Making Cold War Bomber Games Interesting - Thoughts?

[Mako]

Planning on running some of these in the future, and am curious to see what people think would make them interesting?

Thinking about WWII and Cold War bomber raids.

Seems to me they can be a bit more challenging to get right, especially for multiple players on each side, since play-balance is an issue, but also potentially boredom, and a lack of action if no intercepts are made, or drudgery, if they plod on and on, endlessly. Very different than your usual furball I suspect.

I'm worried that in some cases no intercepts may occur at all, and in others that perhaps they'll be a bit too easy, or might drag on for too long, since some bombers can be difficult to knock down.

Might be possible to work around that a little by having each player responsible for several aircraft, so they've got more to do, and to have several chances at some action occurring. Perhaps, if pairs of aircraft or more are involved in different units, letting each player be the lead commander for one, and then acting as wingmen for the others.

Also thinking of perhaps some sort of map plotting/movement, and/or a planning phase to enhance the above, but keeping it fairly quick and simple, if possible, to keep most of the games focused on the minis on the tables.  Might even use a hex map for the squadron level interceptions, and tracking movement.

I've also seen where teams are sometimes set up, and the players get to participate on both sides of the game, e.g. acting as interceptors and bomber players, and pitted against one another individually, or in groups, to make the games a bit more competitive.  Obviously, you wouldn't be pitted against your own aircraft, so some organizational issues would need to be worked out, so that your interceptor squadrons go up against the bomber squadrons of your mates.  Then, you get points for destroying/damaging aircraft, preventing the bombers from reaching their target(s), destroying the target(s), etc..

In this case, you can rank the players by their scores, in three separate categories (four to six, if you want to be judgmental), e.g. best interceptor unit score, best bomber score, best combined score, and, for the last one, worst overall performance - interceptors, bombers, and combined.

Anyone done something similar, or wanted to do so?

What made or would make the game(s) more interesting for you?

[Westfalia Chris]

Not cross-posting might be a step, in order to keep the information in one place...

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=103854.0;topicseen