Learning Thunderbolt Apache Leader: An Improving Commander’s Notebook, Pt. 1
I started trolling the boys again with fake medals and citations. They ran with it and it’s gotten out of hand. Somebody up the chain wants an explanation as to what the Lord Quincy Entertainment III decoration is for and why it has been awarded to a nonexistent flyer, a “Capt. Rarginalt.” They fired off a press release to some goof they went to the Academy with and now it’s all over CENTCOM.
What’s this? New intel? Surrounded? It’s good timing in one sense, but have the Pakistanis gone mad? Who let us get flanked and cut off? All of a sudden me and my impish flyers are out of the administrative spotlight and into the furnace.
***
Session: Cut-Off, Pakistan
Setup
It’s the ceremony, pre-dawn. Only six hours of sleep despite how I timed everything and drugged myself up. Plenty of work to do today. I don’t know about you, but a raft of tasks and nothing else isn’t a day worth living for; some have stolen moments of endorphin checking the Instagram feed, some have love and a natural way with being with others; I have a Cut-Off situation in Pakistan. Usually waking up pre-dawn sours me, but this process — setting up the conditions, composing the terrain hex pool and enemy divisions, is a trill of bright-calm-excited.
Including the imagined space where I think I can survive a Cut-Off, which I never have. The usual pattern: Commit at least one deep strike on Day 1 to blunt the persistent effect of the most annoying Support or Command battalion, let the lesser craft slow down the most aggressive frontline Assault elements…then send flurries of parrying attacks out in a panic over the next three days with increasingly split forces, degrading craft and pilots, until I’m overrun about Day 3, or I wake up one day, look at the board and just pack it up. I’m losing my appetite for grinding out an extra day, wriggling and bleeding for an ounce of maneuver room, just for honor.
And here we are again: Two battalions that accelerate battalion movement, and the first part of the puzzle: What’s the craft mix?
Not overthinking it this time. Modest-cost sluggers in quantity: Two A-10 As and two AH-64 As. And we’re doing concentration of force. After all, the game is Thunderbolt Apache Leader, not Carnival of Esoteric Decisions (a medal I won after sending an amusing, if ineffective, mix of craft into some imbroglio in Libya; somebody had an algorithm or something that awarded you a ribbon if you wasted exactly $50M each from the Northrup Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed Martin piles. Stand up, stupid, you hit the Imperial Bingo!)
So what if the annoying and surprisingly sophisticated Pakistani command battalions—check you out, Pakistan, I see you—can push everything at me at double speed. I’m going to fix on one thing: Making sure they have less and less stuff to push each day. Go ahead. Force march your shot-full-of-holes ragtag bullshit my way. I’m going to try to turn the Front Line and Friendly Transit zones into a buzzsaw into which they can push all the crappy particle board they want.
Wish me luck. If this works, I could end up with a shiny Order of the Malted Milk Falcon.
My, my, aren't we frisky.
***
What have we learned since Thunderbolt Apache Leader pulled us singlehandedly from an intractable late-winter depression? I’ve now filled 14 mission sheets out since learning this game in late winter ‘24. In service of not being a monophagous slouch — the world already has enough twats who just want to hunch over one title with the same people week after week, year after year — I’ve added several new titles to my collection: Final Girl, Wingspan, Cascadia, Vale of Eternity and Star Wars Outer Rim.
But the test is this: What do I regularly crave? What am I going to reach for? Along with all these new arrivals — some of which I have played heavily — I still need TAL on the table at least once a month. What sticks is its own testament.
Missions to Date (Personal Surrender Notes Sometimes Substitute for Formal Rating)
• Pakistan, Cut-Off Outcome: Tap-out - Untenable by Day 3
• Libya, Cut-Off Outcome: Day 6 Tap-out
• North Korea, Show of Force Outcome: Dismal
• North Korea, Surge Outcome: Good*
• North Atlantic, WWIII Outcome: Failure. Overrun.
• Iran, Rapid Deployment Outcome: Are you kidding me with these attack rolls?!!
• Iraq, Show of Force Outcome: Good
• Libya, Rapid Deployment Outcome: Good
• Pakistan, Holding Action Outcome: NOPE
• Pakistan, Rapid Deployment Outcome: Poor
• Iraq, Cut-Off Outcome: Good
• Israel Defense, Cut-Off Outcome: Mission failure.
• Iraq, Rapid Deployment Outcome: Good
• Pakistan, General War Outcome: i can’t take it any more
*Even my best efforts are marred here. There are a couple things I was playing incorrectly. 1) You get ONE auxiliary pilot for every craft TYPE, not every CRAFT. I was playing with too deep a bench. 2) I thought I was being clever and economical by collapsing all the Arm Aircraft steps for the day into one umbrella move. I was cheating. It’s a separate step for each mission, I believe, so my SO expenditure was also padded. Whoopsie.
***
Session: Cut-Off, Pakistan
Day 1, Mission 1
Target: Fast Assault Battalion
Pilot: Viper, A-10A
The enemy — none of whose vehicles have ranged attacks — obligingly clusters in key points along neat reverse-S pattern on flat ground between ridgelines, offering themselves up to at least be halved in strength with one low-altitude pass. Viper seizes this opportunity by knocking out a grand total of three points worth of vehicles, missing hilariously with every kind of armament on the craft. He tops off this gobsmacking display by getting the HUD damaged and biffing a 6+ Bingo check, accruing three Stress on homebound approach. What an asswipe. This was a weak battalion that he could have cratered and should have halved at the very least. My opening gambit is already sideways. Concentration of farce. With the exception of one late APC kill, I have a string of something like six attacks where I didn’t generate more than a natural three on the d10. That is discouraging.
Award: Medal of Defecation
***
Experimentation: In my rookie outings I anchored on the Fast ability to make the variables less dizzying. Then I ease my way into the charms of other abilities, figuring out the nifty trick of having Slow dudes enter low-altitude under heavy ridge cover, wait out the enemy’s fire step, then burst onto the scene in a breathtakingly destructive, patiently timed counter. It takes more Loiter time, but it slaps.
Experimentation: The possibility vibrates. What happens, for instance, if I requisition myself a Specter gunship and then spam a cluster of choppers? Let the Specter, with its free ammo pass and giddy lack of weight restrictions, hit the enemy deep to take out far-away divisions who think they can sit back there between three bands of friendly cushion and just fuck with me? Then we dispatch our cheapo choppers — two AH-1s and an AH-64A—in a cluster to knock out the most menacing frontline assault battalions.
It turned out pretty good because I challenged another habit: Stewing about three delicate complicated entry points onto the battle hex map. What if I just bunched them up for a cavalry charge? It was not only effective, it was devastating. Riding low and dispensing generous ladles of Hellfires for Stand-Off strikes and LAUs for close-in work, they would scour their hex, pound the next one and glide easily over the smoking bric-a-brac. Sometimes I had chopper pilots who had nothing to do on their turn except throttle forward, hoping they could at least dump a bird or two before their mates slagged everything. It was glorious.
***
Session: Cut-Off, Pakistan
Day 2, Mission 1
Target: Tank Leader Battalion
Pilot: Halo, A-10A
With Viper’s loose stool being pressure-washed out of seams in the cockpit previously thought impermeable, I give the stress-resistant Halo the nod. The Tank Leader battalion that was halved on Day 1 by yeoman work from my AH-64 operators—Rock and Eagle—has rumbled into my rear band. Halo has to mop it up post-haste. I decide we don’t have the luxury of running fewer than three missions today, as the Friendly Transit zone now has three assault battalions jostling for our necks—including the Fast Assault Battalion that so baffled Viper. The Apache duo is going after that. I repaired nothing, so hopefully that compromised engine gets the bird to the zone. I don’t even want to detail what I have asked Rebel to do. The bandsaw has to start whirring, missing teeth and all. I’m not diverting to rear-line attacks and I’m not sparing the horses.
Halo starts off with a bad break: Bad Coordinates. But he caught a good one earlier: Four HVTs are clustered in two hexes, which allows him to rip across the board in two turns and unload obscene amounts of munitions into each. He comes home with three Stress and a much lighter aircraft. There are two hellacious missions left to go before I could dare call what I see daylight.
Award: The Timely Mop-Up. It’s a watch glued to a mop I found. Just take it to your billet. Yes, I thought you would appreciate the googly eyes. What’s that? You’re going to fuck the mop. That’s fine. I’m very proud of you and you’re a very good pilot and would you please go away.
***
The brown bear that digs through my trash must be hitting some insane pre-hibernation caloric requirements. I took a full-on whiz in the remains of a Safeway rotisserie chicken, hoping to dissuade it. Every scrap was gone the following morning. I was awestruck.
I’m paralleling that path in anticipation of what I call the Awful 90: November, December, January. I’m laying in calorie-dense stores at all costs. My table will be a bonfire of crackling new endeavors. A deep black-and-red coal bed of Roman, German, American, and Russian goings-on, aiming for that March day when—probably drunk—I will realize the evening sun is stretching and stretching, hanging there like it’s stuck, and I’ve made it.
I now own GMT’s Storm Above the Reich. By Thanksgiving I hope to add Pavlov’s House and Hadrian’s Wall. When the sun starts setting at 4:43 p.m. and I feel hollowed out by 6, I hope to remember in November what I learned in March. Just take the game out. Set it up. Take Ambien and fall asleep with the rulebook on your chest. Bank the fires and grind through. Dream of bears, their stomachs full of chicken bones and piss.
***
Session: Cut-Off, Pakistan
Sitrep, End of Day 2
It’s been a day of valiant flying. Rebel executed a simply brilliant run, halving a full-strength infantry battalion singlehanded. He found a seam somehow, clearing two AAAs his first turn with a well-placed one-two of a Maverick and a GBU-16. His Evasive ability and ECM then kept him aloft as he plied his way west over scads of APCs and infantry with MANPADs, blessing the occupants—which included both enemy command units—with a judicious sprinkling of cluster bombs and Mk. 83s. He even somehow returned a useable craft.
It’s the kind of thing you could put your feet up and savor over a whiskey if it weren’t for the sirens and the fact that there’s no whiskey. The remains of the enemy Infantry Force and the Fast Assault battalions — along with a full-strength Air Defense Unit — have all barreled into the Friendly Rear band.
There’s one play. It’s the same play as Day 1. Lash out at the nearest antagonists with the best-placed shots you can muster. I have eight SO points, most of which I assume I’ll need to reserve for the penalties for extreme encroachment. But those infantry and assault elements are half-strength. If I go at those with two craft each, pitiable state though they may be in, I’ll knock them off for a three-SO kicker. That will keep us in it. The craft will be armed with stuff my adjutants found at Lowe’s*, but we’ll be in it, and the Pakistanis will only have two operational assault battalions left. Maybe just few enough that my tattered squad can gang up on and neutralize on Days 4 and 5. Maybe.
Award: The 7 Seconds Clenched-Fists, Black-Eyes Medal of Being Hardcore as Hell
*You have not had a true retail experience until you’ve visited the Lowe’s in Kandahar. Haggling for cart food in the front alone is worth the trip, the most fun you’ll have on this side of the Durand Line.
Rebel's in the arena. He's trying stuff.
***
Session: Cut-Off, Pakistan
Day 3, Mission 2
Target: Infantry Battalion
Pilot: Halo, A-10A
Today Warthogs and Apaches were paired off with each other for our desperate sweep of the back porch. There was much hooting on comms as we confirmed Rebel and Rock had finally crushed the Fast Assault Battalion that had been flooring it through our fire for the last 72 hours. They spotted a surviving truck or two hauling ass to comical banjo music, but those discombobulated lees will never be a coherent fighting force again. If Halo and Montana can do the same to the remnants of the Infantry Battalion, we can likely weather it when the Air Defense Unit enters our tender rear zone, regroup and make them pay on Day 4.
My gamble with Montana’s engine block craps out. He plummets into scrub and rock en route to the attack zone. Halo pushes on, his A-10 laden with with the fruits of one of the last SO points I can justify spending. He opens with a classic: busting a command unit wide open with a Maverick and simultaneously knocking out an AAA in his approach path with a GBU-16 shot. He banks back, switching to high altitude. His strike ability is compromised, but the three Mk. 20s and two Mk. 83s should be enough to hollow out the remnants of the battalion bunched across three hexes in the middle of the board. With a little luck.
There’s no more luck. He calls in the ping from the helicopter that materializes at six o’clock low. And the Sidewinder that issues from it. That’s the last we hear.
Two enemy battalions will be hammering the base by evening, with a third due to arrive before we’re reinforced. I’ll have one SO point left on Day 4 with which to send out two chewed-up craft, with pilots that are all about to go on tilt. No sense in throwing them away; we’re beat.
I think of Halo’s freshly widowed mop. For some reason that’s really getting me down.
Award: Order of the Nice Try, Cowboy
***
Day 4 of running 2-3 missions a day on Total War in Pakistan. This isn’t turning out much better than the Cut-Off debacle. I quit. This has been on the table for two or three days now and I’m just tired. The last run was my two AH-1s on a hopeless bid…I was begging for the Killed chit.
It was a miracle even in its failure: Gator (a replacement for another KIA Cobra jockey) and Grandpa were running the gauntlet, surviving just enough damage draws not to get killed, but not enough to remain effective. HUDs were knocked out. Stress levels were spiking. Depending on the ad hoc targeting, one or the other were drawing three hits per turn as they barreled for the other edge of the map. I did a count. They were one point shy of halving the battalion…but the penalties from damage were so severe, the few birds they had left in the rack wouldn’t do anything.
The fact that they made it home was just another in a desert full of such. I speed-ran the Close Support Old and New Testaments in two days and I didn’t even care what happened next. Please let it be the Apocalypse. Do I get to at least put my head down on the desk for 15 minutes if it’s the Apocalypse?
On the second mission, I lost the F-16 and Dart — one strike short of finishing the remains of Infantry Battalion 1A. I wasn’t worried about mortgaging my score and blowing the VPs for a new bird. It was the psychic energy and focus I didn’t have.
Each mission had the emotion of a movie. The solo flights, last-chance shots closing up and opening again with a miraculous Enemy Cover roll and then the pilot missing on the last possible try with the last possible missile. Anticipation and rage. Despair and resignation. And the overlap of unnameable alloys that should be added to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. I was relieved to set it down, but still happy to savor it. Although I’m wondering if the eight-day missions just aren’t a bit protracted for me.
If you’d have told me two years ago that a solitaire boardgame about close air support would be my muse, I wouldn’t have believed you. This is a categorically unique being on my shelf, a private and exhausting and thrilling second life on my table — not exactly spiritual, but undeniably transcendent and engrossing.
I can only say to those who have made that AGM-114 strike at the last possible moment before the tanks run dry and your tailbone chakra disappears down a black flume, thank you for reading. And good hunting.
Award: It’s for you, my fellow Special Option-point spenders and pilot allocators: the Gen. Johneld B. Dubious Patient Reader Award. I can only thank you for indulging me. I am currently lobbying BGG to get you some profile flair for this one. Should happen any day now. Count your mops before you shut down the house tonight. This century is freaky as hell.
Further Recommended Reading: Here’s Part One of my four-part series about my freshman season as a TAL commander.