Has anybody gotten into solitaire boardgames at all? I've found myself just needed some alone time, and for that I've been doing some VASSAL modules for some solitaire wargames. I've been playing B-17 Queen of the Skies (AAR ongoing, hope to update this weekend), and for the past week or so I've been getting into
Carrier.
Now, Carrier is a beast of a game... it's about earlyish war aircraft carrier battles near the Solomon Islands and Coral Sea. If you're into the Pacific Theatre at all, and enjoy the kind of things that people describe as high investment, high reward, then I think you might like it. The manual is a whopping 68 pages, double-column. It contains 6 training scenarios, interspersed through the basic rules that teach you different aspects of the game.
- Scenario 1: you learn how IJN and USN planes attack an enemy carrier fleet - going through CAP, through AA, then dropping bombs and scoring hits. The scenario is going through the motions of attack for predefined strikes (with a certain number of fighters, dive bombers and torpedo bombers) against predefined fleets, both IJN and USN.
- Scenario 2: you learn how to operate your aircraft carriers. Take aircraft from the hangar bay, service them, raise them to the deck, launch them and define strike groups or CAP, attack the enemy fleets, drop bombs, come back, land, etc. And don't you think this is easy by any stretch of the imagination! The scenario is two static fleets sending out strikes at each other (IJN attack randomly).
- Scenario 3: you learn how enemy forces move on the map board, and how you are allowed to move. The scenario is TF16 with the Enterprise and TF17 with the Hornet, and you need to outmanoeuvre the enemy task forces, strike them, provide CAP, defend against enemy air strikes, etc. The enemy forces react to your presence.
- Scenario 4: you learn about intelligence and how the game handles incomplete knowledge. You learn to launch planes for searches to find out what contact reports are actually real and what aren't, enemy force compositions, etc. The scenario features no combat, just launching search planes at the right times and hoping for the best contact reports.
- Scenario 5: you learn about surface combat without air, i.e. battleship slugfests, and how enemies react to your close proximity. The scenario is a night battle around Guadalcanal.
- Scenario 6: you learn about how IJN forces launch air attacks, how losses to air strikes and damages to carriers affect their ability to do so, and when they retire from damage. The battle starts with some predefined contacts and then it's all out carrier warfare.
- Standard game: for the standard game you learn how to set up a random scenario with varying IJN commitment limits for carriers, transports and surface forces, and how they appear throughout the game, victory conditions, etc. With this one you're finally playing the game.
Aaaaand then there's the advanced rules, which include things like uncertain hits on enemy forces which need to be confirmed later by search planes and/or subsequent strikes. And you never really know whether you put that carrier out of commission or not!
And tonight I might get to play a 6-player Battlestar Galactica
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Topic: Boardgames you love, boardgames you hate. Open boardgame discussion. (Read 6493 times)