U-Boot: The Board Game

 

U-Boot: The Bord Game

Over a year. Time to dust off the old blog and see if I can get myself writing again. I'll admit, Covid and the associated debates, mandates, and actual sicknesses has given my personal moral a hit, which has led to a lack of motivation to write. However, I haven't stopped reenacting, painting, crafting, and gaming when I can.

Yesterday afternoon, for instance, I met up with some folks to try out a game of U-Boot: The Board Game. I'd read about the game a year or two ago, but never really looked into it, as I don't have a lot of fellow players in my area. A couple of gentlemen from the Vermont Historical Gamers Group, who I'd met at a game this past summer, were looking for players, and, being a weekend, I was able to make the trip north to The Boardroom cafe to join them.

In U-Boot, up to four players take on the roles of command staff on a German U-boat, circa 1940. The Chief Engineer, which I played, is responsible for the upkeep of that boat. The Navigator keeps track of the boat's location, as well as plots courses to various targets. As a secondary role, he also acts as the vessel's cook. The third role is that of the First Officer. This player is responsible for intercepting and decoding message from Command, firing weapons, entering data, and generally running the game. As a secondary role, the First Officer also has some medical abilities. The final role is that of Captain, who is responsible for the overall running of the ship, making the high-level decisions, issuing orders to the crew, and keeping track of moral.

At first, the game seems complex. There are traditional board game elements, as well as a miniature 3D sub and figures to help keep track of where the crew is, and what damage the ship may encounter. There is paperwork for the Navigator and Captain, and a computer application for the First Officer to enter orders on, and generally run the game. It's a neat hybrid of board game, computer game, miniatures game, and role-playing game. Oh, it also takes place in real time.

As two of us had never played the game before, we played a training mission to learn the game. Dave, our First Officer, fired up the game app on an iPad. He started the mission, and our orders were received. There were three known targets at sea. A couple of freight ships, and a small convoy. It was believed that the freighters were unescorted, while the convoy was likely to be protected. Our mission, as early war German submariners, what to sink as much freight as possible withing 48 hours. In addition, we were given information about the location of possible mine fields.

Steve, acting as Navigator, plotted the locations of the various elements using the game's maps, a ruler, and protractor. He then plotted courses to each, relaying that information to George, our Captain. The Captain decided to go after what was believed to be the smallest freighter. This should give us a chance to learn the game mechanics without getting into too much trouble. He gave the order to plot course and make way at full speed. The Navigator's crew (each player gets four crew members), calculated our course. My Engineering crew readied the engines, and Dave input the data into the game app. We were underway!

As I mentioned above, the game takes place in real time. While underway, this part could be slow, but the game app, which keeps track of the time, allows for speeding up time (A “fast clock” for those who may be familiar with model railroading). The Captain ordered fast time, and we were thrust forward an hour or so to the first problem, an engineering task. The torpedoes in the first section of the U-boot needed to be checked. Crew members needed to be allocated to the task, and the location. To do this, the Captain ordered a Mobilization. This is where the 3d model of the boat and the crew member miniatures come in. In order to move crew members around the vessel, they must be mobilized. During a mobilization, the players move their figures around the 8 sections of the ship. In my case, I needed to move two engineers to the 1^st section in order to check the torpedoes. The Captain then ordered the “repair” to take place. The two men that I had moved forward each received and Order Token (each man could take up to three orders before affecting morale). In real time, I reported to the First Officer that my men were in place and working on repairs. Dave entered the data into the game app, and we moved back into fast time.

Within a few hours of game time, we came across our first target (we may have had some more engineering tasks in between, but I don't recall). Steve had plotted our course perfectly! The game app switched back into real time. The First Officer, after his men had been ordered up on deck, observed (in real time, with the app acting as binoculars) what was around us. It appeared that our initial information was correct. We saw a small freighter, out on its own, with no protection.. The Captain ordered a Mobilization to man the deck gun, and to slow to half speed. Dave's men were on deck, observing. Steve's men were moved on deck to the gun, and my engineering team moved to the engine room to change speed. At this point, the Navigator's role moves from operational level to tactical level. The First Officer called out the relative position of our target, its speed and bearing. Steve plotted this information on a smaller map, using tokens to represent our ship and our target. Information was relayed to the Captain, who then made decisions of when to change course, by how much, and so on.

This is when moral starts to play a factor. With each order given, the Captain loses the ability to give more orders. Crew members also start losing the ability to do things, as they are only able to take on three orders at a time. If more are given, moral starts to drop ship-wide, and fewer tasks can be take on, etc.

Also, this is all in real time. So as we're discussing strategy, tactics, moving figures, arming guns, and so on, our target is still moving.

To make a longer story short, after all the orders, movement, and so on, we were able to fire on the target vessel using the deck gun. This, again, is done via the game's app. The First Officer actually had to move the gun and fire on the ship in real time, video-game style. Turns out, firing a deck gun while bouncing on the waves during a rainstorm is as hard as it sounds. In the end though, we sunk our first target.

I think it was here that the ship's crew had its first meal. Like other actions, this required an Order from the Captain. Steve, in the Navigator/Cook role, put together a three element meal. Meals are made up of tokens laid out in the “kitchen.” As the tokens are used, they are replace by other tokens from the “pantry.” This means that the cook may not always have the supplies needed to put together a full meal. In our case, though, a full meal was served, and ship moral increased.

At some point, we received a message from Base ordering us to go to a specific grid coordinate and report on the weather there. Our Captain decided to ignore this order for now. A course was plotted to our next target, the second freight ship. While underway, we made repairs as needed, and kept checking our surroundings for enemy ships. The fast clock was engaged as needed to keep the pace moving. Our second encounter was much the same as the first, with the addition of it being dark, making the target that much more difficult to hit. We were able to, though, and the second freighter was sunk with plenty of time to spare.

During the course of the game, other small things happened. A crew member sprained a finger, another hit his head on a bulkhead, repairs had to be made to systems, and so on. The game really does get to that granularity, but not in an overbearing, bogged down way.

Our third encounter was the most exciting. In this case, our Navigator successfully plotted our course to the freight convoy, consisting of two loaded freighters, protected by a Destroyer. Again back at real time, we started discussing our strategy, with the ultimate decision on what to do laying with Captain George.

As we approached the convoy, the Navigator went into tactical mode, keeping track of all the ships on his map, based on bearings and relative locations supplied by the First Officer, who was keeping an eye on our targets through the telescope (game app). The Captain had given the order to dive, so my men were in the engine and control rooms working on that task. Other men were readying the torpedoes as we slowly approached the enemy ships. Again, we were in real time, which awesomely adds to the tension of the game. Dave would call out distances, “2.3 nautical miles... 2.1.... 1.9...” We carefully approached the convoy, turning carefully to stay on course with the freighters, but not get too close to the destroyer. We plotted angles, and distance, and time, all while keeping an eye on the clock. When the time was right, George gave the order, “Fire tubes 1 and 3! Fire tubes 2 and 4!” We waited, watching our attack play out.

HITS!

All four torpedoes struck with deadly blows! Two sunk one freighter, and two sunk the other. Suddenly the iPad app starting blaring a warning. The destroyer was on high alert!

At this point, George, as Captain, made a brilliant move. He ordered us to dive dive dive! We pulled the crew together and went almost as deep at the boat could go. George's plan was to hide from the destroyer, hopefully under the range of their depth charges, and make our way away from the battle site as quickly as possible (which, for a sub under water, isn't that quick). There were several tense moments as we plotted the courses of the two ships. The destroyer started circling, searching for us. We carefully stayed on course, trying to leave the area without detection. At point the enemy ship was directly behind us and, I, at least, thought we'd been found. As we held our breath, Dave called out bearings “One-six-oh, 1.1 nautical miles. One-six-two, 1.2 nautical miles....” This went on for several minutes. Eventually our distance from the enemy ship started to increase. Using a combination of real time and fast time, we slowly made it away from the destroyer without being attacked. It took nearly three hours for the enemy to give up it's search for us.

If you're wondering, just moving away from the battle site wasn't smooth sailing. Because we were so deep, systems on the boat started failing. We sprung a leak in the control room. The lights went out in the engine area. My Engineering crew went here and there, trying to keep the boat patched together, all while order slots ran our and morale began to lower. At one point we had a hull breach in the engine room. The game mechanic to fix this is for the Engineering player (me) to sold a small jigsaw puzzle of the boat within a short time limit (two minutes, if I recall). I failed this task, because two of the pieces were hiding under one of my charts. Technically, this should have flooded that compartment, killing any crew members in that section, and making it more difficult for the U-boat to continue its mission. The two veteran players decided to give me a pass, though, since this was my first game, and the needed pieces to the puzzle had been out of side under paperwork.

To wrap up the game, the Captain ordered us the the secondary objective that had been given to us early on. That of the weather check. Navigator Steve plotted our course, we surfaced, and were underway, making repairs as we went.

Arriving at our destination, we took a weather reading. Unfortunately, the app didn't recognize any weather. First Officer Dave took a sextant reading to verify our locations. We were several grids off! Steve had confused our direction and sent us the opposite way from where we needed to head. Recalculations were made. We turned around and made our way to the correct spot, with hours to spare on our mission time. Once our weather report had been submitted (via Enigma machine, another piece of the iPad app), the Captain called the mission complete. Dave clicked some buttons on the app, and our mission score was calculated.

A! We had completed all mission objectives, including the secondary task, and made it back to port relatively unharmed (since we ignored the flooded engine compartment).

Overall, awesome game! I'm looking forward to playing again.