FIGHTING WINGS Support Centre

WHAT IS FIGHTING WINGS?

Fighting Wings is a series of games on the topic of World War 2 Air Combat. The first game, Over the Reich, is focused on the European Theatre of Operations in 1943-1945. Rules cover air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, and scenarios vary in scale from one-on-one aerial combat to cross-Europe strategic bombing missions. The second game, Achtung-Spitfire!, uses the same ruleset, but includes aircraft, scenarios and missions for the European theatre in the years 1940-1943.

The third game in the series, Whistling Death, covers the entire Pacific War and primarily features aircraft from the USN and IJN, with a few USAAF and JAAF planes for variety. It includes updated and expanded flight rules, and new rules covering Air-Naval actions and night-fighting. With this rules set, the player can recreate any type of aerial action, whether air-to-air, air-to-ground, or air-to-sea, by day or by night.

WEBSITES

Uncle Ted's WW2 Air Combat Pages

Mitchell Schwartz, aka "Uncle Ted", has produced some extra ADCs at his "Hangar of Homebrew", which he has made available for download. These expand the possible conflicts that can be recreated beyond those covered in the published games.

Fighting Wings Scenarios and Missions

My own site. An attempt to complement Mitch's effort by providing extra scenarios and missions to add on to the system, and where possible involving rarer types and/or marks of aircraft. Where possible, I have used the aircraft produced by Mitch.

Airpower Counters

Also part of my own site. To support the ADCs printed by JD Webster in his Airpower magazine, I have produced three pages of counters covering all of these aircraft that are yet to be published in a Fighting Wings module. I have also included some alternate camouflage schemes for some existing counters.

Clash of Arms

As the publishers of the Fighting Wings series, Clash of Arms own site is a good place to go to purchase the games.

ConsimWorld

ConsimWorld is a web-based discussion forum for wargames, accessible through the 'Forum' link on the front page. It is a subscription site to make a post, but read-only access is free. Forums of interest are:

Boardgaming - Individual Game or Series Discussion - Era: World War II (GAME SERIES) - Fighting Wings (CoA); and
Boardgaming - Game Theme & Other Era Discussions - Air Combat.

BoardGameGeek

BoardGameGeek is a general site for boardgames of all types, including wargames. There is only minimal activity here for Fighting Wings at present, but this should increase over time.

Web-Grognards

A general wargming site, has some links to other on-line resources for the Fighting Wings player.

YAHOOGROUPS MAILING LISTS

There are a couple of YahooGroups mailing lists of interest to the Fighting Wings player.

AIRPOWER: General discussion of Air Combat wargames, and items of news relevant to such games. Anything to do with Air Combat wargames is fair game for discussion, including games from all publishers and covering all eras.
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Airpower mailing list
FIGHTING_WINGS_GAME: Run by JD Webster himself, this is a forum specifically for the Fighting Wings series of games. An excellent way to meet other players of the game series from all around the world, and get yourself involved in one or more of the many PBeM games that are in progress at any one time! Even if you have no interest in any other other link on this page, I recommend joining this list if you are a Fighting Wings player. Click here to join Fighting_Wings_Games
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Fighting_Wings_Games

QUICK START RULES

JD Webster has produced a "Quick Start" set of rules. He has also given permission for these rules to be distributed freely, electronically or hard-copy, although they obviously must be distributed in an unchanged form, may not be sold for reward, all rights (including copyright) still rest with JD Webster, etc, etc. These are a slightly simplified version of the full Whistling Death rules, designed to give players a feel for the rules and how the game plays.

In support of JD's efforts, I have produced a small booklet of scenarios for the two aircraft types he has included with the Quick Start Rules, the F4F-4 Wildcat and the A6M2 Zero. At the back of the scenario booklet is an Example of Play to help new players learn the system (Note: this example was written for the first version of the Quick Start rules and has not been updated yet. As a result, there are some errors in rules application within it, but it is still a useful guide for the game flow. I hope to update and expand this in the near future). I have also produced a file with a small mapsheet and aircraft counters, giving you everything you need to play except a 10-sided die. Even if you don't like my scenarios, you can always use the map and counters for your own combats!

I have made all these files available as a single zipped download, the "Quick Start Pack", including the current Quick Start rules, the Aircraft Data Cards for the F4F-4 Wildcat and the A6M2 Zero (from the original version 1 Quick Start file), my scenario book, and my map and counter file. Alternatively, you may download another zipped file which has just the Quick Start rules on their own.

	Download the complete Quick Start pack (zipped PDF files, 1,257 KB), including the current Quick Start Rules (version 2.1, June 2006), Aircraft Data Cards for the F4F-4 Wildcat and A6M2 Zero, a scenario booklet with an example of play, and a map and counter file.
	Download the current version of the Quick Start Rules (version 2.1, June 2006; zipped PDF, 649 KB).

LOGSHEETS

Since most scenarios are 20 turns long, and the logsheet that comes with Whistling Death is only 15 turns long, I did my own 20-turn version to cover a complete scenario. It's other notable feature is the extra space allowed for writing the hex location, useful for when you are on a hexside.

Copies are available here in A4 Size and US Letter Size.

WHISTLING DEATH ERRATA

Unfortunately, no game is perfect, nor are the production processes! JD Webster himself described the situation with Whistling Death in the first release of errata:

"Well, as we all know, no game is ever free of errata. Whistling Death has been out in public now for about 10 months and the following is what we've spotted so far. This is the first official errata issue for the game. The good news is that none of it is a game breaker and that, for a game of this magnitude, there is surprisingly little errata."

The current complete Version 1.1 errata file can be downloaded here. (Zip file, 428 KB).

Note: the above file was updated in April 2005 although it has a January 2005 date. It also includes a corrected version of the A6M5c Zero ADC that was included with the original errata file.