by: Michael Barnes

I never expected to say it, but a solitaire board game has turned out to be one of my favorite games of 2010. Dan Verssen’s PHANTOM LEADER is a thrilling, dramatic game that puts you in charge of a group of US Air Force or Navy pilots and their F-4 Phantoms, A-6 Intruders, and other winged death-dealers as they undertake dangerous bombing sorties over Vietnam.

It’s almost like a sports team management game, with the player in control of strategic, administrative, and logistical decisions as well as the actual execution of a mission. Once a North Vietnamese Naval yard, barracks compound, industrial complex, or other target is selected, its defenses are determined so you can at least plan ahead for the mission. But once your birds are airborne it becomes a tactical game where situations can change dramatically. Thanks to a simple event card system, you might find yourself faced with having to deal with unanticipated SAM sites or thicker than expected MIG traffic. Or that F-105 Wild Weasel that you were counting on to deliver a hefty payload on top of a naval yard might get sacked by AA guns before it even gets to the designated recipient. Each mission in the game is filled with an amazing degree of narrative tension. Every die roll could be a make-or-break one, and every single decision to maneuver or fire weapons could make the difference between a successful run and a disastrous one.

The game ships with a big stack of aircraft cards, each with a unique pilot that might have better skill at hitting ground or air targets. Before each campaign- which can be flown in short, medium and long varieties- you’ll choose a select number of pilots based on their rank and fill out a roster sheet. Yes, there’s paperwork involved and yes, it’s really easy to screw up unless you have a meticulous eye for detail. A simple experience point system means that your “Newbie” grade guys might upgrade to “Green” over the course of the campaign. Pilots are also rated for how they handle stress (“cool”), and over the mounting emotional toll of flying dangerous missions into hostile territory can seriously affect their performance. Or they may wind up unfit to fly without a little R&R downtime. Maybe you’ll get lucky and draw the “Steak Barbecue” event card between missions so they can blow off a little steam.

It’s entirely possible to fly single missions, but the game really comes alive in the way it handles persistent campaigns. Watching your pilots get better, get burned out, and maybe even die is boardgame role-playing at its best. It’s oddly rewarding, and it’s easy to come to “care” for callsigned heroes like Vapor, Duke, Mad Dog, and T-Bone. When one of the boys gets shot down, there’s a chance to recover them in a rescue mission. It’s pretty exciting to get one of your Aces shot down and find them alive and kicking afterwards. The problem with the campaign though is that it requires a certain kind of discipline to stick with it and play through to the end, even if you’re looking at a string of losses. I suspect most gamers will likely give up on most campaigns halfway through if the chips are down. That’s unfortunate, because some of the biggest thrills in the game come when you’re trying to staff a mission with shaken, ill-prepared or inexperienced pilots to try to squeeze a couple of extra victory points out of the campaign.

Each mission starts with two target cards, more if you’ve managed to increase your reconnaissance level by taking out certain locations. Each target specifies how many defense chits representing AA guns, infantry, and SAM sites are drawn to protect it, how many planes you can use, and any special rules. Higher profile targets are also higher risk ones, but the victory point rewards are greater. There is also an unexpected political angle to the game and as you attack more auspicious sites there is a chance that your Political ranking could fall, representing public opinion of the war and high command’s willingness to pursue more dangerous missions.

Once you’ve loaded your planes to capacity with ordnance, including party favors like AIM-9 Sparrow air-to-air missiles, cluster bombs, and politically questionable napalm you’ll send your team into a four round ingress/egress sequence that takes place on an over target board divided into sectors. Decisions must be made as to how to approach the target, where to put interceptors to deal with MIGs, and whether to fly at a high or low altitude. Sure, you can fly below the radar of the SAM sites but that can put you in the range of a lot of guns. Fast pilots will get to attack first, but enemy defenses will hammer away at your planes as they make their bombing run. Do you use rockets to suppress the AA guns? Do you take a chance on rolling for a potentially catastrophic SAM hit or take evasive action, increasing the pilot’s stress level? Every roll of the dice is agonizing, whether you’re dropping your last bomb and hoping for a high enough roll to finish off the target or if you’re taking an unmodified roll from a defensive emplacement without countermeasure.

There is no AI system save for a very basic triage mechanic that determines where the MIGs fly but stationary and static nature of the defenses mean that all you’ll be doing is determining valid targets and rolling dice against a couple of target numbers for their resolution. It does not feel one dimensional, automatic, or boring. It feels like the game wants to kill your pilots and it’s up to you to make the right decision every single time to bring them back home. The mechanics are extremely simple but effective; there is nothing elaborate or gamey anywhere in it. It feels lean, efficient, and right on target as far as the setting and the depiction of specific action is concerned.

That being said, the rules feel a little spotty in parts and it does take a couple of plays to iron out minor details. It can also be sort of tricky to iron out details such as which planes can fly in each campaign, what weapons each can or can’t carry, and other factors that can lead to false-start campaigns where something gets screwed up early on. I do feel that there is a rules omission in that the game really needs more structured way for the defense to select targets than player discretion, but that would require more formal rules and part of why I like the game so much is that it isn’t very dense, therefore making it an uncommonly accessible game given its subject matter. Usually, these kinds of air campaign games are terrifyingly complex and overly detailed. PHANTOM LEADER hits the balance of playability and specificity right on the money.