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Made in au
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





I played Captain Sonar recently and it's a very novel design. There are two teams with four players on each side, each hunting the other player's sub. I won't get in to tall the mechanics here but I was really taken back by the lack of a turn mechanic. The captain of each ship is actually free to move his ship and build up weapon systems as fast as he can, he doesn't have to wait for the enemy ship to move before he moves his own sub again. Potentially a player could cover the whole map before his opponent has made a second move.

There's a lot mechanics to stop this - every time the captain moves it impacts weapon systems & engineering, so the commander needs to co-ordinate his movement with his engineer and first officer. And that's really the clever thing - the skill of the game is trying to communicate with your team mates while under real time pressure, because if you don't plan your moves you break your sub, and if you spend too long talking the other sub will be geared up to hunt you down.

I was just wondering if there's other board games out there with similar mechanics?

“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”

Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something. 
   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

I played a game called.... Space Aler(?) where it was your team of four people against a set of audio scenarios that represented different levels of danger. Your team of 4 people or so had to organize how you were moving about the ship and what you were doing to handle threats.

For example, if you needed to fire gun, you would load the cannon, and someone on a diffeent deck could fire it.

Not all threats were shooting related, and the speed and where they arrived would force you to move about the ship and scream what to do at each other. Since it was timed on a CD, you had to do as much as you could befor ethe next threat arrived.

The harder levels got faster and faster with more and varied threats.

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Made in au
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





Interesting. Sounds like another example where the skill comes from having to communicate with other players while under real time pressure. It is co-op though, which is very different. There's something extra when you're against other human players, to me anyway.

I was really wondering about situation where this works in opposed games. It seems to me there some extra challenges because you can't have IGOUGO mechanics or any traditional limits like that. Potentially if one team acts quickly, either because they're very organised, or because they hardly communicate, they could move units across the board in seconds. Captain Sonar controls this by having movement cause more problems than it solves, if you make the wrong moves. But I was wondering if there were other games that caused similar issues.

“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”

Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something. 
   
Made in us
Lord of the Fleet






Halifornia, Nova Scotia

 Easy E wrote:
I played a game called.... Space Aler(?) where it was your team of four people against a set of audio scenarios that represented different levels of danger. Your team of 4 people or so had to organize how you were moving about the ship and what you were doing to handle threats.

For example, if you needed to fire gun, you would load the cannon, and someone on a diffeent deck could fire it.

Not all threats were shooting related, and the speed and where they arrived would force you to move about the ship and scream what to do at each other. Since it was timed on a CD, you had to do as much as you could befor ethe next threat arrived.

The harder levels got faster and faster with more and varied threats.


This game was an absolute riot. Some of the threats were communication break downs where you couldn't speak to your teammates, only plan your next moves. Was refreshing really, a nice change of pace, literally.

Galaxy Trucker was another game that didn't run strictly on a turn based method. You had to construct a spaceship using tiles, trying to get a variety of components like storage, weapons, shields, and special rooms. You all built your ship at the same time from a pile of face down tiles in the middle of the table, and you could only grab one at time, look at it, and either return it to the middle or play it on your ship. The trick was that a tile played was set in stone, so you had a limited time to decide if you wanted to use it or fish for better/different tiles. The rest of the game was played in a more less turn based sequence, but half the fun was building the ship. The rest of the fun was watching your ship slowly (or quickly) come apart when it came under fire or failed to dodge asteroids.

The wife and I were recommended Captain Sonar, and we're gonna give it a shot when she gets home. Sounds like a fun game. Plus, we both hunt subs for a living.

Mordian Iron Guard - Major Overhaul in Progress

+Spaceship Gaming Enthusiast+

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