There are three new enhancments going into effect on Sunday, January 22:

• Burst and Damage Bonus system
• Heavy Cannons
• Wingman Deck

Burst and Damage Bonus System

In the original system, an aircraft's armament was translated into a Burst rating. Since the Burst rating only varied between 0 and 2, it tended to make all aircraft look more or less the same in this area. For example, the Spitfire I and the Bf-109E both had Burst rating of 1, even though the Spitfire was armed with .30 caliber machine guns while the Bf-109E had 20 mm cannons.

The new system adds a new rating called the “Damage Bonus”, which modifies the damage value of a card (In My Sights or Out of the Sun). The Damage Bonus will vary between -1 and +2, depending on the destructive power of the aircraft's armaments. For example, the Spitfire now has a Burst rating of 2, but has a Damage Bonus of -1, while the Bf-109E has a Burst rating of 0 and a Damage Bonus of +1. In general, you can equate more machine guns with higher Burst ratings, and more cannons with higher Damage Bonus ratings.

When an aircraft with a Damage Bonus plays an In My Sights or Out of the Sun card, you will see something similar to that shown below.

If the attack card succeeds in causing damage, you will see something similar to this:

Heavy Cannons

Some aircraft were armed with particularly destructive cannons (30 mm and up) which frequently resulted in devasting structural damage when they hit. In order to account for this, some aircraft will have a “Heavy Cannon” rating. Each point of Heavy Cannon will translate into a 10% chance of any “In My Sights” card being converted into the dreaded “In My Sights 2-Burst: Fuel Tank Hit” card. This conversion takes place at the time the card is drawn from the deck. For example, if a leader with a Heavy Cannon rating of 1 draws 3 cards from the deck, and one of the cards is an “In My Sights 1-Burst: 1-Damage”, there is a 10% chance that the cards will be converted into an “In My Sights 2-Burst: Fuel Tank Hit” card.

For you guys into probabilities, assume that you are drawing the first card from a newly shuffled deck. The chance of drawing an “In My Sights 2-Burst: Fuel Tank Hit” is 1 out of 76, or about a 1.3% chance. If your aircraft has a Heavy Cannon rating of 1, your chances increase to about 4.5 %. That's still not a huge number, but it is a significant improvement. And if you were flying an Me-262 jet, you would have a Heavy Cannon rating of 4, which would translate into nearly a 13% chance.

One other thing to note on Heavy Cannons. In a couple of cases, we gave a Heavy Cannon rating of 1 to aircraft that didn't actually have 30 mm cannons, but they did have a large number of smaller cannons and/or machine guns. For example, the Fw-190 and the Mosquito both have enough cannons and machine guns that a 1 Burst and +1 Damage Bonus doesn't quite cover their destructive power. But giving them a 1 Burst and +2 Damage Bonus was way too powerful. So, we gave them a 1 Burst, +1 Damage Bonus and 1 Heavy Cannon rating as a compromise.

The Wingman Deck

A number of players have noted that when pilots get to high XP levels and are flying the best aircraft available to their nationality, the wingman can be particularly deadly because they are drawing quite a few cards, and they have no burst limit. Either they will shoot you down outright, or they will drain your leader's hand of so many cards that he becomes easy prey to the enemy leader. Consequently, many players believe that they must go after the enemy wingman first and try to knock him out of the picture before going after the leader.

We decided that it would improve the game if the wingman were made a little less offensive and a little more defensive, particularly with the Damage Bonus enhancement mentioned above. The solution that we came up with was to have wingmen draw from a separate deck from leaders and bombers. This deck has about 25% fewer “In My Sights” cards in it than the standard deck. Consequently, wingmen should have fewer opportunities for attacking, and therefore should be drawing more Maneuvering and defensive cards.

One side effect of this change is that the wingmen have one “In My Sights 2-Burst: Fuel Tank Hit” in their deck, and the leaders and bombers have one in their deck as well. When combined with the Heavy Cannon enhancement, it means that you could see more of this nasty card in your games.