Go down into the depths as you face off against another team to pilot your sub and get into position to take out your opponents. Captain Sonar is a fast moving real time team game where everyone takes roles on two submarines as they try and track down the other teams submarine and have weapons ready to fire torpedoes and drop mines. Can you plan out your route correctly to keep it a mystery?

Captain Sonar as an interesting game because it’s an eight player game, ideally, though you could play with six, I think any amount less than that would be too little. Each team has four different roles to play in the game. You have the Captain who is giving orders, such as what direction to move in or where to fire torpedoes. Then you have the First Mate who is getting systems ready that can allow you to fire those torpedoes, drop mines, or even run silently so you can make a few moves without announcing them. The Engineer is keeping the systems in working order, but as you move, systems will break down and they have to work them in the right order to keep from damaging your sub and communicating with the Captain about that. Finally, you have the Radio Operator who is listening in on what the other team is saying and is trying to plot their directions to figure out where they are on the map so that their team can hunt them down and shoot them. You can combine the First Mate and Engineer, but I personally think it works best at eight, so it’s a fun, more involved game you can pull out for a big party.

Now, all of that happening at one time can be a bit much for some people, so Captain Sonar does give you the option to be turn based. The downside with the turn based is that it takes out a lot of the stress. That might be what those people need, but having played it both ways several times, in the turn based, you could really plan your move and which ever team figured out where the other was first really had an advantage in winning the game because you weren’t trying to figure it out in a rush. But if you need to play it turn based for a teaching game, I think it works well that way.

Captain Sonar also comes with several maps that you can play on. These maps have different number of islands, and if you aren’t just playing it simply as an attacking game, there are specific rules for different maps, however, it’s just fun to try and blow each other up and keep it simple that way. The maps all have islands on them, and that’s what really starts to give you clues as to where someone might be because when they have to navigate around, they can’t go through and island, and they can’t double back on their route, so you start to get a bigger picture, assuming your Radio Operator didn’t mishear a direction or misdraw it down on their overlay, which is always possible in the rush.

Another thing that I do really enjoy with Captain Sonar is the speed of the game. On Board Game Geek, it says 45-60 minutes, but if you’re just skirmishing, I think that we got two games done in that time frame, and also went over the rules for the players. The game goes fast, though, some of that might just be the pressure of real time. Also, when I’ve played it, we generally haven’t wanted to stop at one game, which makes me think that those times are a bit long, but if you are playing a slow turn by turn game, it might be possible that it’s that long. For that reason, I think that it does work well for a big board game night where you don’t just want to play party games and you don’t want to split into two groups. There are rules to teach with this game, so if your group is a very casual group in terms of the people not being all that familiar with complex board games, Captain Sonar might be the ideal game. But I’ve played with more casual board gamers, and as long as you have a mix of people, it’s been a success, though probably stressed some people out.

I really do enjoy this game. I think that it feels right with the tension in the game, and I enjoy games that make me feel the tension a little bit. I don’t want a game that completely stresses me out, but Captain Sonar certainly doesn’t do that. I do think that Captain Sonar, while being a really good game, isn’t going to work for a lot of groups, if you have too many people who are getting stressed out or if you have too many casual gamers in the group, you might have more issues. And I really do think that the turn based version of Captain Sonar is worse. My rating for Captain Sonar is an 8, but if I were to rate it turn based, I’d put it as a 5.

Overall Grade: B
Gamer Grade: B-
Casual Grade: C+

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.