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Aeronautica Imperialis Review: I Love This Game

When I got into X-Wing years ago I fell into it hard, buying all the little ships and one too many of the big ships (I just had to get that Corvette), and I loved the game. But X-Wing had two fatal flaws. The first, and the one that most people will agree with, is that 2nd Edition virtually wrecked the game. X-Wing was never the same after the new edition. But the bigger problem, in my mind, was that X-Wing was so overloaded with special rules, extra cards, unique powers and weapons, that it was hard to keep track of everything–and we usually played on a big ping pong table where there should have been plenty of room to organize cards.

Aeronautica Imperialis, another aircraft dogfighting game, comes into the scene with a different approach. The rules are similar but streamlined. The special rules come from the scenarios, not the random crap that you assign to your ships. And because of this, it takes a third the time to set up the game (seriously, shuffling through those stacks of X-Wing special rules took forever when you’re creating your force) and the game itself moves faster, can be completed quicker, and you can play four games in the time it takes X-Wing to play two.

That’s not to say that Aeronautica Imperialis isn’t without its flaws, because it has some serious Games Workshop-level rules problems, but I enjoy it SO much more. When we get down to the final score, my rating is going to be lower than you might expect, but we’ll figure that out when we get there.

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Aeronautica Imperialis Review: Lore

The lore of Aeronautica Imperials should be very obvious to anyone who has ever played Warhammer 40k, because this is a Warhammer 40k game–just on a much larger scale (or smaller scale. The planes are smaller scale, the battle is bigger in scope. Anyway.) Anyone who has a passing knowledge with Warhammer 40k should easily grasp the various races, and even recognize some of the planes in the game, because a lot of them (not all) are lifted right off the tabletop.

What will be less apparent in the lore is the description of the dogfighting of the Ork Air Waaagh and the Imperial Navy. There has been so much written about troops on the ground in Warhammer 40k, but very little written about the flyers. (One notable exception is the excellent Double Eagle, by Dan Abnett, which is a sort of Warhammer 40k Top Gun. But unless you’ve read books that are specific to this you’re not going to know a lot of the lore of the flight command or the Imperial Navy or anything like that.

Now, if you are a rational person who has played Warhammer 40k games before, then your first thought with Aeronautica Imperialis is that there’s got to be lore and fluff in the Aeronautica Imperialis rulebook, right? I’m sorry to report that it’s just not the case. My review of this game is based on Aeronautica Imperialis: Wings of Vengeance (Buy from Amazon), but to the best of my understanding Aeronautica Imperialis: Skies of Fire (Buy from Amazon) and Aeronautica Imperialis: Wrath of Angels (Buy from Amazon) follow the same structure: they come with enough planes to play, enough tokens and dice to play, a battle mat with hex squares, and a 36 page rule booklet. There’s not a lot of room in a 36 page rule booklet to get into the rules of the game let alone the lore of the game, but do they try?

No. There is exactly one (1) page of lore at the front of the rules, and that is a VERY generic thing written from a 100,000 foot view talking about various factions dogfighting for glory and war, and it’s very blah.

It’s also worth mentioning here that while the very next page proclaims that Aeronautica Imperialis: Wings of Vengeance is a “complete game in a box” it is… lacking. This kind of veers into gameplay but I’m including it in lore: there is only one mission included in the entire box. The rest of the game, we are to assume, is just dogfighting for the sake of dogfighting. And that seems like a majorly wasted opportunity.

“But wait!” you cry. “Didn’t you say you love this game?” Yes.

Aeronautica Imperialis Review: Gameplay

The gameplay of Aeronautica Imperialis is stellar. It really couldn’t be better, in my opinion. It is all of the stuff that we love about X-Wing dogfighting stripping away the extraneous rules, and jumping into the realm of three dimensions! Yes, Aeronautica Imperialis care whether you are above or below the other planes, and if affects your speed and your stability, as well as which guns you can shoot. This is something that X-Wing never cared about.

Every plane in Aeronautica Imperialis is on a base which keeps track of two important stats: their speed and their elevation. When you move you can increase or lower your speed, and you can increase or lower your elevation, and it’s all part of the dogfight–and it matters for the next turn. If you are going full speed but lower your elevation then you can actually increase your speed by one (because you’re flying down) but you may start to break up because you’re going too fast. And if you’re going at minimum speed and increase elevation then you lose speed and you just may stall and spin out. It’s an interesting new game mechanic, and I think it adds a ton of fun to the gameplay.

Combine elevation with the guns you can use. Every gun has an arc, so guns mounted on the front of your plane have to shoot relatively straightforward. But your planes may have other guns, like turrets on the top (as with the Ork Fighta Bommer) and those can only be fired if you’re on the same elevation as your target or below them.

(It’s worth pointing out here that Aeronautica Imperialis: Wings of Vengeance has bombers, both the Ork Air Waaagh Fighta Bommer and the Imperial Navy‘s Marauder Bomber, but the flimsy 36 page rule book never gives you scenarios in which bombs are used, they’re obviously wanting you to buy more books.)

And while we’re on the subject of buying more books, there are the three starter sets to the game: Wings of Vengeance (Imperial Navy vs Orks), Skies of Fires (Astra Militarum vs T’au), and Wrath of Angels (Adeptus Astartes vs the Eldar). But ALL of these starter sets come with the 36 page rulebook (altered slightly because they contain different planes). To get the ACTUAL rule book you need to go to Games Workshop website and buy the Rynn’s World Air War Campaign Book, and the Aeronautica Imperialis: Taros Air War Campaign Book (and the Aeronautica Imperialis Companion if you want the Necron rules and further Aeldari rules. And these are organized really stupidly: Rynn’s World Air War book us ePub only, while Taros Air War is ePub or hardcopy, and the Companion is hardcopy only. If Games Workshop was intentionally trying to make it hard to play this game, they wouldn’t have to do much more.) (It’s also worth pointing out that in typical Games Workshop fashion these books are not available on Amazon, but only through their own ePub store.)

But I love this game, even still.

The orders are very similar to the X-Wing orders, where you give your plane a preset flight plan before hand (marked by a chip placed face-down and that has a 1-8 on it), and when it is your turn to go—the game has alternate activations, chosen by the players—you flip over your chip and it will show which maneuver you’re going to attempt. Some of these turn, some do loops so you’re facing the opposite way, some fly straight.

The reason that this is superior to X-Wing, in my mind, is threefold: first: not every plane comes with its own extra bulky piece of equipment that keeps track of movement. Second, therefore not every single plane has its own unique set of movements, thus streamlining the game. And third, there are still decisions to be made when you take your turn. You’re not completely locked into an exact formation, but rather you have a general order that you can alter as the need arises: if you choose that you’re going to “Swoop” that’s a turn partway through your move, but you get to decide how far through your movement that turn takes place, and you get options about where you end your facing and what you do with elevation increases or decreases.

What all of this does is make dogfights that offer a TON of possibilities, and while you lose some of the importance in that pre-order phase (though not all) you get so much more opportunity to organize your aerial combat against enemy aircraft.

Aeronautica Imperialis Review: Hobby

The hobby side of Aeronautica Imperialis is a little harder to nail down, because there just isn’t very much of it–but what there is is great. I had an absolute ball painting my Imperial Navy and Ork Airwaagh Squadron and I even ordered some more planes so that I could continue painting these fun aircraft. The problem is that they’re not exactly made to be award-level miniatures (I mean, you can paint them really well, but there’s only so much you can do), and then the game only has six to eight planes per side during any aerial combat.

That said, I can absolutely see myself going DEEP down the rabbit hole and buying up all of the many kinds of aircraft available, be they Imperial Navy, Adeptus Astartes, Ork Air Waaagh, Astra Militarum, T’au, Necron, or Eldar. The planes really are fun to paint, and the game really is fun to play. And, unlike X-Wing, once you know the 8 different maneuvers aircraft can take, understand the importance of altitude and direction, it’s really easy to change from one faction to another without much trouble.

This is not to say that each faction plays the same—they definitely don’t. Not all aircraft have access to the 8 different maneuvers, and there are very definite playstyles to each faction: for example, Orks want to get right in close to you and deal out as much death as they can in your face, whereas the Imperial Navy has long-range guns, moves slower, and is more content to shoot it out at a distance.

One hobby note: for being tiny little models, there are an awful lot of little bits, so you need to be careful not to lose them. On some of mine I just decided I wasn’t going to attach the bombs to the underside because they’d never be seen anyway.

My Overall Review of Aeronautica Imperialis?

Lore: 2/10 for the core set because there’s just not much here, but 8/10 when you consider how much you already know about Warhammer 40k

Gameplay: Despite my few reservations, I adore the gameplay here, and I’m giving this an easy 9/10.

Hobby: There isn’t much to be done, but what little there is is great fun. It gets a 7/10 from me.

If you’ve played X-Wing and liked it, or if you want to get into a tactical aerial combat game, you owe it to yourself to try Aeronautica Imperialis.