wings.

The photo is high res so do click on it and blow it up for a better look. I have exaggerated the contrast slightly with Paint Shop Pro.

I undercoated in light tan and then used Citadels Bright Red contrast paint (the runny stuff that collects in the hollows) for the topcoat, and Citadel Contrast Yellow Ochre or VJ Metallic Brass for wing panels, decoration etc. The Contrast Paint didn't make the panels stand out enough so I dribbled black wash along the lines.

These are enough planes for a decent evenings two hour game. Additional boxes can be bought off GW in squadrons of six Dakka Jets and Four Fighta-Bombas. That would give 15 models and is as much as you might ever want. I probably won't bother unless I split the models with a friend.

An additional Ork Eavy Bomba is on the way which I will buy as it will round out Deff Skwadron nicely - remember them?

Imperial Navy

The Imperial Navy's are the second faction, the starter set including two heavy Thunderbolt Fightas and two Marauder heavy bombers. Again the detailing is superb. Again the photo blows up if you click on it.

I undercoated the fighters with a Humbrol light grey spray can and liked the finish so much I decided to use it as a top coat. The engines are in metallic dark steel liberally coated with black wash, which I also ran into the panel lines.

The bomber are coated in Citadel Contrast mid blue-grey, again with the panel lines marked out in black wash.

As these are elite Imperial Navy squadrons I thought they would have squadron flashes on the wings and tail.

Underneath

The high level of detail is continued on the undersides, even though you probably won't get to see them during play.

I am way too impatient to be a good painter - hey, I'm a wargamer not a modeller - so I did a quick minimalist job. Washes cover a multitude of sins. The models are so easy to paint that they look pretty good with very little effort.

Transfers are provided and I put a few on the Orky planes but I'm not a great fan. Somehow they never quite look right. The Ork planes in particular have very little in the way of flat surfaces.

Scales

GW commonly don't give scales on their models so I photographed a Marauder Destroyer against a 1/144 Lancaster and a 1/300 Canberra early jet bomber.

I would guestimate the AI models at somewhere around 1/200. They do apparently match the scale of the new Adeptis Titanicus game......stand by for a crossover.

The Marauder incidentally is the first of the add-on models released separately. Five factions are apparently waiting in the wings. Given the Rynn's World expansion book, I would guess that they are going to follow the campaign-in-a-box-with-models formula.....but I could be quite wrong about that. 

I will probably buy one box of every release.

Highly recommended models.

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Below are some photos of unpainted planes to give a better look at the raw plastic model.

Review Aeronautica Imperialis: Wings of Vengeance - 1 Overview.

Wings of War

The story of Games Workshop's Aeronautica Imperialis game doesn't start with GW at all. It starts with an Italian game published in 2004 depicting World War I tactical air combat. Wings of War used an innovatory semi-board game mechanism where players chose hidden manoeuvres in advance which were revealed when a player moved a plane. The manoeuvres were depicted on the card and the player just moved his plane along whatever track was depicted, making such changes in facing as necessary.  'Extra' movement could be used in front and/or after the manoeuvre giving the player some flexibility.

Wings of War was taken up by Fantasy Flight and became a big success. They duly dropped it and it is now sold as Wings of Glory.

Aeronautica Imperialis

In 2007, Forge World published Aeronautica Imperialis, a 40K air game.

The mechanism of AI was a straight knock-off of Wings of Glory. You could move a bit, lay down a manoeuvre card and then possibly move again. The problem is that Wings of War was a pretty decent simulation of fragile wooden biplanes armed with light machine guns. An attempt to translate it into a WWII version was much less successful because WWII monoplane air warfare with cannon armed fighters was fought very differently. We will return to this point.

Aeronautica Imperialis: Wings of Vengeance

The first thing to notice is that the models in Wings of Vengeance are the wonderful plastic models. They are much bigger than the old Epic scale stuff from Forge World and are beautifully sculpted. I cannot speak too highly of them. 

What is in the rest of the box though is not a game, but a taster for a game. The playing mat is too small, the rulebook is a cut down paperback version, and no playing cards are included - there are useful counters.

The game mechanism is virtually identical to Forge World's AI, and hence Wings of War except that the 'expensive to print' movement cards are gone and replaced by a sheet depicting available manoeuvres. To make this work, the game is played on a hex grid - hence the concern about the small size of the playing area in the box. As an aside, My friend, David S. claims that in some places in the cut and paste they have forgotten to turn cm into hexes.

Now this is a problem because what worked well as a simulation of fighting canvas biplanes with Lewis guns comes over as pretty damn odd when translated into supersonic jets. For example, although height is recorded in the game, ALL manoeuvres take place in the horizontal. After Polikarpov introduced the Rata in 1933 (until the rise of BVR missile combat, anyway) manoeuvring in the vertical has been way more important for tactical combat than the horizontal. The classic tactic from 1918 SE5a to MIGs in Vietnam is fast in, shoot, fast out: he who shoots and runs away, lives to get home for tea and medals.

And here is another strange example, or at least it seems strange to me. A plane in Wings of vengeance achieves its maximum safe speed in level flight. Diving to go faster risks structural damage. That seems more suited to canvas biplanes than jet planes. Also the weapons are strangely ineffectual. Modern missiles and cannon just smash planes out of the sky but Wings of Vengeance planes can survive multiple hits - well most of them, anyway.

Okay that's enough from me for now: more reviews on the models and a test game to follow.

So first impressions?

Great models, not sure about the game - but at around £50, it is worth buying just for the models. If you end up throwing the game away and just keep the planes, you still will have got value for money.

Aeronautica Imperialis: Fighters

Dakka Jet Makes A Run On A Thunderbolt

Picked up a copy of AI at the weekend and have managed to paint up a couple of fighters.

Dakka Jet Rolling Out

The detail on these plains is fantastic. I would estimate the scale at around 1/200. This follows the current trend for bigger models: 1/200 planes rather than 1/300 - the scale of the old game.

Going In To A Vertical Scissors

The models are easy enough to assemble and the modular construction of the Dakka Jets allows a fair degree of uniqueness for each plane.

Painting is easy due to the sharp-edged nature of the panelling.

More on this to come.