In Parts 1 and 2 we looked at the new German, Japanese, Soviet and American aircraft appearing in Wing Leader: Eagles. It’s great to see a mixture of late-war curios and hot-rods finally make it into the game. However, there are two more nations–one a surprise entry in a World War 2 game–that contribute data cards to the new expansion module.
Today’s Churchill Strategy Tips article is from Robert Crowter-Jones, the writer behind ElusiveMeeple, a wonderful and very useful site that provides both reviews and strategy tips for a wide variety of boardgames. Robert has reviewed Churchill in some depth and written strategy tips for the game on his blog (see the ElusiveMeeple site). For strategy tips on Triumph and Tragedy, 1960: The Making of the President, and Time of Crisis, see his InsideGMT articles here, here, and here.
In Part 1, we looked at the some of the new German and Japanese aircraft appearing in Wing Leader: Eagles. Some of these were second-stringers in the air war, but played a major part in some really interesting battles. The Allies also have a bunch of new aeroplanes ready for the fray, which we look at in the profiles below.
Gandhi on the Salt March, 1930.
Many people around the world live in countries that have been directly affected by nonviolent struggles. Nonviolence has a long and successful track record of creating political change around the world; recent studies have shown it to be twice as effective at achieving its goals than violent resistance. In the 20th century, nonviolent campaigns have successfully resisted oppressive regimes in India, China, Brazil, the Philippines, Guatemala, Nigeria, South Africa, Iran, Denmark, Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Romania, the United States, and many other nations.
Weapons and tactics tend to evolve over the course of longer wars. The American Civil War was no exception. The two years elapsing between the 1862 and 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaigns witnessed changes in both regards.
Death Valley‘s design seeks to reflect those changes. In previous articles, I described the way the game handles late war innovations in the infantry arm, including sharpshooters and “Open Order” tactics. This article focuses on the difference two years made for the Union and Confederate cavalry and other mounted troops confronting each other in the Shenandoah.
Recently, Bruce Geryk posted a detailed and well illustrated After Action Report of the 1942 Campaign of Skies Above the Reich on a Grognard Wargamer thread. We are presenting that AAR here as a series of articles with Bruce’s permission so readers can easily reference it in the future. Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series can be found here, here, and here. Enjoy! -Rachel
Certain tactical games have always scratched the collector’s itch. It’s not enough to play with the ships/tanks/planes in the game you have, you have to have the expansions, you gotta catch ’em all! Wing Leader was designed to both irritate and salve that itch, and in Wing Leader: Eagles, we expand upon the late war kit from Wing Leader: Supremacy with a mixture of crowd-pleasers and oddballs.
My previous article described how the Army of Northern Virginia’s sharpshooter battalions provided Death Valley with a way to level the playing field between the Union and Confederate forces that fought the Shenandoah battles of 1864. A second late-war tactical innovation offered us yet another solution to the problem of mismatched armies: “Open Order” formation, described by Fred Ray in his Shock Troops of the Confederacy.
