Phantom Leader - Deluxe Edition

I am currently learning how to play this game, the rules are well written, easy to understand, and with a lot of explanations. Most importantly it has a very small footprint, you don’t need a huge table! As with all DVG games the quality of the components is excellent.

With the variety of campaigns, missions, and options to choose from in organizing your squadron and planning missions, Phantom Leader is an excellent solitaire game set in the Vietnam War that is both challenging and entertaining. Planning your missions – assigning pilots, arming aircraft, and plotting flight paths – is critically important to your success and to the survival of your pilots. After planning the mission, however, it must be executed by flying through anti-aircraft defenses, attacking the target, and making your way out through more enemy defenses. You may also engage enemy fighters along the way, depending on which campaign you have selected. Event cards can also throw a wrench into your plans (or improve your chances of success) as events outside your control unfold on your flight to the target, while you approach to attack the target, and as you egress the area. As targets are destroyed, the larger strategic situation develops as the campaign progresses allowing you to select from more targets for each mission, decreasing the number of enemy defenses, or making it more difficult to select politically sensitive targets. While the movement and combat are rather abstracted and missing the tactical maneuvering of dogfighting and lining up for a bomb run typical in a two-player game, they are well suited to a squadron-level solitaire game. The variety of campaigns to choose from and the number of targets available for each campaign, as well as the variety of aircraft and munitions to use and the randomness of enemy defenses, provide a great deal of replayability – no two campaigns will ever be exactly the same. I have found Phantom Leader to be an entertaining and challenging game.

With the variety of campaigns, missions, and options to choose from in organizing your squadron and planning missions, Phantom Leader is an excellent solitaire game set in the Vietnam War that is both challenging and entertaining. Planning your missions – assigning pilots, arming aircraft, and plotting flight paths – is critically important to your success and to the survival of your pilots. After planning the mission, however, it must be executed by flying through anti-aircraft defenses, attacking the target, and making your way out through more enemy defenses. You may also engage enemy fighters along the way, depending on which campaign you have selected. Event cards can also throw a wrench into your plans (or improve your chances of success) as events outside your control unfold on your flight to the target, while you approach to attack the target, and as you egress the area. As targets are destroyed, the larger strategic situation develops as the campaign progresses allowing you to select from more targets for each mission, decreasing the number of enemy defenses, or making it more difficult to select politically sensitive targets. While the movement and combat are rather abstracted and missing the tactical maneuvering of dogfighting and lining up for a bomb run typical in a two-player game, they are well suited to a squadron-level solitaire game. The variety of campaigns to choose from and the number of targets available for each campaign, as well as the variety of aircraft and munitions to use and the randomness of enemy defenses, provide a great deal of replayability – no two campaigns will ever be exactly the same. I have found Phantom Leader to be an entertaining and challenging game.