Tiwintza

In my previous Instant Thunder post I promised some missile action. I was going to play the 1958 Taiwan scenario, featuring the first combat use of such missiles, but instead decided to lay the 'Tiwintza' scenario instead. This is set during the short Cenepa War of 1995 between Ecuador and Peru, part of an extremely long-running border dispute between the two nations. The basic version of the scenario is historical - on 9th February 1995, two Ecuadorian Mirage F1s intercepted a couple of Peruvian Su-22s on a bombing mission and shot them down. And expanded 'what-if' scenario includes other aircraft that were in the area - two Ecuadorian Kfirs and two Peruvian Mirage 2000s.

The game starts with the Su-22s and F1s in play. The Su-22s are loaded for their bombing mission, so have a massively diminished performance. However all they have to do in order for the Peruvians to score points is survive and (if they can) exit the board. The Ecuadorians have the advantage in combat, but must score kills with pretty much no loss in order to get a win.

On the first turn both Su-22s managed to position themselves such that they were covered by the sun. All missiles in this game are heat-seeking, so they were very hard to target.

On the second turn the reinforcements appeared - the Peruvians got two Mirage 2000s and the Ecuadorians a brace of Kfirs.

The Su-22s made it to the top row again, but couldn't 'hide' in the sun, and everything scrambled to get missile-locks. The Mirage at the top left got a lock, but decided not to fire. Missiles in this game have a flight-time which is a number of card-draws, with the distance the missile travels being the difference between two card draws. The Mirage F1 got the lock, but the initial card draw was a middling value that didn't offer the potential of enough flight distance for the missile to reach the target. A plane can decide not to fire on the basis of the initial draw.

The Kfirs were armed with Shafrir II missiles which have a longer flight-time, so could engage from much further away. One got a lock on an Su-22 on the top row, and launched.

The missile had legs, and scored a hit, destroying an Su-22.

So a good start for the Ecuadorians, which got better when they started the next turn deployed on the tail of the surviving Su-22.

A position they held after manuever. But the two Peruvian Mirage 2000s dropped down to provide cover from the third row. Both sides failed their missile locks, whilst the Kfir tailing the Su-22 failed to score any damage with its cannon.

And the Ecuadorians bad luck continued; on the next turn a Mirage F1 failed to score a missile hit at the closest possible range ...

... and the Mirage 2000 it was targetting spun about and fired a missile in return, downing its pursuer.

So both sides were now down one plane, which given the Ecuadorians' tight victory conditions wasn't good for them. And it got worse - their surviving Mirage F1 started a turn with a nice shot at the remaining Su-22, only to find the tables turned after the manuver phase as the fighter-bomber got the drop on it. A burst of cannon-fire saw the Mirage F1 badly damaged, giving the Peruvians more victory points.

Here you can see how the continuous line of squares works - the Peruvian Mirage 2000  top-right has a five-square shot off the edge of the board and down onto the next row against the damaged Ecuadorian Mirage F1.

Once again the missile didn't have the reach, and the Mirage F1 survived.

Into the penultimate turn. The Su-22 managed to hide in a cloud, making it impossible to target, but a Mirage 2000 found itself in real trouble, with a both Kfirs and the Mirage F1 able to get shots at it.

It evaded a missile from the first Kfir, saw the damaged Mirage F1 fail to get a clear cannon shot at it, and evaded a lock from the second Kfir to survive into the last turn.

Set-up for the final turn. The Kfir at the bottom had a potentially clear cannon shot at the Su-22, but a Mirage 2000 was flying close support and forced the Kfir to climb out of danger and position for a missile launch instead.

However the other Mirage 2000 dropped in on the Kfir, leaving it with the choice of evading the cannon attack and losing its chance to fire a missile, or going for the lock and hoping the Mirage 2000's guns missed. It went for the latter option, and ended up badly damaged, which threw off its chances of gaining a lock. The Su-22 survived to the end.

And so the action ended in a very clear Peruvian victory. They got points for the loaded Su-22 surviving the game, but also got points for shooting down a Mirage F1, damaging the other and damaging a Kfir (8VP total). The Ecuadorians just had the Su-22 kill on their side of the scoreboard (2VP).

This was a lot of fun, and a different game to the 1958 scenarios because of the higher reliance on missiles and the superior performance capabilities of the more modern aircraft and the options that opened up. The Peruvians are disadvantaged, in that two of their planes are hindered by not only being loaded, but being less suited to a dogfight even when unloaded. But the scoring system offsets this; the Ecuadorians have to score kills without taking any hits back, so need to be fairly cautious. More so than I was in this game, I reckon, as the results showed.