Beschrijving
Captain Sonar
In Captain Sonar, you and your teammates control a state-of-the-art submarine. You are trying to locate an enemy submarine in order to blow it out of the water before they can do the same to you. Every role is important, and the confrontation is merciless. Be organized and communicate because a captain is nothing without his crew: the Chief Mate, the Radio Operator, and the Engineer.
Gameplay
All the members of a team sit on one side of the table. They each take a particular role on the submarine. The division of labor for these roles depend on the number of players in the game. One player might be the captain, moving the submarine. Another player is manning the sonar in order to listen to the opposing captain’s orders and try to decipher where that sub might be in the water. A third player might be working in the munitions room to prepare torpedoes.
Captain Sonar can be played in two modes. Turn-by-turn or simultaneous. In the latter set-up, all the members of a team take their actions simultaneously while trying to track what the opponents are doing, too. When a captain is ready to launch an attack, the action pauses for a moment to see whether a hit has been recorded. Play resumes with the target having snuck away while the attacker paused or with bits of metal now scattered across the ocean floor.
Multiple maps are included with varying levels of difficulty.
Summarised
At its best, Captain Sonar plays out like the most frantic, tense game of cat & mouse you can imagine. It sits on a knife’s edge between chaos and calculation. You and your teammates try to work together while the looming specter of the enemy is omnipresent. It’s rare when you can say a game introduced something truly unique into board gaming, but this does just that. For that alone, Captain Sonar deserves some praise.
