Background The rivalry between Sweden and Norway has never been fully relieved, even when both nations were in NATO as allies. With the disbandment of the Warsaw Pact, old feelings surface and the two nations skirmish in a limited border war. A lone Norwegian F- 16C is coming off of CAP when he encounters two Swedish Viggins and moves in for the kill. Game Length: 8 turns . 1. The Viggins begin spotted. The Falcon is initially unspotted. 2. The Viggins are camoflaged. The Falcon is camoflaged when viewed from above and air superiority gray when viewed from below. The Falcon pilot is a Veteran with no attributes. Both Viggin pilots are Regulars and #1 has excellent eyesight. 3. Loads. F-16C: 1,9=AIM-9M, 218=AIM-9L, 3,7=AIM-120, 5=1200L FT, DDS=8F/8C. JA-37s: 2,6=Skyflash, 1,3,5,7=AIM- 9L, 4=1200L FT, No DDS. 4. Fuel. F-16C: start=270, bingo=136. JA-37s: start=280, bingo=120. Results I still think that this is a delightful little contest full of fun and potential. You should definitely try this one at home. Most people rarely, if ever, fly scenarios with different numbers of aircraft on each side. When they are flown, they are usually 2 v 3 or 3 v 4, one almost never sees a 1 v 2 even though it is a rather common occurence in aviation history and many books have been written on how to fight this kind of scenario. I carefully played with starting configurations, characteristics, locations to try and make this scenario as balanced as possible. I must have done something right because the eighteen tables split 11 -7: a fairly even contest. Once again, I was forced to play the odd man, drawing Quickdraw for this round and so I can only recount the action at our table. I got lucky on turn 1, spotting the Falcon with my # 1 pilot (old "Eagle Eye"). I also got the first initiative roll, so the Falcon was forced to move first. Unfortunately for Quickdraw he made a tactical error early: he climbed the Falcon to altitude level 12 on his move. I'm not one to let people get away with a mistake like that. On my move, Viggin # 1 dove down to 11, closing directly with the Falcon while Viggin #2 extended straight ahead, working to get around behind him. Because of his first turn climb, the Falcon was not able to fire at the lead Viggin, and this pretty much sealed his fate. Losing the initiative again, he broke into Viggin #1, wings level this time, but I was able to move outside his weapon arc and get an unanswered head-on missile shot with two AIM-9Ls. Meanwhile Viggin #2 broke hard in on the Falcon's tail, intending to force him to disengage with #1. The Falcon decoyed the first missile but the second Lima got through for damage (2L, I think). His maneuvering to avoid the missiles, however, set him up perfectly for a range zero gun attack from Viggin #2 who ate him up. It wasn't pretty. Standings After Round Two I finished the scenario about the same time that Paul Procyk (Wiseguy) came over to announce his 30 point win from the Viggin side. He was most displeased to learn, first, that I had scored the same total, and later that Gunner had exceeded it. Hey Paul, it was good for 16 match points anyway! I received a lot of positive comments about this scenario and I was very happy about that. The mixture of brand new technology and older stuff lended an interesting feel to the game and it played fairly quickly at all the tables. By this point in the tournament people had gotten the cobwebs out (we had started at 0800, after all) and were understanding and using the scoring system properly. I figured that the standings would change rapidly in the third and fourth rounds since there would be plenty of opportunities for really good pilots to rack up kills and outscore the less-gifted skyjocks. We broke briefly for lunch with the standings as follows (at right): It was still a pretty close tourney as you can see. With only four match points separating the top five players, its was still very much anybody's game. In fact, I think one of the powerful advantages of a match points scoring system is that it keeps people from running away with a tournament early. Compare the scores above to what you would have seen if only the scenario point totals counted: Scenario Points After Round Two Not only are the rankings different, but there is a significant gap of over ten points between first and second places. In fact, there's a gap of 24 points between first and fifth--a difference of essentially two kills! By this point using the old system, people with a bad round or two would have been giving up. Instead everyone seemed excited and no one took their lead for granted. After a hearty repast at the Inner Harbor restaurants (or the motel sandwich cart in the lobby), the pilots gathered together to be assigned in pairs for Round Three, the following 2 v 2 scenario was the topic of convention. Back to Table of Contents -- Air Power # 15 Back to Air Power List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1991 by J.D. Webster This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com