Bommerz over da Sulphur River (from here on "Bommerz") is a new board wargame from Games Workshop (price £ 14). Set in the Warhammer 40K Science Fiction universe, Bommerz simulates an attack on vital Imperial held bridges by intrepid "Orky Boys" in "Orky Fighta-Bommerz". Still reading? Well, it's unfortunate that GW have trouble with their spelling, but the game systems they come up with are usually fairly interesting, and this boardgame has the added bonus of being for 1-5 players: so, there's a solo play option!
Starting with the box, which is the least important playing item but (probably) the most important selling item. This is, for a company who seem to pretty much understand marketing, incredibly dull: plain grey, with an unclear piece of artwork it hardly jumps off the shelf and says "buy me" (although, to be fair, I obviously did!!). The interior contents are better. There are 6 Epic scale miniatures, four fighter bombers and 2 Imperial Thunderbolt Interceptors. The "Orky Fighta-Bommers" are reminiscent of early jet fighters (Sabre's, Mig 15's and Me 262's) whilst the Thunderbolt Interceptors are more like a cross between a 1930's world airspeed record contender and an A10-Warthog (if you can imagine that). As you'd expect from Games Workshop the miniatures are well cast and well detailed. Each plane has a clear perspex flying stand.
The board comes in three sections, which can be linked together with plastic clips which are provided. The board shows a series of winding canyons with flight paths indicated through them. Movement is from circle to circle along these flight paths, some circles are marked with an Imperial Eagle and can contain defences and 2 circles are the heavily defended bridges. The board's quite nice, although I had a bit of trouble at first with the contrast between the background and the flight paths.
The basic idea of the game is that 1 or 2 waves of Orky Bommerz fly through the canyons and then dive bomb the bridges, if they can avoid the defences. If it were a film it'd either be 633 Squadron or the assault on the Death Star from Star Wars. Movement is controlled by a dice throw, with fast moving aircraft better able to avoid flak, but more likely to crash into the rock spires which litter the canyon. In the standard (2-5 player) game, one person controls the defences and the other players have one or more attacking fighta-bommerz.
In the solo game the defences are randomly selected and there are more of them, making it quite a difficult prospect for the attacking player. As the defences are randomly selected and the defence counters are placed face down there's the added problem of flying into defences either too fast or too slow. Combat is a simple D6 comparison against speed for anti-aircraft fire, and a straight roll off for dog fights. It isn't possible to gang up in dog fights either - although this might make an interesting optional rule: if involved in a dogfight and there is a friendly aircraft either on the movement circle ahead or behind then get a +1 on the die roll. That'll teach them to stick to their wing man in future! The rules are so simple that there's a lot of scope to tinker.
There are various levels of victory depending on how many bridges are destroyed and whether one or two waves of attackers were used (suffice to say that a Major Ork Victory - both bridges destroyed by one wave of fighta-bommerz - is not easy to achieve). Optional rules suggested in the designer's notes such as "scrolling" the playing boards or having different types of fighter (fast and light or slow and tougher) also add a little variety.
Overall, it's not a game that'll set the world on fire, but in fairness it didn't set out to be. Against a live opponent it's a good fun "beer & pretzels" or end of the evening game (could be used for a quick league game in a club), and solo it's tough enough to win to keep the interest for a while. If you play Epic, you can always reuse the figures in tabletop games.
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