Instant Thunder

Fast play air-to-air combat miniatures game for jets equipped with guns and missiles. The game uses a rectangular grid with playing card suits marking 4 rows and cards K to A marking 14 columns, similar to Gary Graber's Göring's War. Jets have individual flight characteristics for vertical and lateral movement, as well as armament and structural points. Each turn a card is drawn for each jet to place it onto the grid on the appropriate space. Jets may be able to move to a different space by drawing a new card that must be lower than its movement rating. Thereafter shooting cannon fire and missiles is preformed in a similar fashion. At the end of each turn, the jets are removed from the grid, so may reappear on an entirely new angle of attack the following turn. Rules provide many optional rules and complete aircraft statistics for any period from the Korean War to present. A short introduction to the rules, focusing on the Vietnam era, is available in Wargames Illustrated No. 254 (December 2008), under the name "Very Instant Thunder".