Hi All,
Here are a few photos of yesterday’s Next Gen balloon game at the Darien library. During WWI, both sides used observation balloons to track enemy movements and guide artillery. Planes would try to shoot these balloons down. In our game, the German team had to try and shoot down a British observation balloon. The British team had to defend it. Thanks to Cliff Brunken for giving me a brief summary of the balloon rules while at PAX Unplugged.
The kids have played this game before without a balloon, so they picked up the rules right away and had a great time. If a player got shot down, we just recycled the plane so they could keep playing. We had 10 players, so there were 6 on the German team, and 4 on the British tram. Alicia was probably the most skillful player, shooting down at least 5 German planes, and never getting shot down herself.
But the Germans finally were able to scoot through the defending British planes to start hammering the balloon. Even though they lost many more planes than the British, they finally shot down the balloon before it could be lowered and won the game.
At the end, I played a video for the group of a WWI dogfighting battle with balloons from the Red Baron movie, and they got to see the actual planes that they were playing with. Next month, we will play the WWI Trench Wars game. They like that one as well.
I also included the “snack break” photo !
Best regards and enjoy!
John
