Learning Thunderbolt Apache Leader: A Hapless Commander’s Journal, Pt. 4
I packed the game away after my first-ever play, looked at the box for a few minutes, then took it all back out again for a second play. Following is a collection of notes and observations on my sophomore experience.
Setup: A random draw presents me with a Cut-Off situation in Iraq. I scour the cards to find the name of who’s responsible for letting a whole-ass airbase get encircled. As usual, there’s no accountability, just rigid parameters: I’m getting most of my Special Options points up front and there are very few ways to get any more. I’ve got five days to punch a hole in the approaching enemy forces that’s big enough to reopen supply lines.
Let’s Try it Again from the Top, But With More Killing This Time, Work With Me, People, Work With Me: During my rookie mission I fielded a tiny squadron and sent them all at one target for the first few days to make game management simpler and just focus on mechanics. This time I want to have more craft that I can combine for separate strikes starting on Day 1. I end up with five: a Harrier, an F-16, an A-10A, and two AH-64s.
I want to commit Day 1 just to strikes on the enemy’s front-line assault elements: Degrade their ability to project force, then practice equipping missions that reach support and command elements in the rear range band — exotic regions I never saw during my inaugural game.
Looks like this scenario will penalize me for using craft or pilot replacement options. Looks like the only way to earn more SO points — there is no daily income in this episode — is to knock the hell out of stuff. You want resources? Let’s see some blowed-up stuff. The enemy’s hand is already closing around your windpipe.
Beginner’s Strategy Heuristics: To simplify the strategic puzzle, I’m carrying over the basic approach I settled on during my first game: Low and fast. My Day 1 crew is comprised entirely of pilots with the Fast ability (they get to fire before enemy units do). I don’t care if they’re good at other things, just give me the ones whose DNA helixes spell out K-I-L-L. These are the guys who you don’t turn loose anywhere but places like these, because they’ll pick off a civilian airliner or two out of restless hunger if you’re not constantly feeding them live target data.
Keeping the mission at low altitude means I can focus on zooming through selected lanes where they can do their dirty business in between ridgelines. No fancy Ridge Evasion checks for me. And no Pop-Up units (for each craft that starts a Loiter Turn at high altitude, you have to do a blind pull from a bag of Special Surprise Jerk Counters that might appear on the map). During my first game, Pop-Ups offended me to an almost pathological degree. I don’t like being interrupted. So we’re not doing any of that.
Privation, The Great Teacher: Having nearly all of the SO points given to me at once turned out to be an instructive limitation: With SO points desperately low as the mission days went on, I got a lot more familiar with each type of munition and what it does. I was setting tight budgets for each sortie and finding out how very much I could do with a little. I didn’t have to go grab my Xanax if there were damage markers on my craft; I got a lot better at picking which kinds of dings I had to deal with right away and which I could just let ride. (“Oh, waaah, your display is damaged. Just don’t shoot stuff from real far away, stupid. Get right up on ‘em, it’ll be fine.”)
Still Learning: When I teach others new games, I always remind them that they’re going to get major stuff wrong and to not be too upset about it. I got anxious enough to forget my own bromides. I was applying the Evasive ability wrong. I wasn’t applying Battalion notes correctly. I was routinely forgetting basic steps. I still got chewed to pieces, even with the little accidental advantages I gave myself through blithe incompetence. But as I re-read the fan-compiled FAQ on Boardgame Geek, I remembered that I was just one of hundreds of dudes effing stuff up, getting stuck, re-reading, and figuring it out in a distributed fraternity of souls siloed in thrill and despair.
Speaking of which: The several days I ran my first few games were a carousel of confusion and insight, joy and rage. I noticed last week my left eye looked a bit cloudy. I tell you in all candor that I think I popped a blood vessel in my eye screaming at Tex. He went down in his AH-64A, killed on impact from a SAM hit. His job was to take it out with LAU-61 rockets. It was important to clear this hex out, so I committed two rocket pods to the attack. Two chances to produce a four on a ten-sided die. He had some diabolical talent for avoiding the plainly achievable. Whatever came out of my mouth next would have been Q.E.D. in any divorce proceeding in any court in the U.S.
But I was already already divorced anyway, so fuck it. My hygiene suffered during these days. I hadn’t been happier in recent memory.
***
By Day 5, I can tell I’m en route to a failing grade: There are no more SO points, and despite getting pounded to half strength, my Day 4 mission troubles must have emboldened the armored spearhead battalion I tangled with the day previous. They’re advancing.
But I have rested pilots who I’m going to pile into these once-gleaming craft for one more run. Fuck mission ratings. Fuck victory points. It’s you and me, assholes, one last time. The damage markers on these craft are comically dense, but it’s late in the day and we have murder in our hearts.
I love this fucking game so much. I don’t rue the days of the old Colorado Springs crew when this is on the table. When the board has the glow of morning catchlight, I can’t even remember their faces. My eyes narrow as I sip some scalding coffee, look at the distribution of the new target battalion’s units over the terrain hexes and start planning attack lanes. I want for nothing.