Feeling the Need….The Need for Speed!

Gotta love that box art!

Yesterday evening I had the absolute pleasure of the company of the esteemed David Manley - he, the writer of many naval rulesets and much else besides as well as being a thoroughly decent fellow. The conversation ranged back and forth over subjects too numerous to mention as both food and drink were consumed. As has become something of a tradition on these occasional meet ups, there was an exchange of goodies. 

Heading towards Mr Manley - as something of a belated birthday present - was a copy of Brassey’s Naval Annual for 1913, the David and Charles reprint edition which he was suitably delighted with. The book was from my own collection and I suspect that regular readers of the this blog will be rather surprised to see me parting with such a title, given my interest in matters naval. It is an excellent book but it is rather more technical than I am comfortable with and in any event, I have pretty much all the information contained therein from other, more digestible sources. Given that David is a Professor of Naval Architecture by day, such tomes are very much more to his taste than mine!

By way of a complete surprise he presented me with copy of the board game you see above - and boy oh boy was I pleased with this!

The customary ‘back of the box’ shot. A game very much of its time in many ways - charts and tables galore - but a most welcome addition to the collection.

Gamers of a certain vintage will remember the old SPI game Air War, designed by David Isby. This was a really good game of jet age aerial combat but required a big investment of both time and commitment to play. The rules were quite challenging and the frustration factor for newcomers was very high meaning that unless you were really keen on the subject matter the game was never going to work for you. For all of that though, there was a hardcore of gamers that persevered with it and so some cracking aerial battles were fought and enjoyed.

Around 1985/6 Avalon Hill release Flight Leader, a game designed by Captain Gary Morgan, a U.S.A.F. Fighter pilot and developed by none other than S. Craig Taylor Jr of Air Force and Mustangs fame (and many others besides). I remember owning a copy of this back in the day but cannot for the life of me remember actually playing it! Thanks to Mr Manley I hope to rectify this omission shortly - all the counters are punched so hopefully it will be sooner rather than later. A further bonus is that the game rates as ‘High’ on the solitaire suitability index on the back of the box. 

Once again, many thanks to Mr Manley for another splendid evening and for a really welcome surprise!