Phantom Leader PBF

Gringo with 8 CBUs is pretty much a guaranteed wipe out of the convoy.

Yes, all three targets had politics of 4+. They were a Railyard, Naval Base and an Airfield.

I've let a rogue target card into the deck - 23 isn't available in this campaign. Apologies. The re-draw is:

Which has just as poor a level of air cover, so we should probably go with that. 9VP still gets us a good rating.

No I mean, you've only given us a choice of two targets. Was the 3rd one a politics 4+ card?

Ah right, well I had to re-draw anyway.

Unfortunately if you pass a day without a mission all your counters slip back one left. So we're back to just two targets again.

I think we should go with the AAA sites.

So we're only up against two S-60s and two Zu-23-2s? Seems easy. We only need Showtime and Easy Money carrying rockets and CBUs (or Napalm . Maybe add another plane carrying rockets and AIM-9s in case something goes wrong. Buick perhaps?

Schweig! wrote:

I think we should go with the AAA sites.

So we're only up against two S-60s and two Zu-23-2s? Seems easy. We only need Showtime and Easy Money carrying rockets and CBUs (or Napalm . Maybe add another plane carrying rockets and AIM-9s in case something goes wrong. Buick perhaps?

We need the extra plane just in case: some events add bandits or sites to the target, and others attack you with bandits or sites on the way to and from the target. So yeah, take Showtime and Easy Money and another plane with a mix of AtA and AtG to handle emergencies.

More than that, remember each plane can only attack a single target each turn. So ideally, we'll want to hit 3 targets in the approach area and the last in the final turn, with extra ordnance to account for misses and bad event draws.

I'm not sure it's even worth doing a map for this one, especially since the center bandit will be rendered inactive thanks to our Intel rating. Should be a pushover.

I assume we're just going to send in our best pilots on this, with a little AtA cover just in case of emergencies? Three out of showtime, poco, gringo and easy money.

BTW I'm not sure I can honestly spare the time to run the next campaign - Linebacker - at least not for a while. Sorry about that. If one of you fancies taking over ...

Had another amusing USAF mission just now - I've taken to driving out of work at lunchtimes and playing a mission in my car.

Mission #3 of medium USAF Rolling Thunder ended up being against a Convoy. I could only take two aircraft and annoyingly two adjacent approaches had an M1939 and an SA-60 in them which could fire into the center. I decided to take them out on the way in and took two pairs of rockets plus three pairs of CBUs to use against the soft convoy. I also had one Sidewinder in case any bandits materialised, which they didn't. My roster is lacking in fast pilots so I took one fast and one slow, who'd be upgraded to fast on a successful mission. Inbound event was "Sierra Hotel" which gave me a handy +1 on all rolls. My fast pilot duly took out his target, but the slow pilot got hit and damaged by the initial attack in spite of evading, bad news as I was now suddenly very short of ammunition. Turn 2 I flew over the remaining AA site and managed to strafe is successfully with my fast pilot. Turn 3 and the fast pilot dropped his three CBU's on the target ... leaving me agonizingly 1 short of the required damage. The ZSU in the center missed and I decided to try strafing with my slow pilot - who also missed. Turn 4 I decided I had to stick around and strafe more as I needed the xp for a successful mission to promote for another fast pilot, even though it was risky. My fast pilot missed his strafing run and luckily the ZSU missed again. One dice left from a damaged plane - success! Homebound, to my horror, I drew bandit attacks. I had one AtA to see one attack off with but 3 more came in. The first attacked the damaged plane and caused a stress point. The other two attacked the undamaged fast pilot and, thankfully, missed. Another 2VP - but only by the skin of my teeth!

MattDP wrote:

I'm not sure it's even worth doing a map for this one, especially since the center bandit will be rendered inactive thanks to our Intel rating. Should be a pushover.

I assume we're just going to send in our best pilots on this, with a little AtA cover just in case of emergencies? Three out of showtime, poco, gringo and easy money.

We can do without the map. I'd say Showtime, Poco, and Gringo. We don't need EM's die roll reduction.

BTW I'm not sure I can honestly spare the time to run the next campaign - Linebacker - at least not for a while. Sorry about that. If one of you fancies taking over ...

Well, send me the game and I might...

MattDP wrote:

Had another amusing USAF mission just now - I've taken to driving out of work at lunchtimes and playing a mission in my car.

While driving, I hope. Then you'll get the real feel of dodging missiles.

Good mission. Showcases the Leader games at their best.

Man. I get sucked into a project for 3 days and miss all the fun stuff. well thanks for running this matt.

By the way, Dan V. is looking for Call Sign suggestions for the upcoming Hornet Leader reprint/update. He's asked to post 'em in the DVG news thread. Sadly, I suspect "Bullwinkle" would lead him into infringement discussions with Sony Media

Bullwinkle would make a great call sign.

I bought the game two days ago.

Nice. I intended (and still do intend) to pick it up when it moves to VASSAL.