Another BLKOUT unit at good-enough-for-table-use completion. This one is Szabla, a PMC offshoot of a Polish heavy industrial corporation’s security arm. Two riflemen, a marksman, and a jammer specialist who makes every model within 12″ immune to data attacks:
Continue reading →Tag Archives: wargaming
Harlow Kinetic Solutions
I won’t say that the most recent painting drought has broken, but I spent a fair amount of time at the bench the past couple of weekends, getting my recent BLKOUT purchases into usable shape. The photos aren’t my best – I would swear iOS 26 lost some camera control capability. The paint isn’t my best either, but I think it’s good enough for use on the table.
For my initial force, I’ve chosen to go with Harlow Kinetic Solutions. In-universe, they’re a PMC of South African origin. On the colony world of Abol, they’re largely under contract to the Authority, a somewhat mustache-twirlingly evil offshoot of the remnant United Nations that is ostensibly the planetary governing body.
Mechanically, Harlow’s things are mobility and some of the better combat drills (limited-use maneuvers) in the game. In theory, this design supports aggressively going after objective points on the board over getting bogged down in fights.
Continue reading →Blacked Out
Been a while since I got any updates posted here. Head full of other things.
A couple of weeks ago, I stopped in at one of the FLGSes in Roanoke. They had a new section of shelves devoted to BLKOUT. The game had been on the edge of my radar for a while, but the last things I need are more unpainted miniatures and another game system played by no one I know. Also, the last time I’d looked at the publisher, Enemy Spotted Studio, they were still leaning heavily into dudebro/vetbro mouthbreathing idiocy in their advertising, with the owner/founder doing balaclavaed videos under the nom de tube of “Head Goon.” Ugh. Hard pass.
Having said that… I got to chatting with the shop owner, who indicated that the game was starting to get some traction with his regulars. I went home without more minis (but an as-yet-unread copy of Dolmenwood purchased in the name of supporting a good FLGS). I spent enough time poking around the net to come away with a slightly more favorable opinion of BLKOUT. The minis have always looked good (and they’re made in North Carolina, which is a plus these days), the *bro advertising schtick appeared to be dead, and accounts of play seemed pretty good. I reached out on the shop’s Discord server and made contact with a guy who’s been running demos in the area.
Last week, I wandered back up to Roanoke for one of said demos and came away more impressed than I expected to be. The game lore could use a serious professional developer’s hand to rationalize some of the more hyperbolic elements, but the rules are really appealing. My opponent and I were both novices who’d read the rules but not actually used them before, and we knocked out a 3-unit vs. 3-unit game on a 2’x2′ board in an hour. I’d expect experienced players to resolve such a skirmish in 30 to 40 minutes. The level of complexity is not overwhelming, and any given mix of units provides interesting tactical choices.
More to come on this if I don’t lose focus and can motivate myself to get back to the blog.
Head to Head Engagement: Eagle Leader vs. Fulcrum Leader
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been playing – and thoroughly enjoying – Eagle Leader. I recently picked up its sibling, Fulcrum Leader, and am currently playing through my first campaign. These are collectively the newest additions to Dan Verssen Games’ Leader series of solo wargames (more specifically, of the Air Leader sub-branch, which originated with Hornet Leader). I won’t say too much more about the games’ shared ancestry here because there is plenty of content elsenet, and this is neither advertisement nor review (despite me dumping this in the Reviews category for ease of later return).
So whatthehell am I spending electrons on, then?
My intent with this post is to illustrate the points of congruence and divergence between the two games – beyond the “well, duh” obvious of NATO versus Warsaw Pact player-avatar perspective. Basically, I’m putting together the kind of information that I wish I’d had when I was considering whether to buy one or both, because it was all too easy to conclude that they’re the same game with different skins. That, I’m happy to report, is in no way the case. While they definitely share the core mechanics and gameplay loop of the Air Leader sub-series, the devil is in the details – and there are a lot of details in which they differ.
The following assumes a baseline level of familiarity with the Leader series, particularly the Air Leader sub-family (Hornet Leader, Phantom Leader, Israeli Air Force Leader, Corsair Leader, Zero Leader…).
Continue reading →Composite Squadron II
After having an inordinate amount of fun with Eagle Leader despite its editing and playtesting issues (thank the gods for an active and mostly-helpful boardgamegeek.com community), I broke down and picked up the full run of Fulcrum Leader. Despite some lingering misgivings about playing the default bad guys from my childhood (and, arguably, again from 2014 forward), I’m finding it an equally-enjoyable play experience – and arguably better-designed than its cousin.
As my regular readers may anticipate, I’ve built out a random squadron generator here.
Terrain Following Flight in Eagle Leader
As I continue to amuse myself with Eagle Leader, I’ve been tinkering with a few house rules. This one is intended to reflect (in more narrative than simulationist tones) the advantages and risks of terrain-following flight. Aircraft eligible to use this rule are the F-111, A-7, and Tornado families (and, in Fulcrum Leader, the Su-24).
Continue reading →The Appeal* of Solo Wargames
(* for me)
The Girl and I took the past week off work for our anniversary. We did some old married couple stuff and some maintenance, but a lot of the week was spent in our respective monotropic foci. For her, that was a lot of editing and gap-filling on her current fiction project. For me, it was entirely too much time spent playing, deconstructing, and sketching out house rules for Eagle Leader.
I’ve spent the past few posts braindumping on that game, and as I was wandering around the house today, I found myself considering just why it’s so compelling. It’s easy for me to lose myself in PC games, particularly turn-based tactical stuff (looking at you, X-Com and Doorkickers series), but what’s so fascinating about analog solo wargames? They’re not nearly as cost-effective or space-efficient – for what I’ve spent on Eagle Leader, I could make an immense dent in my Steam wishlist, and that wouldn’t require any shelf space.
Continue reading →In Which I Wax Rhapsodic About Eagle Leader
Because of poor impulse control and a strong interest in late Cold War (i.e., my formative years) NATO air operations, I wound up snagging the full run of Eagle Leader from Atomic Empire and The Tabletop Strategist (good vendors, BTW; will doubtless give both them more money soon, especially before TTS’ current moving sale ends on Friday). Despite Dan Verssen Games’ long-standing and justly-deserved rep for crappy editing and questionable playtesting being fully borne out with this product, I have been having a ridiculous amount of fun.
A small amount of that is the fact that this is a physical product. Analog gaming feels innately healthier than my default mode of digitally-mediated work and play. It gets me away from screens and requires my brain to manipulate things in meatspace, something I’m realizing I need badly. With our recent rearrangement of furniture, it also gives me another reason to spend time in our now-much-more-welcoming library – either alone, or engaged in parallel play while The Girl is working on Lego kits or writing on her laptop.
The greater part of Eagle Leader‘s appeal, though, is its existence in my sweet spot of complexity (fiddly bits! options!) and speed of play, combined with the sort of emergent narrative I first encountered – and latched onto – in the original X-Com. This extends to the other Leader-series games in my library (currently more Cold War – Thunderbolt/Apache Leader, Spruance Leader, and Hornet Leader, with the Vietnam-era Huey Leader in my Kickstarter fulfillment queue). When my little dudes are individual pilots with names and callsigns, or named warships, with varying stress levels and damage and experience and improvement over time, it’s easy to get attached, and to start writing stories in my head.
Continue reading →Composite Squadron
I recently acquired a copy of Dan Verssen Games’ long-delayed Eagle Leader solo wargame. I am trying to remain firm in my resolve to not play it until I finish my current North Atlantic WWIII grand campaign of Spruance Leader. However, a four-hour power outage on Saturday did give me some enforced tech-free time, part of which I used to punch out and sort the absolutely ridiculous amount of counters that are typical of DVG Leader-series games.
That, predictably, got me engaged in thinking about the game more, so I sat down that night and spent another three hours branching the code and data set of my earlier Hornet Leader random squadron generator to build one for Eagle Leader. Both are linked from the DVG games landing page of the main site.
Launch the Alert-Five Hornets
I’ve been wanting to get Hornet Leader out again, having yet to finish a campaign of it. In lieu of actually, you know, playing the damn thing, I spent a few hours today coding some JQuery to generate a random squadron, as per the optional rule for doing just that sort of thing.
I have a few other thoughts on tools for DVG’s other solo wargames, so the new landing page (which links the aforementioned Hornet Leader generator) is here.