Learning Thunderbolt Apache Leader: A Hapless Commander’s Journal, Pt. 3
Mohawk’s inaugural high-altitude pass in his F-16 resulted in a cratered enemy AAA unit — that guided 1,000-lb. GBU-16 is a hell of a drug.
Then rookie mistakes set in: Mohawk wasted a cluster bomb trying to take out two tanks, then I blithely ended his movement right in the sights of an enemy chopper, which would have shot him down had I not equipped the bird with an ECM unit. Mohawk chuckled his way through several attempts at reprisal.
Thor swooped in with his A-10’s cannons to shred the chopper soon after. All this time, Grandpa was tasked with hunting a pair of command units, one of which he eliminated with a tidy volley of Hellfires. But owing more neophyte sloppiness in the commander’s chair, I’ve also exposed the craft to costly potshots from another enemy chopper and AA unit: Thor and Grandpa have accumulated Stress points and taken hits to their pylons, which compromise the amount of effective weight they can carry in ordnance.
This matters less to Thor, who still has a Wal-Mart distribution center’s worth of boom-boom slung under the wings of the A-10, but Grandpa’s little Cobra only has two big-punch munitions left and his cannon efficacy isn’t good enough to bank precious attack turns on….
As I age, the more painful the gap between complexity and desire becomes. Bouncing around between three different applications and four different source docs to harvest some sliver of Boring out of 15 different shards of Boring for some boring-ass project makes my mind claw for Elsewhere like a mouse trying not to drown in a jar.
But last night, driven by the building tickle of finally feeling all the game’s information and steps start to gel, I fought through it until I got into something resembling a flow. I was still doing stuff wrong — LOS, figuring out who can shoot and who and when and with what — still had me bouncing back and forth between the rulebook and BoardGameGeek forums every few minutes. But the mound of stats and chips was starting to take the shape of a game. And now I’m hungry and I want more. I’m finally feeling the thrill, the quiet pride and accomplishment of figuring it out.
Building odd monuments with a single viewing chair in a protean gallery of your own learning experiences is one of the things you learn to treasure as a solo gamer. I believe these little triumphs and insights enrich the inner life.
So Day 2 of the mission looms, and per the restrictions of the Rapid Deployment scenario, I can’t switch any pilots out. Just to see how it goes, I’m going to split my trio of flyers into two separate groups and see if I can effectively harass two enemy battalions.
Are ya winnin’, son? Grandpa and Mohawk barely made it back from the Day 2 foray vs. an enemy recon battalion. Thor’s Stress is pushing Shaken range even before he’s in the air. Feels irresponsible to send him out, but I’ve explained to him that this is a learning experience for all of us.
My expectations for this experiment are low: Grandpa was a mess after Day 1. He’s one more hit from crashing after failing a Ridge Evasion check that put his Stress levels close to the Unfit range. Also now there’s a Munition Shortage, so I’m trying to find a few missiles he can fire off while hovering and hopefully exit before he gets shot down, which almost feels like an inevitability. Mohawk, his craft still undamaged, will be hunting the rest of the hexes vs. an assault battalion, while Thor—whose Stress levels have also crept up dangerously—is heading after a separate target to see what he can get away with.
Quibble: I think I’m going to ignore the step where the rules say to strip damage and stress counters off of the pilot and craft cards, then log them all on the sheet during the bookkeeping steps. Why not just track them with the counters on the cards? It’s a better dashboard for me. Maybe this doesn’t work when you have bigger squadrons and more damage to track, but it feels like an efficient workaround for now.