Phantom Leader PBF

Hi,

I've got permission from Dan Verssen to run a play-by-forum session of his new solo game Phantom Leader . Although it's designed for solo play it looks to me like it would also make a fun co-operative experience, with individual players controlling individual pilots but making collective decisions on things like target selection and spending operations points. Dan confirmed that he's actually played a few co-op games and they've been a lot of fun.

DVG sent me a review copy of the game, so I'm willing to act as GM for the game - and possibly to fill a play gap as well if there aren't enough players and everyone trusts me to be fair . However, before I go mad picking a campaign to play, sorting out the details of co-op decision making and fiddling with ways to make it a more narrative experience, I ought to gauge some interest levels.

Anyone up for it? Sign up here

Cheers,
Matt

I'm in. I'm very familiar with HL2, but I haven't played Phantom.

Bullwinkle wrote:

I'm in. I'm very familiar with HL2, but I haven't played Phantom.

C'mon guys - I'm not going to run this unless there's quite a bit more interest.

I have Hornet Leader from back in the day but I haven't played it in forever.

This game looks really cool, if you can get enough people to play I'll definitely be reading.

What would I need to play?

I don't have the game.

Schweig! wrote:

What would I need to play?

I don't have the game.

Nothing - grab the rules from the DVG site and I'll take care of the rest.

We probably don't need too many to play: we can have two pilots each if necessary.

This is how the big B-17 game is run at the WBC--everyone is flying their "own" B-17 but serves as part of a large bombing run. It's cool as hell.

I'm in...as soon as Matt remembers that the Pope is up to play his last card in our HIS PBEM game too


(Edit: and I do own Phantom Leader..._)

With Matt, Bullwinkie and Justin this ought to be fun. I'm in.

Give me some time to read the rules please.

Schweig! wrote:

With Matt, Bullwinkie and Justin this ought to be fun. I'm in.

Give me some time to read the rules please.

Well that's 4 people, so we can attempt a short campaign with two pilots each.

I suggest we make a start with the short 1967 USAF Rolling Thunder campaign. It uses all the event cards and minimal special rules, as well as being historically the best known. I think we should keep it short for now to see how the time pans out. I've not tried this before and it's possible that it might take quite a while to resolve a single mission: this way we can find out and still realistically finish the whole campaign even if missions do take a long time to play out. If it moves quicker we can simply change goalposts and collectively decide to go for a longer campaign, and add pilots and ops points as necessary.

I suggest you all read the rulebook:
images.dvg.com/www.dvg.com/phantomrules.pdf

As regards assigning pilots, I'll take the two lowest skill levels (1 Newbie and 1 Green) and then dice off for the rest of you: high roller gets to pick 1 Skilled & 1 Green, the remainder get 2 average pilots each. You can pick your pilots from this roster:
www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/54586/pha...ader-aircraft-roster

Let me know if everyone is happy with that and we can start when Simon has read the rulebook

Works for me. Longer campaigns are more fun--you have more interesting decisions to make re: target selection, stress management, and SO point allocation--but it does make sense to see how things pan out before going that route.

If PL's like HL2, then we'll have to figure out what to do with missions that require fewer pilots (or when a player's pilots are too stressed). Probably the best choice is if everyone picks one pilot good at AtA and one at AtG (or at least competent in both).

One thing to note for those who've played the earlier games: in PL, it looks like Dan's changed the stress rules. Now you feel the effects of stress immediately instead of waiting until after the mission. That's going to make life much harder, and mean pilots sitting at home more.

You can start without me if there's a mission with only 6 pilots.

Bullwinkle wrote:

If PL's like HL2, then we'll have to figure out what to do with missions that require fewer pilots (or when a player's pilots are too stressed). Probably the best choice is if everyone picks one pilot good at AtA and one at AtG (or at least competent in both).

One of the reasons I thought the game might work PBF is that it isn't terribly bothersome for a player to have to sit out a mission - it's not like PBEM where they have to watch all the other emails bounce back & forth. Besides since I'm running & playing the game it's not going to worry me if both my pilots stay home - which is partly why it makes sense for me to have the weakest pilots. So I don't see this being too much of an issue.

Actually, anyone mind if we do USN instead? I've got the USAF counters punched and have been playing those missions myself, so it'd make a change to do USN.

If everyone's happy with the arrangements so far, I'm planning to kick off next Tuesday.

dooo eeeeetttt