Tag: Phantom Leader

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What to do?

When I get home tonight, do I set up one of the Leader games (Corsair, Hornet, Phantom) or a Sunday double header, Braves @ Giants, 1967?

I can probably play the double header tonight.

Any of the Leader games will probably be played over a couple of days.

And I found that I had been playing wrong, adding a phase that is only used in B-17 Leader.

I would include a round of homeward bound air/ground combat, which isn’t even listed in the sequence of play.

Whoops.

I was used to a phase like this because of playing B-17 Queen of the Skies for so many years, which requires a possible Luftwaffe intercept in every zone on the way back to base from the target.  Again, B-17 Leader has this step, the other games don’t.

Maybe this will speed up my games.  We’ll see.

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Hobbies

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by my chosen hobbies.

DC Universe Miniature Game
Ball Park Baseball, 1917 season
Warhammer 40K

And that’s just what I touched this weekend.

I also spent a few days following the livestream from Star Wars Celebration Orlando, got a haircut, went to a baseball game, watched the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who, attended a screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark with a live orchestra, Easter Brunch with family, and still feel that I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to this weekend.

For example, I didn’t get to play a game of Warfighter or Phantom Leader.  Or start watching a couple of shows on Netflix/Amazon Video.  Or read comics.  Or read in general.

Ah well.

I’m posting this trailer just because.  You folks who haven’t started watching this really should start, the last season begins this fall.

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Solitaire Wargaming Organization Revisited

I think I’m going to shift around that list I made, with the print-and-play games at the bottom of the list.

  1. Phantom Leader
  2. Warfighter
  3. Hornet Leader
  4. Gato Leader
  5. Corsair Leader
  6. Philippines Ablaze
  7. Carrier Strike Force

I’m gonna revisit Phantom Leader right away, since I screwed the pooch in the game play of that AAA Site mission.

Evade.  Must remember to have pilots evade.

Warfighter will be next, to break up the 2 aircraft games back-to-back, as I had originally listed.

And all this will be broken up with with table top sports and skirmish games.

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Overload

I received so many items for so many different games yesterday, and stupidly tried to go through all of them last night.

Big mistake.

I couldn’t focus on one thing or another, in addition to attempting to play the second mission of the Phantom Leader campaign that I started.  It was a total failure, all planes shot down, but only because I forgot to employ a couple of rules, like pilot EVADE.  Whoops.

I guess I’ll rerun the mission sometime soon.

I sorted the cards and punched the counters for Warfighter.  I skimmed the rules.

I attempted to figure out how to run a fight in the Batman Miniatures Game.  I also found a box to store all the miscellaneous markers and templates for the game.

I opened up the Starfire Gorm-Khanate War expansion.  I almost punched the counters.

I assembled and primed the miniatures that I got from Crossover Miniatures, including the one I’m using for The Koala in Mutants and Masterminds.

Meanwhile, I was watching the Warriors/Thunder game, Supergirl and 24: Legacy.  Good to see Oded Fehr back on TV.

There’s simply not enough time in a day to do everything that I’d like to do.

As a side note, this morning I ordered a few counter trays for all the wargames that I’ve picked up in the last couple of weeks.  Odd that you’d have to pay extra for counter trays, they used to come with the games, back in the day.

And Knight Models got back to me regarding the Superman miniature defect, they’ll be sending me a replacement part in a couple of weeks, so I’ll just put off assembly until then.  Yay!

All this with baseball approaching.

See why I can’t podcast?

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Phantom Leader Playthrough

Keep in mind that I’m still learning how to play.  I’ve run two missions in the USAF 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis campaign.

MISSION  1
Target: Ammunition Depot
Pilots: Echo (Skilled), Splashdog (Average), Smokes (Green)
Aircraft: F-4 Phantom x3
Result: Target Destroyed; no aircraft lost

MISSION 2
Target: AAA Sites
Pilots: Boomer (Skilled), Papa (Average), Cajun (Green)
Aircraft: F-4 Phantom x3
Result: Target Undamaged; all aircraft lost, pilots Papa and Cajun MIA

So I went from total success to total failure, in the span of two missions.

I’m abandoning the campaign, writing it off as a training exercise.

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Phantom Leader Unboxed

The package arrived at about a quarter to 1pm.

BEHOLD! Average sized box for a wargame.
Opened! Rulebook sits atop the rest of the contents, as usual
Counters!
Aww, the player log sheet was damaged. Luckily they have it online, so I can print copies as I need them
Campaign sheets
Help sheet
Tactical display
Cards and a d10

I’ll post my 1st play through as soon as I read up on the rules

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Uh oh…

Phantom Leader is out for delivery, via Amazon delivery services.

I haven’t had something delivered by them in a while, since this Flex thing started, so we’ll see if  the service is any better than it was before, like when they delivered a small package of mine to the house next door.

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Overboard

As per my standard operating procedure, I went a little overboard and went on a games shopping spree.

In addition to Phantom Leader, I have these two games on order:

And later I discovered THIS and ordered it…

So yeah.  Games overload.

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Check Six!

For some reason I felt the need to pick up something that brings me back to the original tabletop gaming that I used to play, in my early teens: historical wargaming.  I had a few Avalon Hill games that I played, namely War at Sea and Victory in the Pacific.  Through high school we mostly played Star Fleet Battles, moving toward RPGs during senior year.  But we did find time to try games like Top Gun and Flight Leader.

The big difference back then was that the wargames were rarely designed for solitaire play, and when I didn’t have anyone to play with I ended up playing both sides of a conflict.

In the past few years I had bought a tabletop modern aircraft wargame which used miniatures, but once again I had no one to play with, so I just painted up a bunch of the minis and left them in a storage box somewhere in the house.

Finally, I came across this:

I’d been eyeing Phantom Leader and Hornet Leader for a while now, along with a couple of submarine games (U-Boat Leader/Gato Leader).  I finally chose this one because I remember the F-4 Phantom as the cool looking fighter jet of my youth.  Both the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds used them for their airshows back in the day.

Unlike my old standby, B-17: Queen of the Skies, these games have a political factor in each mission.  If you bomb too big a target, politics may slow you down and limit the number of potential targets in later missions, but if you don’t strike hard enough, you could end up losing the campaign and the war.

This game should arrive sometime this weekend.  If I end up liking it I may pick up Hornet Leader later.