Yesterday, I had some generally positive things to say about Eagle Leader, Dan Verssen Games’ take on NATO air operations in the latter half of the Cold War. Today’s post will be less positive than pensive, as I complain about a missed opportunity and contemplate some possible solutions.
The missed opportunity is the Luftwaffe. Yes, all of it. Except for six dudes.
Between the Eagle Leader core box and the RAF/Luftwaffe expansion, six of eleven campaigns center on West Germany. In a nutshell, my issue is that despite being on its home field for half of the core material, the Luftwaffe is not a playable air force in this game. There are zero West German aircraft/pilots in the core. The back of the box literally says Germany is an included allied nation, so I question what decision led the designers to omit West German forces in favor of… Australian F-111Cs and New Zealand A-4Ks? I’m all about incongruity and scrappy underdog factions, but that feels like strike one.
Strike two comes with the aforementioned expansion. With the core box including three British pilots (Tornado GR.1A drivers) and zero West Germans, you’d think an expansion dedicated to those two nations’ air forces would restore some balance, right?
Not even close. For the RAF, Expansion 1 provides twelve more pilots: three each for the Tornado GR1/3, Tornado F1/3, Jaguar, and Phantom FGR Mk 2. The Luftwaffe gets… half that number, two each for the Tornado IDS, the F-4F, and the assisted suicide device known as the F-104.
I know one of the design precepts for Eagle Leader is to focus on NATO multinational air operations, but several other single-nation expansions enable national play, and six is literally not enough pilots to play a West German campaign. A short campaign starts with an eight-pilot squadron… and years of aircraft availability only allow all three of those airframes to be fielded together between 1973 and 1987.
What’s more, none of those aircraft are unique:
- The Tornado IDS also shows up in the aforementioned RAF (GR.1A and GR1/3 are just the IDS with tea), as well as Expansion 3’s Aeronautica Militare aircraft selection. The Italian models are, from a game perspective, statted identically to the West Germans’, and the British variants differ only in being able to hang ALARM antiradiation missiles off their pylons.
- Other operators of baseline Phantoms include Greece (Expansion 2), Turkey (Expansion 5), Japan (Expansion 8), and, as noted above, the UK. There are differences in weapon compatibility across all five variants, but the only factor changing the cost to acquire one is the discount received for the Japanese version’s lower carrying capacity. This doesn’t even factor in the Americans’ specialized Wild Weasel variant, nor the second Japanese version that’s a dedicated interceptor.
- And Italy and Japan both get to kill off slow and easily-distracted pilots with their F-104s. Again, there are slight differences in weapon fitment for the Italians at an equal cost, while the Japanese have a variant with lower WP allocation and commensurately even lower cost.
So what is to be done about this, should one be so inclined (and I’m not sure I am, but the tinkering sure is fun)?
The Photoshop Answer
Well… the easy answer is to duplicate and rename the existing pilots. Spiegel acquires a new doppelganger, Siegel, with identical skill progression, and so on and so forth. There are definitely enough blank counters in the game to Sharpie up appropriate representations for the map.
Getting a bit more complex, it should be possible to port equivalent aircraft from the RAF, Aeronautica Militare, or Polemikí Aeroporía, using the same pilot stat lines and just changing names, roundels, and weapon lists. A little correction tape, some careful labeling, and voila: Andreozzi is Heckler, Kemp becomes Koch, and Simiadis is renamed to Walther.
For greater immersion and hyperfocus, some time with a quality scanner and Photoshop would allow one to transfer other pilots’ stat blocks onto the base images of the Luftwaffe aircraft. I am informed there are numerous custom card printing services on the internet.
The Fun-Sized Answer
All of this leverages existing aircraft, though, and misses out on the one Luftwaffe aircraft of the period that would be unique in the game: the Alpha Jet.
Admittedly, the Alpha Jet does appear in Expansion 1… but as a squadron asset, not as a flyable aircraft. I don’t have access to the design team’s formulas, but in looking at other short-legged, lightweight aircraft that did make it into the game, my gut tells me its stats would be a little something like:
- Years: 1979-1997
- SO: Gain 2/4/6
- WP: 5
- Weapons: AIM-9 (max 2), Mk. 82/83, Mk. 20, Rockets, Gunpod, ECM Pod, Fuel Tank
- Cannot benefit from tanker support
- Freely add to mission
That last line is important because I think it differentiates the Alpha Jet from the other short-legged, low-cost aircraft in the game. It keeps that quality from the existing Alpha Jet SQA card and reflects what I dimly remember from decades-ago reading regarding West German intentions for forward-deploying Alpha Jets in penny packets, enabling quick pop-up strikes while staying away from big, easily-targeted airbase infrastructure. Accordingly, with that ability, I’ve set its SO refund value lower than that of the A-4K, which is perhaps its closest equivalent currently in the game. It’s not going to be doing deep strike missions, but for targets in closer zones, adding an Alpha Jet or two to a heavier flight could tip the balance.
Pilot skills would be weighted toward AtG. Despite the defensive AIM-9 fitment, the Alpha Jet’s role was strictly light strike/CAS.
If anyone wants to playtest that, let me know how it turns out…
Afterthoughts
There are two other Luftwaffe variants of existing airframes that could be brought into the game, but their use would be limited (barring the Future Tech special option card) due to their late dates of service. The West German RF-4E variant was equipped for a secondary air-to-ground mission starting in 1988. The Tornado ECR variant would provide a SEAD-focused aircraft, but I’m uncertain if it had actual jamming capacity to exploit the electronic warfare rules, and it appears to have entered service in 1990.