Captain Sonar

Today's review is of the 2016 release, Captain Sonar.  For 2-8 players, it takes 45-60 minutes.

Overview
In Captain Sonar, two teams- each a submarine crew- square off in a real-time attempt to destroy the other's sub.  There are four roles per crew, with one person responsible for each (in an 8-player game) or people taking on multiple roles as needed:
- Captain: sets the sub's course (by shouting 'heading north/east/south/west') and chooses when to fire weapons and use spy equipment
- First Mate: decides which ship system to charge (whenever the sub moves, it gets to charge one element of one system); for example, a weapon can only be fired once fully charged
- Radio Operator: listens to commands given by the opposing team's captain and tracks their perceived position on a transparent grid that overlays the map (and can move independently of it, since you don't know their starting location)
- Engineer: keeps the sub functioning; alerts the crew to breakdowns in certain sections (whenever the ship moves, one thing in one section breaks) and the need to (potentially) change course or surface to fix a given section

The graphic below shows a game in progress.  First to destroy the other sub wins!

example of game in progress; from here

Review
This game is well-regarded; I found it enjoyable enough but stressful and confusing (we played a six-player game, so one person on each team had two roles.  That made it harder).  There's a lot going on, and the real-time nature of it adds to the chaos.  In general, I've found that I don't really care for real-time games for this reason, but as far as this genre goes, Captain Sonar is pretty good.  It's basically a much more complicated version of Battleship.  If you play it, have eight players.

Rating: B