David R. Moody  - Nov 10, 2005 6:29 pm (#11142 Total: 11166)  
Last played: ASL, Under the Lily Banners, Suez '56 (S&T), 
Downtown, Band of Heroes, War of the Ring, Wellington, Blackbeard, 
B-17, Down in Flames. Reading: Wellington--The Years of the S
word (Elizabeth Longford). 	 

Last night I got to go out for my regular Wednesday night gaming for the
first time in almost a month. Joe could not join me, so I met up with
Jason Pipes, another local gamer who I met at ConQuest (he was one of my
opponents in the Downtown event). We played Downtown again--scenario D2,
the same one we played at ConQuest. It's one of the simpler
scenarios--no SAMs or Fire Can, and the US forces and raid targets are
preset. Good one to learn the system. 

I took the US forces in what was my third playing of that particular
scenario (one solitaire) and decided that, rather than going the long
way round past Haiphong, I'd just go straight in to target. This I
did--my two strikes of A-4s (one headed for Kep airfield, the other for
a nearby bridge) headed straight or nearly straight to their targets,
preceeded by four flights of escorts--two of Phantoms and two of
Crusaders. All my planes came in at Medium altitude, and were on DRV
radar almost immediately. 

Jason got enough warning to have two flights airborne. Putting them at
Medium as well, he sent them straight at me. Try as they might, my
controllers could not detect them. My Phantoms got one of the dummy
flights on radar, but none of the real flight. Thus, the MiGs blew right
by the fighter cover and hit the main strike heading for Kep. The first
flight fired off all its ammo to no effect, though they did force the
lead flight of A-4s to jettison bombs and abort. The second flight of
MiGs shot down a Skyhawk with loss of crew, but one of the Skyhawks
damaged the MiG flight leader. Flights of both sides dropped down to
Low, Disordered, and tried to limp for home. 

The second MiG flight was detected, and I sent two of my now-alerted CAP
flights down to bounce them before they could get home. The F-8s I sent
failed to engage, but the F-4s did, damaging both MiGs (the previously
damaged one was now Crippled). Both made it back to base safely. 

With no more MiGs (though Jason sent his two dummy flights after my
strike, I figured out when they didn't attempt to engage that they
weren't real), we proceeded to the bomb runs. My flyboys flew through
light to moderate flak and pulverized their targets, destroying the
bridges and heavily damaging Kep. All would have been great, except in
my cockiness I plotted the egress paths too close to enemy light AAA. On
the VERY LAST attack roll, Jason hit and shot down one of my A-4s--pilot
bailed out and captured. If all planes had made it back, I would have
had 6 net VP (9 for target damage, -3 for one A-4 and crew loss) and
inconclusive; as it was, that lucky hit turned the raid into a US loss.
Even then, had I splashed just one MiG . . . so close and so far. Great
game though. Next week I hope to hook up with Joe for more Wellington
fun. 

At home, still (very slowly) solitairing Rocroi. Also doing lots of
PBEM. In Mike Lam's PBEM B-17 game, I lost my fourth bomber over Verona
(wing blown off by flak) on only its second mission. Next mission is to
Reggio Emilia. In Lance McMillan's PBEM operational MechWarrior game,
Joe and I just fought a titanic battle for an unnamed city on the planet
I am defending, resulting in the devastation of the whole city and heavy
losses to both sides. Someday they will make a manly painting of our
exploits and use it to advertise the next MechWarrior expansion. I'm
also doing some PBEM roleplaying, also with Lance as GM. I play a Goblin
chieftain named Gricklag, part of a coalition of various peoples
fighting an orc invasion of their lands. Most glorious.


David R. Moody  - Jan 29, 2006 1:46 pm (#12105 Total: 12132)  
"Life is that unfortunate time between wargames."--Larry Leadhead 
	 
Yesterday my dad and I took the Linebacker III module from Downtown out
for a spin. To save time when playing him, I pick my target, roll up my
flights, and plot my mission beforehand, so I can assist him with the
AA, SAMs, and fighters (and no, I don't cheat--last time we played I got
an inconclusive result). So of course I picked a Navy strike, and of
course I picked Enterprise, so I could play with the Tomcats. 

The module, BTW (from C3i #17), assumes that the Watergate scandal
didn't break until later in the '70s, so Nixon stayed in office until
his second term ended in 1976. In 1975, when the North invaded South
Vietnam, Nixon, a popular president, was able to convince Congress to
let him send four carrier groups and USAF assets to the area in support
of the RVN, inaugurating Linebacker III. It also assumes the ARVN put up
a better fight than they did historically. 

I picked the Canal des Rapides Bridge, on the edge of Hanoi, as my
target (might as well go all the way Downtown). Maverick and Iceman
(yes, they used the Top Gun callsigns for the new Tomcat counters)
escorted the A-7E SEAD flights and EA-6B Prowler jammers into target.
Viper and Jester did MiGCAP, and Hollywood and Cougar covered the
bombers, a mix of A-6As and A-7Es, all armed with bombs (I opted not to
use the electro optical guided bombs (EOGB) on the Corsairs). 

A couple interesting decisions in this mission: I usually do standoff
jamming, but I decided to take the Prowlers on board, as previous
missions Downtown indicated the need for as much jamming protection as
possible against DRV SAMs. Also, the DRV player got two extra VP if he
shot down a Tomcat over land, and two more if it had the new AIM-54A
missiles still loaded. Thus, I decided to only arm Maverick and Iceman
with the new missiles. 

So we started up the mission, with Maverick and Iceman escorting the
SEAD flights and Jammers in. I wished we'd had our copy of "Top Gun" to
put on the VCR for background, but it's in deep storage. Not that that
stopped me from humming the theme song. 

At any rate, controllers on the Big E picked up enemy MiGs (believed to
be MiG-21s) taking off from Kien An. Maverick and Iceman dove down to
the deck and tried to fire off AIM-54s, but neither could get tone. As
both climbed back up to altitude and went "feet dry", enemy SAMs started
to light up. One SEAD flight forced a SAM site near Thai Bin to shut off
its radar, which remained off for most of the game, and damaged another
site near Nam Dinh. The Prowlers, both Standoff and Spot Jamming, did
their best to keep the SAMs away. 

But one of them zeroed in on Maverick, and shot him down with a lucky
shot! Maverick and his RIO got picked up by air-sea rescue (just a few
hexes from the coast), but the DRV (and soon the Russians and Chinese)
would have the wreckage of a brand-new F-14A AND the AIM-54A missiles it
was carrying. TRIPLE DOH!!!! Dammit all to H-E-double hockeysticks. In
retaliation, Iceman bounced the two MiG-21s that had taken off from Kien
An and splashed them both with no loss, then returned to base (as did
Maverick's wingman). 

So the strike continued. The lead bombing flight (A-6s) was forced to
jettison bombs to avoid SAMs and had to abort. The others kept coming,
with the Prowlers and SEAD flights buzzing around. In all, the SEAD
planes destroyed one SAM site (with cluster bombs) and damaged three
more, with loss of one plane crippled by flak when it strayed too close
to Hanoi. One more Tomcat (Hollywood's) was lost to a SAM, and Hollywood
got captured. 

As the strike made the first turning (just south of Hai Duong) and began
the run in, US controllers detected another enemy flight at Medium
altitude, NE of Hanoi, closing fast. Cougar intercepted what turned out
to be 3 MiG-19s, coming up from Yen Bai. No losses were sustained in an
inconclusive fight, both sides breaking off. 

Flak was heavy over target, downing two planes (an A-6 and A-7) and
crippling another A-7. The lead flight of A-6s, using Radar bombing,
destroyed one span of the Canal des Rapides. The second flight of A-7s,
suffering two losses, missed (and fortunately didn't hit any civilians),
but the third flight took out the second span. All planes made it back
safely to Enterprise. 

When the smoke had cleared, I ended up with 23 VP (my dad gave me two VP
to buy extra planes) to 18, a difference of 5, for an inconclusive
result. The US utterly destroyed the target, but lost four planes and
three crews doing it, two of them the new Tomcat fighters. Great fun,
and we both want to try it again (there are things we'd each do
differently).