by Marc M, February 10, 2025
If you’ve played air combat wargames, you’ve probably heard of designer Lee Brimmicombe-Wood and his games, including Downtown, Wing Leader Victories and Wing Leader Supremacy. You’ll also see his name along with game designer Douglas Bush on Red Storm, the second sequel to Downtown. Lee was gracious enough to answer a few questions about his designs, his art credits, and to give some hints about current projects.
click images to enlarge
How do you research the aircraft performance and weapons data for your games?
When I first began playing air games back in the late 1970s I thought the data you needed for modelling aircraft needed to be all this complex stuff about angles of attack and form drag and thrust. Data that in many cases was hard to find, or you could only get as headline numbers that didn’t really reflect operational performance. What I discovered when I started making games, and particularly ones at more pulled-out scales, was that I needed precious little of that. So the usual military aviation books I’d owned since I was a kid served me fine. Or even Wikipedia, which over the years of nerds pouring over it, has become a pretty solid source of data on aircraft. Sure, I may need to dig around for certain details, and read deeper on some aircraft, but those old 1970s Salamander volumes and the internet is good for 90-95% of what I need.
How do you condense aircraft and weapons data down to a handful of factors for aircraft data that’s not overwhelming for the player?
It depends on the game. I think a lot of this comes down to figuring out what the important values are that you’re modelling, and then focussing only on those. For example, in my WW2 game, Wing Leader, a very important value was the altitude at which engine power began to fall off, which was the kind of stuff you could either find from engine power graphs, or infer from other data. (Most aircraft performance stats tell you the altitude at which aircraft develop their top speed.) However, it was important information to know, because that told you the altitude at which particular aircraft began to become less effective. That really mattered to late war scenarios. You could see the point at which Fw 190s began to lose puff when fighting B-17s. So the altitude boundaries in Wing Leader became one of the critical bits of data to incorporate into the aircraft data.
What era of air combat is most interesting to you from a game design standpoint?
Hard to say. WW2 has a lot going for it, because we see a lot of technological refinements come together in a handful of years. Engines that first ran in the early 1930s started to reach operational capability, while new concepts of wing design and engine installation began to make huge strides in improving performance. And add to this very different national strategies regarding things such as aircraft protection and the power of gun batteries, and there’s a strong narrative of technological and doctrinal development in this era.
I made a game on Vietnam, which was a war fought with immature weapons and doctrine but pointed the way forward. I could put a lot in there to do with the interaction of various sensor and weapon systems – both air-to-air and ground-based. However, the modern era of BVR (beyond visual range) warfare fascinates me, and though I have notes on all sorts of projects in that space I’ve never really gotten around to making yet.
In addition to your design credits, you have quite a few art credits. What do you enjoy about doing the artwork on a game?
Oh, it’s far less pressure and lots more fun. Recently I’ve been very involved with the Compass Games Air & Armor line. That is one of my very favourite all-time games, and doing the terrain analysis and initial map designs for playtest was both a privilege and a pleasure. I’ve already done V Corps (though Bruce Yearian turned my playtest maps into final maps for that) and recently delivered the playtest map for a third module: BAOR. Good times. Plus there’s even another exciting map I’ve done that I can’t really talk about yet.
Maps and components for other games can be a real pleasure to do. For example, I’m very proud of my work on Charles Vasey’s game Unhappy King Charles. I put in a lot of period flavour to that project. I believe it’s being republished with new art and I wish them well.
What are you working on now?
I’m playing around in the tabletop roleplay game space at the moment. I’ve been doing some work for Chaosium in helping get their QuestWorlds rules system launched. (Due for release this month!) This is basically the 4th edition of their previous Hero Wars and HeroQuest lines. And I’ve also been writing and illustrating my own worldbook for QuestWorlds, titled Spec-ops Magica Crisis. This is an anime-influenced world setting and the elevator pitch is ‘High-School Wizard Secret Agents’. It’s got everything, from ninja to mecha, samurai to magical girls! I’m hoping that will come out around the same time as QuestWorlds.
Many thanks to Lee for his time!
Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.
Rather than list a bunch of social media links, the easiest thing to do is to check out our LinkTree, which connects you to all of our various locales around the web.
You can also support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, and find us at a variety of conventions and other events.
Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.
Who does this bloody Brimmicombe-Wood guy think he is!
thanks for taking the time for Marc 🙂