an excerpt:
As expected in a helicopter warfare simulation, victory in “Hind Commander” tends to center on exploiting the technical characteristics of your equipment. Helicopters are rated for speed, ceiling, sensor effectiveness, range and tracking capability, plus electronic countermeasures and armor. The helicopters hunt, while anti-aircraft weapons hunt them. Naturally, helicopters are far more mobile than the plodding ground-bound troops and armor, which are treated more abstractly. There are fixed-wing aircraft, but they are also treated in less detail. The whirlybirds are the stars of this show.
An interesting feature of “Hind Commander” is that for a given battle, players have a certain number of points to spend on various configurations of “strike groups.” A regular strike group will have a balanced mix of, say, a dozen heavy and light helicopters. On the other hand, a special forces group will have fewer but more high-tech choppers, while a reserve group will have more but older equipment. In addition, players can buy stratagem cards that offer bonuses such as elite helicopter crews or enhanced jamming. So there’s a fair amount of unpredictability on the tabletop battlefield.
Sounds intriguing... I'm curious how big the "minis helicopter-centric wargaming" market is.
By: Brant
I've always been interested to see how modern era wargames treated helicopters (well, I guess that's the only era that would need to).
ReplyDeleteI have seen only three board wargames that concentrated exclusively on helicopters: the unplayable Air Cobra from OSG, the much-cleaned-up Air Cav, and the solo game Thunderbolt/Apache Leader.
I see mention on BGG of another minis rule set from Navwar called "Chaingun" from 1995.