B-29 Superfortress: Bombers Over Japan, 1944-1945
– First Look!

frontier wars 728x90 KS

The shrink comes off the box~

Michael Eckenfels, 04 May 2016

ed note: Michael sent this to us a looooooong while ago, and we misplaced it.  Totally not his fault.

001 Cover

Obviously, the box, but what’s cool is it is new and still in shrink-wrap. That’s cool, considering the game is a few years old at this point.

002 Back Cover

The back cover. I do like the design of this box.

 

003 Open

Shrink wrap off and box open now…and I’m perturbed to see the manual is not lined up properly. Not a big deal…it’s just one of those things.

 

004 Books

Two large books: Rules and Charts. The Charts book is pretty obnoxious and is in a similar vein to Picket Duty, a game I reviewed previously and indicated some consternation as to how it might be better with individual pages (as B-17 Queen of the Skies did). To be fair, there’s a LOT of them, and individual pages might be a pain in the rear. You’d probably run out of colors if you tried color-coding that many pages.

 

005 Counters

The counter sheet – there’s two, actually, in this game – are nice and thick and sturdy. Plus, good-looking too. I like that there’s not a ton of counters in this game.

 

006 Oops

I spoke too soon…but no big deal. I barely moved the sheet and it collapsed like a Hapsburg government, spilling counters everywhere. Guess I’ll be sorting and bagging them now!

 

007 Map

The main map looks good, but I don’t like that it’s thin and paper-like. If I play this a lot and have to pack it and unpack it constantly (a reality in my house, unfortunately), the creases will wear in the map in no time. A mounted board would have been much nicer. Had I paid much more for this, I would have been more disappointed, but all in all, it looks good and isn’t overwhelming with the details.

 

008 Charts and Stuff

And there’s plenty of other stuff to look at. The B-29 crew placement chart is cool, reminding me of B-17. The other pages, such as the Mission Log, must be photocopied before use. Another reality of keeping costs down, of course. I’m still not used to it, but hey…that’s why copiers at your day job were made, right?

 

009 Counters Close-Up

The counters look great. Here are some of the possible Japanese attackers, color-coded to indicate the level of their pilot’s experience.

 

010 Edwina Back In Bowl

Now I put ‘Edwina back in bowl’ (bonus points if you know what I’m talking about). It’s a great thing when all the pieces go back into the box and the box can close without being overstuffed.

There is an AAR for this game forming up on the GrogHead forums – go check it out in the Tabletop AAR section if you have a chance.


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