You Dropped a Bomb on Me, Baby!

Well... here we are back after a long hiatus. What happened to SABG attack on Libya via Hornet Leader: Carrier Operations. We'll never know.

I played the first of five days through to completion for about an hour, and I have to tell you in all I totally despised the game. I stepped away from the table, leaving it set up for a few days, and I could not bring myself to sit back down to continue the campaign. I went out of town for a week, and I still found I would rather finish my federal income tax than spend even another hour with this game.

What was wrong with it? Although the theme was fun (i.e., modern jets blasting the living daylights out of little guys scurrying about on the ground), I found the game a repetitious die rolling and accounting exercise with few meaningful decisions. Playing solo didn't help.

Anyway, many others on BGG seem to love the game, so I offer it here to any readers for $20, played very briefly one time to partial completion.

Oh.... and Rob was totally blown out of the sky on the first mission by a mobile SAM... SA-11 to be exact, which is a particularly nasty tank-mounted, radar guided piece of equipment. Everyone else survived, but unfortunately Rob was the best air-to-ground guy in the squadron, and I loaded him up with all the best bombs. So, the group failed to destroy the target. Overall, some pretty heavily negative VPs after the first day. Boo! Perhaps I'm just a sore loser.

SABG In the Navy!

Back again for another episode of SABG at War. When we last encountered our heroes, they were steaming off the coast of northern Africa as part of a carrier battle group, ready to put the hurt on Col Qaddafi and friends. Yes, tonight we're kicking off an epic session report on DVG's Hornet Leader: Carrier Operations, with SABG as the pilots flying the Libya 2011 scenario.

Here is the roster (using the callsigns generated by the game, to keep me from going crazy) with their assigned aircraft:

Steve (Ranger) - F/A-18E, Veteran, Squadron Leader -- As the actual military pilot of the group, he gets the top slot.

Michael (Caveman) - F/A-18E, Skilled -- Gets the next top slot due to his outstanding performance fighting xenomorphs last game.

Dennis (Brick) - E-2C, Average -- This pretty much the cleric class aircraft of the group. You can thank him when he saves you from a SAM with his electronic warfare prayer powers.

Rob (Scout) - F/A-18E, Average -- Rob gets a prominent role in this game due to being shuffled into the background last game.

Brian (Bear) - F/A-18C, Average -- Brian is flying an older version aircraft, but his kamikaze flying style will make up the difference.

Chris (Hunter) - F/A-18C, Average -- Ditto. Pretty much another red shirt.

Sean (Panther) - F/A-18C, Average -- Sean wasn't in last game, so I expect a strong showing during this one.

Jon (Alien) - F/A-18E, Green -- Sorry, Jon. At least I paid to upgrade your ride.


The campaign will consist of five fun days of hot action, during which time we'll try to inflict maximum carnage upon the Colonel without getting anyone's aircraft shot out from under them. Sounds easy, right?

Day 1:

For the first day of the campaign, everyone is fresh, well rested, and happy just to be doing something besides sailing around with a few thousand of their closest friends. Unfortunately, Libya's air defense and intelligence suppression capabilities are still maxed out. We only get two potential targets to choose from:

Major Airfield -- Pretty much the hardest target in the game right out of the shoot!
Convoy -- A minor target.

If we don't go after the airfield, it will put extra two bandits over every target each turn until its destroyed. It's going to be a bear, but, hey, we're bad ass, right?

Sadly, we're only allowed to take seven aircraft on this Death Star run, so I leave the Green recruit, Jon, back at the base to keep the beer cold. We arm up, and we're off!

Inbound on the target, we encounter some random troops with shoulder launched SAMs. Dennis fails to jam their targeting (here we go again...). They lock on to Rob and Chris, who both evade the missiles, but both take one stress each. Don't worry, guys! Plenty of clean underwear back on the boat.

The desert rushes by at high speed as the miles to the target tick down quickly. Catching the enemy airbase off guard, the team comes screaming out of the sky like a pack of steel birds of prey! The attack set up is shown below.



Tomorrow, the first day's attack run!

SABG Goes to War!

Well, timing is everything. I had already planned to run a solo scenario Hornet Leader: Carrier Operations, featuring the familiar cast of SABG Classic filling the billets in the squadron. Given the current events in Libya, I was going to run the 1980's Libya scenario included in the basic game. Then today I noticed Dan Verssen games, the publisher, released an updated 2011 scenario for free on their website. Cool.

Okay, so fire up your Top Gun soundtracks and expect a full report later this evening!

The picture above is from the New York times, showing what I believe to be a Libyan Mig-23 Flogger having some severe fire containment issues. Note the ejection seat and parachute in the background.