Well I'm glad this issue has a lot of stuff in it, because it's pretty damn late, and I apologize most sincerely for that. First, J. D. moved his family up north last month and I didn't get some of his articles until later than I might have hoped.
Meanwhile, I was in a play (yes, on the stage) at the college during April and May and that killed quite a lot of time. Then, I found out my bosses at my new place of employ wanted me to start about two weeks earlier than I anticipated.
Needless to say, my house in LaGrange has not yet sold, I don't have a house in Huntsville yet, I'm working during the week here and driving back to LaGrange to visit my wife on weekends (about 3.5 hours one way) and life is real full right now. What it's full of, I leave up to you.
The situation with regard to AIR POWER is bound to improve sometime, but, for the time being, we're going to be losing access to the scanner we were using for our artwork. This means less frequent and less detailed graphics since they all have to be "drawn" and that is a time-consuming process. I have also lost my staff back in LaGrange and until I can recruit some locals, I'm back to doing everything myself. All this means that if you've ordered back issues and haven't gotten them, or if you haven't yet received a response to an inquiry, don't panic. I'm getting to them slowly but surely.
On a positive note, my new job seems interesting enough. There are some good people here and it's a sound company. It's certainly a far cry from teaching, but I may wind up doing a little of that here at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. AIR POWER seems to have a secure future for the time being and we are still planning to expand our readership, our coverage of other games, and our coverage of modem air combat related gaming in general. We have started to advertise a little more aggressively and we hope that this year's ORIGINS will be an even better success for us than last year's.
Speaking of ORIGINS, we have quite a lineup. J.D. and I will be there, of course, for the whole show. If you can make your way to Atlanta, you should do so. I know some of the people who are organizing the con, and they put on a fine show and consistently make money. They have sponsored DragonCon every October in Atlanta for five years or so and used to sponsor the now defunct Atlanta Gaming Con every spring.
The "people who know" are estimating something like 11,000 people for ORIGINS, more than half of them wargamers. For Air Sup, there is a Novice tournament on Thursday morning, and two full tourneys on Friday morning and Saturday afternoon / evening. We even have an AIR POWER seminar on Friday night and you can bet that J.D. and I will be found around the open gaming area venting our numerous move- induced frustrations on hapless, Canadian, so-called .1 pilots". If God had meant for Canucks to fly, he would have given them forebrains. (I hope you guys realize we're kidding.)
I'm trying to get up a mini-campaign for Air Strike folk and will be circulating around the con trying to rope unsuspecting passers-by into playing it. It should be really fun.
If you are selected for this arduous task, you'll be given a "strike pack" with target information, plane and pilot availability, allowed ordnance, and defense intelligence. You'll be required to weaponeer the target, outfit the aircraft, plan the route, assemble the force and execute the attack. And you'll face ground defenses and interceptors operated by other gainers or, possibly, yours truly (sadistic grin). The idea is to get a wider range of folks interested and comfortable with Air Strike.
I'll be the first to admit that the rules were tough for me to pick up and I didn't fare very well on my first few bomb runs against a real enemy, but the group in LaGrange has moved a lot of mud over the last 18 months and we're quite comfortable with it now. Striking opens up a whole new set of concerns for the Air Sup gamer and it presents a different and refreshing set of challenges that are an often welcome relief from the "sameness" of pure air combat.
Best of all, from our perspective, is that strike missions can often be flown "solitaire", so you have a cooperative game rather than a competitive one. Going up against your friends all the time can put a strain on things, but ground defenses are pretty easy to run and don't take a great deal of thought. The mood of "us" against "them" that results usually makes for a really entertaining evening's play and there are never any hard feelings.
I musn't forget to mention the great stuff in this issue! Mo Morgan, designer of Flight Leader ™ and TAC AIR ™, gives us part one of a two-part review in this issue. There are numerous data card revisions by Psycho. The F4/2000 and corrected Su-27 form the data card contingent while the rest of the pullout has the expanded damage tables from 2nd Edition - an "H" hit's riot just an "W' hit anymore! Of course all the usual features are here and we're starting a new column check out the Tactics Talk on page 15. 1 hope to share my many hours of Air Sup experience with you all. Until next time, keep 'em flying!
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© Copyright 1990 by J.D. Webster
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