I found December a busy time and did not get much gaming in but did pick up some war-games related items in November and December. Besides painting figures, I received terrain for my battlefields and bought a solo board war-game. I bought Raiders of the Deep U-boats of the Great War 1914-1918. The pandemic has affected me in two ways that perhaps I might not have expected. It has made me look more a board war-games’ which I have not used in a while and in particular board war-games developed for solo play.
This is the second game I bought which is developed for solo play. The first being Amerika Bomber which was also sold by Compass Games as is Raiders of the Deep. I admit no specific interest in submarine warfare but thought it would be something to try out. Knowing I will be not getting together with other individuals most likely for some time can cause one to widen what one is willing to try for the first time.
Therefore, in January I got a chance to try the game out. It had some similar mechanics to Amerika Bomber that means many dice are rolled to determine events. I liked the ability to play historic captains or build your own random captain. It is also possible to pick various types of U-boats for different periods and progress through a campaign. Further, you can play Austrian-Hungarian submarine captain if you want so you have the choice of not being a German captain for a change.
I read the rules felt I mostly understood them and gave the game a play. I resisted the temptation of doing the Sound of Music and playing Captain Vonn Trapp of the Austrian-Hungarian navy and made a random named and U-boat type commander. I ended up playing a type U-19 submarine called U-28, which was historically in a flotilla that patrolled the British Islands. My submarine and crew survived though I actually did not play all the way through to the end October 1918 because of time. It appeared I would end the war sinking enough ships to be respected by my peers, crew and the navy but not famous. Except for the random event, I rolled midway through the game it went pretty well.
I did much better than with Amerika Bomber were I never could roll well enough to hit any targets. I did better when I moved into close range for attacks. I did have a number of dud torpedoes during the early part of the war, most likely a realistic factor. Further, I found the surface attack necessity to be interesting at times. I learned that medium range would often not work you had to move in to do damage. Having said this it was fun and challenging to play. You have such a limited supply of torpedoes you must decide do you want to use it on a small freighter or wait another turn on the patrol. When an escort attacked me, I did think I would not survive as I had three rounds of being detected and being damaged. My forward torpedo doors ended up being damaged and that greatly reduced my abilities and made me conduct surface attacks with the deck gun only for the rest of the patrol.
It was fun and you do have to make decisions and they do affect how well you do this is obvious after a while. The ability to play either a randomly generated captain with U-boat type and area of patrol allows for lots of replay value. I did this and got the less target rich environment of the British Islands. I could have tried a specific U-boat and or commander and played a variety of different patrol areas. You can also play Austria-Hungary and get different play from doing this as they have different U-boats and patrol area.
On another note, the counters are pretty nice and understandable, though there are many charts to consult and you roll many dice. The dice rolling does not bother me and I liked the randomness of this. I really found I was having to make hard decisions and learned over time what better idea was and admit passing up on opportunities for attacks to conserve ammo or for the thought of self-preservation. This was realistic I felt and was good to have in the game. I did complete one special mission that was randomly generated by a dice roll of landing a secret agent. This forced me to decide to try to attack shipping and perhaps be destroyed or complete the mission as I continued to detect ships on my way to the point to put the agent on land. Tough decisions at times must be made at times and I really liked this aspect of the game.
Now the bad news at least for me, during the game. I rolled a random event and forced to make one of those tough decisions. I had to make a tough decision based on a real life event. Either, I sink a large hospital ship and claim credit, which causes me to be branded a war criminal at the end of the war. Not something to aspire too as far as I am concerned or tell the admiralty who covers it up and get no advancement for the rest of the war for me or the crew. This was a no win situation random event in a way. You need advancement in a number of ways for the chance to win. Therefore, I did win the game but lost as I was then found to be a war criminal. It is a way it goes there are good random events and bad ones and I got a very bad one.
I am pleased so far, and am going to read the rules again, and try to get smoother with them so perhaps I am faster playing the turns. Perhaps I also with try and play a specific captain for their special skills and abilities they will bring. I know I want to have a submarine with more options of patrol routes. The other thing to try is to see if my wife will want to play a game as you can play and see who does better which adds a non-solo aspect to the game.
morale roll 