A couple of weeks ago, we played Captain Sonar for the first time, and it went… well, swimmingly. Sorry not sorry.
In Captain Sonar, you and up to three of your family and friends command a submarine that is hunting an enemy sub, also commanded by up to four of your family and friends. Each person takes on a role — the Captain determines where to sail and when to do special actions (drones, sonar, torpedoes, mines, silent running and “special”). The First Mate sees that the sub systems are ready to use. The Engineer makes sure the sub and its systems are all working. And the Radio Operator tracks the enemy sub. Teams with fewer than four players have to double up on the roles; usually the Captain can double as First Mate, or triple as Captain, First Mate and Engineer. Because the Radio Operator has probably the most essential job; keeping track of enemy movements and figuring out where they are based on those movements.
If you don’t know where the enemy is, you can’t put a torpedo in their face. The Captain may tell the sub where to go, but the Radio Operator tells them why to go.
In turn-by-turn mode, you use simpler maps, and all the players on one side go (Captain, First Mate, Engineer) and then the other side goes. Plenty of time for whispered discussion.
But turn-by-turn is playing with training wheels; though it was enticing enough that my “I don’t play board games” grandson decided that he would want to play, actually.
Each game is pretty fast, especially since we were playing “sudden death” — one direct or indirect hit would sink the sub. We easily played a half dozen sudden death, turn-by-turn games in an hour and a half.
I thought we might come back next time for a real time game, but everyone on the other side of the partition wanted to give it a shot and so we did.
There were some growing pains, some missed calls. We won the first game, but in the second, our captain decided to surface and get some repairs done. In turn-by-turn mode, surfacing gives the enemy three free turns. But in real-time mode, every player has to carefully draw an outline around a ship’s system without crossing outside the lines. This was fine until they got to me — the Radio Operator. There was no way I could track the enemy real time movements and also carefully draw a frickin’ line, so I shoved my duty station over to the captain and started drawing my line, but the enemy team found us and fired. If we’d not been playing “sudden death”, we could have dropped to silent running and sped away, perhaps immediately retaliating, but one hit was enough to kill us.
So 1-1 for real time.
Captain Sonar also has special scenario missions. Next time will probably be the last time we bring the game to game night, but we’re going to go out with a bang. Real time, special scenario, four hits necessary to win… I honestly can’t wait.
