Birds of Prey (BoP)

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Birds of Prey
Designer	Valle & Markgraf
Publisher	Ad Astra Games
Players	2 - 8
Setup time	Fast
Playing time	1.5 hours and up
Random chance	Dice rolling
Skills required	Strategy, Tactics, Mathematics

BoardGameGeek entry

Birds of Prey (BoP) is a minatures wargame currently in pre-publication by Ad Astra Games the game focuses primarily on dogfighting in the jet age.

The game offers combat in aircraft from the Korean war era to modern times, spanning all generations of Fighter aircraft and features an extremely accurate flight model. BoP attempts to model true three dimensional movement. Tilt blocks and stacking tiles are used to orient box miniatures for on-map display of aircraft.

BoP handles three dimensional gameplay with several play aids, such as the Pitch, Heading, and Attitude Display, or PHAD. The PHAD is a color coded polar projection of a sphere fixed relative to the map, and is used to handle sighting angles and aircraft orientation for flight, manevering, and targeting.

BoP uses a a series of nomographs to quickly and easily calculate aircraft flight parameters based on speed, altitude, and mach regime. In addition to these constants each aircraft has its own unique drag profile, engine output, and lift profile.

BoP will include aircraft from the dawn of the jet age to modern jets.

Early jets These early aircraft were basically extenisons of late WWII aircaft design, with a Jet engine rather than a piston engine. Some inovations were introduced in this first generation of figther such as as swept wings, ejector seats, and flying tails.

Mig-15
F-86
Hawker Hunter
Mig-17

Early Supersonic The second generation of jet fighter introduced innovations such as the swept wing, the delta wing, and area ruled fuselages. These were the first production aircraft to break the sound barrier.

Mig-19
F-104
F-8E
Mirage IIIC
Mig-21

Upgraded Supersonic The third generation of jet fighters show a maturing of earlier design innovations. In addition the weapons of this era show much improvement.

F-4 Phantom E
Mig-21-J
F-4 Phantom J
English/BAC Electric Lightning

Early Modern The fourth generation of fighters represents the start of a shift in design emphasis from speed and payload to maneuverability.

Mig-23
F-5E
F-14
Mirage F1
JA 37 Jakviggen

Modern The modern fighters show much more refinement of earlier advances, particularly the swing wing. Design focus shifted much more towards energy, and maneuverability.