BIG Aeronautica Imperialis Reveal From Gen Con 2019!
August 1, 2019 by brennon
Building on their array of specialist games (for want of a better phrase), Games Workshop has been showing off the newest high-flying addition to the library, Aeronautica Imperialis.
Whilst not a new entry into the Games Workshop library, as this is a revamp of an older title by Forge World, this does give new gamers a different glimpse of the Warhammer 40,000 world. You will become pilots for either the Imperium in their Thunderbolts or the great Orkish horde in their Dakkajets. Presented in a much smaller scale than you're probably used to seeing for Warhammer 40,000 you will be battling it out across a hex-based game space.
The miniatures for the game are multi-part plastic flyers, each of which are highly detailed. You know that folks are going to go above and beyond with these miniatures, painting them up to suit specific sectors of the Imperial armed forces and of course plenty of personalisation too.
This isn't going to be a flash-in-the-pan game either. The core box will offer up the forces of the Imperium and Orks but there will be plenty of expansions coming your way which will build on these forces and also throw new ones into the mix too.
Whilst this doesn't particular spark any need to instantly pre-order from me I can imagine a lot of fans of the old game are going to be jumping on this. There are no doubt fond memories of playing this game back in the day and it will be good to see just how much of that classic has been transported over into the new board-based version.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
"I can imagine a lot of fans of the old game are going to be jumping on this..."
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Maybe we will finally get a plastic Thunderhawk Gunship 🙂
Sweet. I love any game that can tie into a 40k campaign. Definitely a purchase for me.
As a big fan of the original, I’m disappointed with this, unfortunately.
The Thunderbolt, to my eyes, doesn’t look in scale to the Marauder.
You can’t really see it in the pictures above, but it seems more obvious from the video on GW Community website.
The hex based nature of the board, though understandable in today’s design space of streamlining, is also a bit of a put off for me.
I was looking at getting into Warcry, but it lacks the level of customisation I was after, so I told myself I’d wait on AI…. And now…hmmm.
Sorry for the downer post.
You might find a bit more customisation in the likes of Kill Team and Necromunda if you’ve not tried those yet.
Cheers Ben, I have Kill Team….Hope to use the 40K Hobby Weekend to finally build a team. I have the starts to one or two.
I think what I really what is the old “Path to Glory” 40K edition – I have the PDF, so I could go that route. And I have the 40K 8th ed rulebook.
And really there is nothing preventing me from dragging out the 1st Ed of AI to play.
They are in scale – look at the bases compared to the flyer size. It’s just a bad photoshop job that makes them look the same size
I was mainly going by what I saw in the video as I detected that the photos have the issue you describe.
Do you mean lack of customisation in the warband for WarCry? Like with Shadespire?
Sort of, but I haven’t looked at Shadespire closely.
But I think I have dragged the discussion off topic, being about AI.
Having Tyranid faction there with Harpies, Hive Crones and maybe even Harridan would be awesome (yeah I know that it will never happen).
Looks nice, I wonder if Blood Red Skies has had an impact on this coming out.
Hexes ?
Why ?
Couldn’t they have *eh* copied the Xwing or Wings of Glory mechanics ?
At least the scale suits them better than the 40k regular game …
The original had a combination of tape measure and cards for movement, if I remember correctly. It certainly predated X-Wing and I think maybe Wings of Glory.
I’m assuming hexes for simplicity’s sake.
If they are retaining some of the mechanics of the original, the two dials seen on the hex base, and yes the original had hex bases, are for Height and speed.
Manoeuvres could affect the speed of the plane. Execute on that reduced your speed too much and you were at a low speed, the craft could stall and crash.
AI is/was a brilliant game! Sometimes even a really big table was not enough, but I like the idea of it being a bit more ‘confined’. The FW minis were stunning. Their Chaos and Eldar aircraft were some of the most outstanding models I have ever used for gaming. The Eldar planes had swing-wings and so did the minis.
I could be tempted…
@hobbyhub – the minis are just to show you what is where. Better than counters!
I prefer wargames where all pieces are in scale with one another….
Star Wars: Armada was the one exception I really made for that, but it lost me in other ways.
I think I have at least 3 factions for AI and I have paint on at least one of those 😉
I got some of FW’s epic tank range, along with some GW plastic Space Marines. I put the later on some spare FoW bases to as ground attack targets.
As for counters – to each their own.
Ah, the latest in GWs long line of “Whoops, we killed off games unnecessarily and other companies capitalised on them so lets panic-release a new version” games.
There’s been a lot of personnel changes since these games were killed off and GW is a very different company from the one it was then. The guys calling the shots now might never have culled the range.
Also, GW’s financials seem to be steadily on the rise so I’m not sure why they’d “panic release” anything.
Absolutely spot on. GW don’t need to be panicking about anything right now. It’s looking like profits are up yet again. I don’t even think they’re trying to steal the crown from X-wing either.
GW spams games like mad these days.
Leaves me rather cold.
I really, really hope they actually support this.
the previous incarnation was a really cool version, but it could use an update and more than one or two models for some races
I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to resist this once it comes out.
I do uave mixed feelings on hexes, as I am a devout fan of Xwing. However, hexes do reduce a lot of the “fiddlyness” that comes from the more freeform movement. Some of our group are less dexterous, so we’ve had to weight the bases and use a thicker neoprene play surface to keep fighters on target, as it were.
Still, as usual the models look great at this scale. Not sure if I can get my group into it, as we are still converting over to xwing 2.0
Very much looking forward to this. The low model count for me means its a great side project to have and the small footprint is so convenient.
Right into the Dakkazone!
I want to see some Eldar and Necrons! By the way, is there not going to be a Gen Con 2019 live blog? I figured I’d see sone awesome coverage here by now.
great models will work well for adaptus titanicus.