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I attended the demonstration today hosted by the Northwest Historical Miniature Gaming Society and led by RB and Brian from WOTC.  First of all I must say the setting was perfect as it took place directly underneath a SR-71 Blackbird and many WW2 era planes were nearby.  The bad part was I forgot to bring a camera and my phone wasn't good enough in the dim light.  The SR-71 cast's quite a shadow.  The NHMGS members took pictures and will upload them to their site later.  

We played on 4 standard size A&A maps but used what looked like a 4" hex.  The map was decorated to show a forested European setting.  The planes are all 15mm and look huge compared to the land and sea planes I'm used too.  They were all nicely painted and had a good feel to them.  A quick side note is that stats for adapting the planes to Axis and Allies land miniatures are included.

The starter set includes 6 planes and all 31 cards for the set while a booster comes with 2 planes only.  The first set is mostly based in the European theater with a few Japanese planes.  When I arrived a demo was already underway which gave me a chance to see everything in action.

The game overall was fairly easy to understand and play but had plenty of complexity.  Each plane has a corresponding stat card with a point value, attack ranges from 0-3, armor, vital armor, hull, pilot stats and abilities.  Planes had pilots from rookie to ace which coupled with the flying abilities of the plane created a lot variation.   Each person picked two planes and were given a brief rundown of the rules.

Each plane was nicely painted and attached to a hexagonal base.  The base has 1-6 printed on it so you can keep track of your altitude and the plane is attached with a swivel so you can show defensive banking, climbing and diving.  How you positioned your plane was equally important to what maneuvers you picked.

Flying depended on your chosen plane speed and whatever maneuvers you wanted to undertake.  Easy maneuvers could be performed with no rolls but hard maneuvers needed a ability check.  The stat cards had your ability scores which if you added your 2D6 dice roll had to equal 10+ to complete the maneuver.  If you failed you had a second maneuver you had to perform.  Either way you continued your movement to your desired plane speed.  

Initiative determined who moved and attacked first.  The loser of initiative had to move one of there planes first.  The winner then moved one of there planes.  The loser moved their last plane and the winner moved their last plane.  The loser picked one of their planes to attack first and then alternated as above.  If you destroy a plane it's dead and doesn't get to fire back which is the only good thing about losing initiative.  I just happened to lose initiative every round I played.  

Attacking is based off of the 7 hexes clustered in front of you.  Each plane has a certain number of dice to roll depending on how far away the target is.  This can be modified by a number of conditions including altitude, defensive banking, quarter attacked and quality of pilot.  6's count as two hits just like WaS.  The planes I used had 3-4 armor, 7 vital and 3 hull.  

I happened to confetti the first plane I shot at (8 successes on 8 dice) but lost my second plane a couple turns later.  The winner was determined by who had shot down the most points of enemy planes once the game became a 1v1.  

All in all it was an easy game to learn but it had a lot of complexity and further advanced rules we didn't worry about.  All in all I'll probably pick up a starter and go from there depending on what my local gaming group does.  We just have to wait till February now as the whole thing has been pushed back till then due to the initial Zero being undersized.  

I'd like to thank the NHMGS, Richard and Brian for a wonderful demonstration.  The Museum of Flight was an awesome venue and if anyone gets a chance they should go visit.  It's not quite in the same time frame but the WW1 exhibit was my favorite.  

Cheers
Ober