Scenario design is an art, and one that we’ve been perfecting over more than four years of Wing Leader development. Maybe it’s time to describe what we’ve learned through the lens of the scenarios we have built. The new late-war expansion set, Wing Leader: Eagles, features some of our most advanced scenarios yet, and this article will examine some of what you can look forward to.

Scenario E01: Three Days of Greif

Setting: Operation Bagration, Belarus, 26 June 1944

Featured Aircraft: (German) Bf 109G, He 177A; (Soviet) Yak-3, Yak-7, La-5FN

Wing Leader expansions exist as a vehicle for introducing new aircraft, but this scenario was a difficult one. Not only was the German heavy bomber force a footnote in the war, but it rarely operated by day. However, the Heinkel 177 was such an icon of failed Luftwaffe ambition that I searched high and low for this bizarre situation, where German desperation led to the ‘heavies’ being launched into battle as low-level tank busters. No record of their effectiveness in that role exists, so here we have set the bombers, as they were deployed, in ‘penny packet’ flight formations comprised of vulnerable pairs intruding on the deck. (So vulnerable, in fact, that for balance we have to turn off the single-aircraft rule for this scenario.)

We intersperse the ‘heavies’ with German sweeps of the kind they regularly employed on the Eastern Front. (The Germans mainly operated in flights, confident of their skill against larger Soviet forces, while needing cover a wide frontage.) To give the Luftwaffe a chance, the defending air cover, which includes the ‘hot’ Soviet Yak-3, is also dispersed. This is not a fight that goes down to ‘quality vs. numbers’, but rather of different kinds of quality on both sides, married to German fragility in an environment, down at low level,where the Soviets perform well.

Scenario E02: The Last Samurai

Setting: Japan, 8 August 1945

Featured Aircraft: (Japanese) N1K2 Shiden; (American) B-29, P-47N

This scenario is a showcase for the ultimate version of the Thunderbolt, the P-47N. It was actually a leftover from the development of Wing Leader: Supremacy, shelved due to a lack of ADC slots. The defending Japanese are, as befits an end-of-war scenario, completely overmatched. The puzzle here was in trying to give the interceptors a chance to sneak past the American sweeps so as to get a shot at the bombers. One of the ways to do this was to add obscuring cloud layers to permit the Japanese the option of going ‘high’ or ‘low’ against the Americans. More creative use of cloud is a technique we have been increasingly employing in recent game releases, and you’ll find it cropping up again in these accounts.

Another design problem we faced was in trying to incentivise the defenders to get at the bombers, rather than allowing themselves to get sucked into fights with the American fighters. Surprisingly, the defensive fire of the bombers, and the toughness of the B-29s, is sufficient to give the interceptors pause. So we give VPs for simply attacking the bombers, for persisting against the B-29s, as well as the losses they inflict.

Scenario E03: Disaster Over Ledo

Setting: China-Burma-India, 27 March 1944

Featured Aircraft: (Americans) P-40N, P-51A; (Japanese) Ki-43-II Hayabusa, Ki-49 Donryu

There was a strong impetus from the testers to include the Allison-engined P-51A, the forgotten Mustang, in the expansion. This resulted in this curiosity: in which an overwhelming force of Americans try to massacre a single squadron of Japanese Ki-49s ‘heavy’ bombers, that are accompanied by a substantial escort of Hayabusas.

Now, bombing in Wing Leader is a game of average results. It works best where there are a sufficient number of bombing die rolls (at least three or more) that we can balance the scenario on the likely mean result. Where you have just a single bomber squadron in play, and by extension just one bombing die roll, you risk building a scenario that swings entirely on a single roll. So in Disaster Over Ledo we replace the ‘swingy’ die roll with a fixed VP tariff for simply overflying the target, with a decreasing rate based on the bomber squadron’s state. This puts the emphasis on the air combat and whether the massive escort can force the bomber squadron through to the target.

Again we’ve divided up the airspace with cloud, to give the defenders some interesting ‘high-low’ decisions. Avoiding the Hayabusa sweep might allow more P-51s through to the bombers, to mass against the escort.

Scenario E04: Schlachtflieger

Setting: Operation Bagration, Ukraine, 14 July 1944

Featured Aircraft: (German) Bf 109G, Ju 87D, Hs 129B, Fw 190F; (Soviet) P-39Q, Yak-3, Yak-9, La-5FN

One of the impetuses for the Wing Leader second edition rules was the unsatisfactory treatment of fighter-bombers in the game. The fixes are small but significant and Schlachtflieger is one of the showcase scenarios for the revised game mechanics. It is a scenario that also allows us to demonstrate the differences in battlefield attack between the ‘old’ precision dive bombing, in the form of Ju 87s, and the ‘new’ specialist armoured low-level attackers such as the Hs 129 and Fw 190F.

One of the things you’ll quickly discover is the helplessness of the Hs 129. A favourite of modellers, seduced by box art that often depicts a snub-nosed tankbuster spitting fire, the actual Hs 129 comes as something of a disappointment. In reality it was underpowered and vulnerable, and in the B-2 version depicted here it was undergunned against modern tanks. The real future was represented by the Fw 190F, which could at least look after itself in a melee against low-level enemy interceptors. In its chaos and desperation, one playtester noted, this scenario ‘feels very much like Bagration‘.

Testing Schlachtflieger demonstrated an everpresent problem we have with mixing single-engined and twin-engined bombers in the same scenario: that of perverse incentives generated by differing VP values for aircraft losses. Our solution was to reduce the VP gains for Hs 129 losses, to prevent them becoming a ‘VP farm’ for the opposition.

Scenario E05: Over the Oder

Setting: Oder Bridges, Silesia, 24 January 1945

Featured Aircraft: (German) Bf 109K, Fw 190A, Fw 190D, Fw 190F, Hs 129; (Soviet) P-39Q, Yak-3, La-7

Yet another low-level attack scenario, this one is enlivened by adding the ‘hot’ Soviet fighters, including the Yak-3 and La-7. Revolving around the German attacks on the bottlenecks at the Oder bridges, the Germans are forced into flak suppression before they can take out the more lucrative targets. The Fw 190Fs are forced to use air-to-ground rockets for this one, which are excellent for the kind of soft targets we plant around the battlefield here. To add to the fun we have a mix of low wispy cloud cover over the targets and some snowy ground mist to increase the difficulties of acquiring low-level targets.

There’s a novel, shifting role for German fighter cover in this scenario, as it might begin the battle by strafing and then have to pivot into air battles. To encourage the German fighters to strafe, we add in an interesting special rule that permits Experten to modify bombing and strafing attack rolls.

Scenario E06: Aces High

Setting: Operation Bagration, Latvia, 27 July 1944

Featured Aircraft: (German) Bf 109G; (Soviet) Tu-2, P-39Q, Yak-9D

Throughout the development of Wing Leader I have been a champion for two air forces that often fail to get a look-in in other air combat games: the Italians and the Soviets. There’s not much scope for the Italians to appear in a late war expansion, but Wing Leader: Eagles gave me the opportunity to fill out the Soviet inventory with some of their best equipment. The Tu-2 is just such an aircraft. It was arguably the finest medium bomber of the war, possessing great speed. However, finding scenarios for it was difficult. Stalin seemed to regard them as something of a ‘glass cannon’, a special capability that was both powerful and fragile. So they were often used only where the Soviets had air supremacy, such as the reduction of Königsberg. however, Operation Bagration catches the Tu-2 early in its career, supporting the 1st Baltic Front in Latvia.

One feature of this scenario was the use of the ‘hunting from cloud’ rules, introduced in the Wing Leader: Blitz campaign. This gives the German player the chance to stooge around in the copious amount of cloud, and use it as a springboard for hit-and-run attacks on the bombers. In this scenario the small German defending force is a true elite, with no less than three Experten in play, so I wanted to give a sense of how quality could make all the difference. In another special rule, I wanted to depict the Yak-9D’s long-range capability, so I ruled that they had full reserve fuel tanks; these tanks were unprotected and therefore made the aircraft vulnerable to attack.

Testers have described it as an ‘unsubtle’, if even, scenario. There has also been some interesting debate over the use of gun pods by the Bf 109Gs as an option for the interceptors. The schools of debate vacillated between those who who feel the tradeoff in performance is not worth it, and those who are frustrated by the 109s’ lack of firepower.

Scenario E07: Red Star, Blue Swastika

Setting: Tali-Ihlantala, Continuation War, 2 July 1944

Featured Aircraft: (Finnish) Bf 109G; (Soviet) Yak-9D, IL-2M, Pe-2

A favourite of the playtesters, this provides a lot of tactical options for what is essentially a small scenario.

This will be the first published scenario featuring the Finns. I approach the Finns with caution, in part because of the layers of myth and romance surrounding their exploits in the Winter War and Continuation War. It’s also hard to find large-scale air battles suitable for Wing Leader in a war where encounters tended to run to small-scale skirmishes. However, the Finns’ appearance has been long overdue and in this scenario we get to see two squadrons of Bf 109s trying to tie up a mass of ill-protected Sturmoviks and Peshkas at very low level. Yet again, some well-placed cloud provides options for both attack and defence, though the big decisions here tend to revolve around the slimness of the interception force against the mass of Soviets. Should the defenders mass on a small number of targets or split? Should the raider escorts stick with the Sturmoviks and let the Pe-2s defend themselves? Should the Peshkas steep bomb through the cloud or glide bomb from beneath it? There are many different ways to slice this one.

In Part 2 of this article we’ll look at seven more scenarios, featuring battles over Norway, Denmark and Japan, featuring Mosquitos, Me 163 rocket planes and the return of an old favourite: the Wildcat.

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Articles in this Series: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3