Heavy Gear: Tactical Air Support - Dogfight Review

I recently scored the Blitz Airstrike Counter Pack. So I decided to break out the old Tactical Air Support book that's done little more than collect dust. A few weeks ago, I was flipping through the book and decided that I really wanted to give the Dogfighting rules a go. They looked really sleek and were pretty easy to learn, especially if you have experience with the Silhouette game system. I decided to take two qualified pilots (North) against a Southern Ace.

After playing the rules, I HIGHLY recommend using pilots of veteran level or higher. My qualified piloted constantly were missing skill checks and suffered. One Northern pilot suffered light damage as a result from a failed roll and another of my Northern pilots that had a clean shot at the Southern Pilot, but blacked out after making a turn that was too tight and failed both his Piloting and FIT tests. Neither of my Northern Pilots were able to get off even a single shot due to constantly dealing with the effects of failing skill tests. Also, I believe that I should have used two hex maps instead of just the one (18x22). One other suggestion is to not be afraid to make tight turns. Playing it safe also contributed to the troubles my Northern Pilots faced. I was constantly running into the edge of the map and was forced to make tighter turns than I needed to.

I did use a d10 to mark the altitude. At the beginning of the game I rolled two d6s to determine the harddeck. If an aircraft wanted to go higher than 10 MPs, you were off the board and left the field. If you wanted to go below the harddeck, you simply put a marker next to the mini to note that it was below the harddeck while the d10 showed how many inches below the harddeck the mini was. I also noticed a few other areas that needed a little tweaking. (i.e. the aircraft control loss table where you sideslip how far do you sideslip when you loose control)

That said, the rules were really a blast to play. The dogfighting was pretty slick. You definitely have to think differently. You can't just go balls to the wall or you pay for it. You do get a healthy supply of MPs for the aircraft. And I often found myself making sure that I moved enough to keep from stalling. They don't need to the Blitz treatment. I don't think the whole game lasted more than a ten rounds. Even with the constant checking of rules total gameplay timed in at about 30 minutes. I could definitely see myself playing this game more as I get used to the rules. I can't wait to play with one of my buddies to see what they think. I've been hankering to do some 6mm air to air combat for a while and here I had the rules all the time. Oh and Banzai I will defintely be putting some of your work to use once I get the hang of Dogfighting. Even thought the rules are old, if you have them and some of the airstrike minis handy I'd defintely recommend giving it a go.

Heavy Gear is a trademark of Dream Pod 9, Inc.