Eagle Leader Expansion 2: Hellenic Air Force
Eagle Leader Expansion 2 gives you the Hellenic Air Force and one job: sink the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. The catch, which is also the reason to buy it, is what you get to do it with — three generations of jet fighters that were never meant to be flown as one force.
Buy it if you own the Eagle Leader core game and want the hardest of its national expansions. Skip it if you would rather command an air force that can win on quality, because this one cannot.
An air force out of its depth, on purpose
DVG’s own description is unusually candid: Greek pilots flew a mixed inventory drawn from three generations of jet fighters, and “the Greeks had their work cut out for them.”
The roster bears that out. Twelve aircraft covering the F-16, the F-4E Phantom II, the F-5, the A-7H Corsair II and the F-102 Delta Dagger — an interceptor whose design belongs to the 1950s. Putting an F-16 and an F-102 in the same squadron list is not a rounding error; it is a thirty-year capability gap sitting inside one campaign.
Against that, the target deck includes the carrier Kiev. You are asked to go after a Soviet fleet with aircraft that in several cases had no business being anywhere near one.
Why the mismatch makes a better game
In Eagle Leader you build a squadron by pilot skill level and pay for aircraft in Special Option points, with the F-15C as the price baseline. Better aircraft cost points; worse aircraft refund them.
That mechanic is what turns the Hellenic roster from a handicap into a decision. The F-102 is not simply a bad card you are stuck with — it is a card that pays you. Fielding it buys Special Option points you can spend on pilot skills, squadron assets, special weapons or a Priority R&R that pulls Stress off the whole squadron. The question stops being “is this aircraft good” and becomes “what is this aircraft worth to me somewhere else.”
The five squadron assets, which include Greek Army and Navy support, feed the same calculation. Assets are bought per day with the points you have, so every obsolete airframe you accept is potentially a tanker, an AWACS or a strike you could not otherwise afford.
This is the most interesting version of the Air Leader system’s central tension, and it is why an underdog nation makes a better expansion than a strong one. An air force with nothing but F-16s gives you fewer decisions, not more.
Pilots break before aircraft do
The other half of a campaign is attrition of a kind most air combat games ignore. Damaged aircraft repair overnight. Pilots do not.
Every mission adds Stress based on how deep the target sits, and pilots shed it only at their Cool rating. Push too hard and they slide from Okay to Shaken to Unfit, and an Unfit pilot does not fly. Since the Hellenic squadron is already short on capability, losing your best pilot to exhaustion for a day costs more here than in an expansion where the airframes can carry a mediocre crew.
Pilots who survive earn experience and climb — Newbie, Green, Average, Skilled, Veteran, Legendary — which means a campaign flown carefully produces a squadron that eventually deserves the mission it was given. Getting there with this roster is the appeal.
Three campaigns, and where this sits in the line
The expansion carries three campaigns and three special condition cards, which is standard for the series’ national sets. Eagle Leader has eight expansions in total: Luftwaffe and RAF, Hellenic Air Force, Italian Air Force, French Air Force, Minor NATO, Aces, Experimental Aircraft, and Japan Air Self-Defense Force.
Choose between the national ones by the problem each country had rather than by what it flew. Expansion 1 gives you the two air arms NATO’s Central Front actually depended on. Expansion 3 gives you Italy, stretched between the Mediterranean and Germany. This one gives you the steepest climb of the three, and the clearest identity because of it.
Worth knowing: Fulcrum Leader is the Warsaw Pact counterpart from the same designers, so the opposition in these campaigns has its own game if you want to fly the other side.
What works and what does not
Works well:
- A roster spanning three decades of aircraft, which the points system turns into real decisions.
- The hardest strategic brief in the line: a small air force against a fleet.
- Greek Army and Navy squadron assets give the theatre its own flavour.
- The Soviet carrier Kiev as a target the campaign builds toward.
Does not:
- Requires the Eagle Leader core game, which lists at $139.99 and is currently sold out at DVG.
- Solitaire only.
- The difficulty is the design, so anyone wanting a fair fight should start elsewhere in the line.
- Three campaigns is a reasonable amount of content for $39.99, not a generous one.
Verdict
8/10. The best national expansions are the ones where the nation’s real problem becomes the game’s problem, and Greece qualifies twice over: an outdated fleet and an impossible target. The Special Option economy is what stops that from being merely punishing, because every obsolete aircraft you accept is buying you something else.
Sort out the core game first — it is the expensive, hard-to-find part of this purchase. Once you have it, this is the expansion to reach for if you want the campaign to fight back.
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