The RAF Expansion pack is the first of what I hope will be many. There are six packs planned for release this year, one each for the RAF, Luftwaffe, USAAF, Japanese and Soviets, plus a "secret" sixth which I'm sworn to secrecy over. Unlike previous releases for Blood Red Skies these are card sets only, and remarkably for a modern games company Warlord have decided to release these without linking you in to using their models - in fact some models that correspond to these cards are only available at the moment from third party manufacturers such as Armaments in Miniature. Of course I expect Warlord will try and back-fill the range to cover them at some point in the future, but until then this is a brave move that should be applauded because it recognises the game needs more variety to thrive than they can cater for at the moment.
So what's in these expansions I hear you ask? Each set contains six new data cards for aircraft, plus the associated Trait cards to play them. There are also some Doctrine and Theatre cards, plus some Equipment cards. the Doctrine and Theatre cards are a mix of old and new, but the Equipment cards are a whole new addition to BRS that allow further tweaking of planes and their stats to represent design changes or special equipment. In the RAF set the obvious example is the Malcolm Hood, which can be fitted to all planes in your squadron at a cost in points. In real life this was a new cockpit canopy that helped improve visibility and was fitted to a number of RAF fighters, and similarly in BRS this new equipment reflects that by making planes with this equipment harder to outmanoeuvre - its a nice touch.
Back to the data cards. As I said there are six double sided cards included in the pack, in the usual BRS format. These are the Spitfire Vb, Spitfire XIV, Typhoon, Tempest, Wellington and Lancaster. They also come with the relevant Trait cards to allow you to play them, so Tight Turn, Great Dive etc etc, so the total pack includes 6 Data cards, 22 Trait cards, 3 Theatre, 3 Doctrine and 2 Equipment, plus a card to explain how equipment works in the game - a neat way to introduce this new idea into the game.
Production quality is good, with the usual art deco style.
There are a couple of niggles. The Agile card is included for completeness and to allow players to stat up and play less common planes, but the one in this pack has the old wording and layout which is being changed in the next set (Germans). It's still usable but not as nice.
The other issue that has been raised is duplication of Trait cards. It's possible if you have several different BRS Squadron boxes that you will already have enough of some of the Trait cards included here - Tight Turn for example, so there is an element of duplication going on. I understand that, but can't see how it can be avoided. On balance I think any criticism on the duplication question is not really valid - complaints would be far more vocal if there were Data cards that you could not use because the Traits were not included. Damned if you do, damned if you don't I suppose.
And the Lancaster Data card says Lancaster MkIII and it really should be Lancaster B MkIII but I'm 100% certain no sleep will be lost there.
So all in all a really useful expansion to BRS. Price is £10 which I think is not bad at all in today's market. If you play BRS and the RAF in particular this is a good set to buy, particularly if you have recently, like the RAF did historically, ran into the new Fw190 and find your early Spitfires no longer cut the mustard. Never fear, the Mk IX Spit (now released as a Squadron box) will put the Hun back in his place, or at least restore parity, and the MkXIV is just superb.
Cheers
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