Ryan Pelkey
United States
Wallkill
New York
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This will just be short review, based on a run through of an early war "The Battle Begins" campaign.
First of all, I'd like to compare the game to Phantom Leader/Hornet Leader, the other games in the series I am very familiar with. In a way the, game has a very different focus than PL/HL in that much more time is spent in the "Over Target" phase, with more tactical considerations to be made. The heart of PL/HL is the arming phase, where you spend most of your time during the game, selecting weapons for your aircraft from a myriad of choices. In U-Boat Leader, the arming phase is automatic, and the action occurs in the approach and targeting of juicy surface ships. But instead of static defenses with fixed rock/paper/scissors stats, you have defenses that will move, detect, and hunt you down.
The game starts with selecting your boats by spending Special Operations points. Each boat has four levels of training, green/trained/veteran/ace, so you can level them up over the course of linked campaigns. Any SOs left over after purchasing boats are available for executing special missions, buying Intel or Air Search to increase contact chances, or getting some curbside service from a supply ship.
The game is actually more similar to the Silent War/Steel Wolves system, with a simpler strategic step but a more fleshed out tactical component. In both games you move subs to patrol sectors, and can incur transit events. In UBL this is handled by event cards, some good, some bad, with certain areas being more active than others. For instance transiting the English Channel will bag you five event cards, so you probably want to stay away from that part of town. Again similar to the SW/SW system, you roll on a contact table, modified by your skipper's special ability, any SOs spent on Intel, and a negative modifier for any previous attempts to jack up convoys in the area.
Once any contacts are made, a convoy card is drawn that directs placement of Unknown (?) merchant and escort counters on the tactical map. The card may also have bonuses or penalties to the U-boat. The sub can begin in any outside sector of the map, and must maneuver close enough to identify targets, and execute either a deck gun or torpedo attack. The escorts will move randomly based on a table roll, unless they are able to detect the sub. Finally there is a Lag Movement step where slower ships move towards the Convoy Wake (bottom of the map) based on the fixed position of a reference ship. Once with in range two of a U-boat at any point of movement, a card is drawn from the appropriate deck identifying the enemy ship.
This is one part that I found a bit fiddly, as I spent most of my time sorting through counters with my stubby digits trying to find the appropriate named ships. I like the SW/SW method better, with unknown flags on the back of named ships in a random chit pull, although it has a longer setup time. After the sub attacks, a marker is put down which makes future escort contact rolls that much easier, so you are limited in the time you have to take out the targets. I did not attempt any Wolfpacks in my game, but I can see where they are a must for a large convoy.
Sometimes when you pull a merchant card, you can get a misidentified Escort or Naval Ship, putting you closer to an escort than you really want to be. It can also lead to a movement anomaly with Naval Ships, as they have a higher speed than most merchants, and will become the reference for lag movement. This immediately causes the convoy to start breaking up, with merchants lagging right into the jaws of any U-boat waiting near the Convoy Wake. Maybe I screwed this up, but the rules clearly say to pick the highest speed Merchant/Naval Ship as the guide-on. It makes no since for the formation to start changing as soon as an undetected U-boat starts sniffing around the back door. It happens very rarely, however.
Attacks occur with aggressive skippers going before escorts, and cautious skippers going after escorts. The sub can fire torpedoes in a spread to gain a to hit bonus for each fish, or it can conduct one round of surface gunnery if able. When attacked, the sub has Deep Dive or Crash Dive options available to try and evade. As they should be, escort gunfire is brutal against a sub, (perhaps not brutal enough), so avoid it like the plague. Most of the merchants have a bit of a stinger too, so you can't just sail up and shoot the deck gun at them without getting your hair mussed. You are limited in any combat segment to the number of fish in ready storage, so choose wisely. The rest of the torps are stored outside the pressure hull so you have to be away from combat to reload. If you survive, and have done all you can, you can leave the map and exit the combat. If you have contacts left available, you can re-attack the convoy, pick a new convoy, or choose to expend a torpedo/gun round to finish a ship you heavily damaged during the attack. This simulates a crippled ship being left behind by the convoy as easy pickings. It can be really frustrating to not have the contact counter available to finish these ships off, however.
Finally there is the usual clean-up phase, for distributing XP, VP, moving torpedoes to ready, and reducing stress for Joe Cool skippers and boats in port. Stress is the overall damage done to boat in both physical and mental terms. I only played a one patrol campaign, but I'm thinking maybe the port stress reduction of 5 per turn may be a little high. If a turn is about one week of time, then a really damaged/demoralized boat can be fully restored in 2 weeks. I'm thinking 3 stress per turn might be a little better.
Component wise, the game is very nice. The counters are the same quality as the ones in Phantom Leader, maybe not quite as nice as those in Hornet Leader: CAO. Still thicker and glossier than the standard GMT counter. There were a few off register color bars, but not really a big deal since the chits do not work on an unknown/flip system. The boards are the thin PL type, adequate but not nearly as nice as the mounted board in HL:CAO. That's just a price point thing, however. The one negative is the cards, which have a frayed edge in pretty much the same spot in every deck. None of mine were scuffed on the back, though. Really just a minor annoyance.
Obviously this is more of a game than a simulation, but it does bring quite a bit of historical flavor. Some have mentioned a lack of night attack versus day attack modifiers, but that seems to be baked in to Convoy cards already, with some cards giving a bonus to escort detection rolls. I think the fix to placate this group would be to have explicit Night/Day attack spelled out on the cards (like HL:CAO), rather than another layer of rules. As the designer pointed out, if you could choose, you would just always pick night attack to get the bonus. One feature I would like to see is standard torpedo improvement, the Germans had similar issues to the US early in the war, they just didn't have some shore-based asshat poo-pooing the problem for years. They should start out with a negative modifier for the first campaign.
Overall, I really like this game, and will playing much more of it. Expect it to take much longer for a campaign than the other Leader games, but no where near the time/space investment that Silent War/ Steel Wolves take. I would recommend it for fans of both systems, as it really is like a hybrid concept between the two.
One last thing, I would really love to see a "Fleet Boat Leader" game come out of this, although I understand that US Pacific subs don't have the following that the German boats do. Still it would interesting, with the ridiculous distances involved in the Pacific, as well as lighter target density but lack of effective convoying. Plus commando missions, pilot rescue, and infiltrating harbors.
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Steve Herron
United States
Johnson City
Tennessee
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Quote: Obviously this is more of a game than a simulation
That is the impression I had when I played Field Commander: Alexander for the first time. Still, if one enjoys playing it, being more of a game won't matter. I am hoping to add it to my game library.
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Vance Strickland
Canada
Nepean
Ontario
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Good review.
Re: Lag Movement
Only choose a Merchant or Naval ship as reference speed not an Escort. Escorts will move around the convoy on their own. Escorts are not Naval ships.... at least in this context.
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Andrzej Sieradzki
Poland
Opole
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The game has just arrived to my place. Counters pushed and sorted. NIce first impression. Than ks for a competent review.
Hope to get the same intense action as I have in Phantom Leader.
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Paul S
United Kingdom
DARK IN HERE, ISN'T IT?
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Nice review, thanks. On my Xmas list.
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Ryan Pelkey
United States
Wallkill
New York
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Right, but sometimes you get a merchant that is actually a Naval Ship, not an escort. They will have a speed of 3, while the rest of the Convoy is 2. I had a battleship and a light carrier show up this way.
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Michel Boucher
Canada
Ottawa
Ontario
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sherron wrote: Quote: Obviously this is more of a game than a simulation That is the impression I had when I played Field Commander: Alexander for the first time. Still, if one enjoys playing it, being more of a game won't matter. I am hoping to add it to my game library.
As opposed to your simulation library? 
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Christopher Schall
United States
Pennsylvania
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Atomlad wrote: Right, but sometimes you get a merchant that is actually a Naval Ship, not an escort. They will have a speed of 3, while the rest of the Convoy is 2. I had a battleship and a light carrier show up this way.
This rule doesn't make sense to me. I play that until a U-boat is detected, the convoy stays intact and moves together. If the Empress of Britain or a fast naval ship is in a convoy, it will have to match the speed of the slowest merchant.
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Rich 33tireman33
United States
Delaware
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I read the book “Convoy” and when fast merchant ships were in a convoy they would sometimes speed up at night and leave the convoy behind when U-boats started attacking. Sometimes to be sunk as U-boats were positioned ahead of the convoy track.
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Christopher Schall
United States
Pennsylvania
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Interesting. I guess one way to play would be to have the fast ships speed up AFTER a u-boat is detected or attacks.
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Quote: This is one part that I found a bit fiddly, as I spent most of my time sorting through counters with my stubby digits trying to find the appropriate named ships. I like the SW/SW method better, with unknown flags on the back of named ships in a random chit pull, although it has a longer setup time. After the sub attacks, a marker is put down which makes future escort contact rolls that much easier, so you are limited in the time you have to take out the targets. I did not attempt any Wolfpacks in my game, but I can see where they are a must for a large convoy.
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It has occured to me that one could put all merchants and escorts in seperate cups, then after the convoy card is drawn, drawing ships out first then locating the ship card maybe faster!!
Something Iintend to try
gavain2
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Christopher Schall
United States
Pennsylvania
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I sort the counters alphabetically into 2 groups (A-M and N-Z or something like that) in my counter tray. It takes only seconds to find the needed ship. I place any sunk ships near the U-boat that sunk it and any survivors on my playing area so it is easy to find if that ship ever comes around again. I also place sunk ship cards into a separate pile so I can tally up the tonnage sunk at the end. I have yet to run out of target ships (but imagine in a large campaign this would be easy) that require you to reshuffle sunk ships back into the pile. It seems like maybe 10 or 20 more merchant cards would be nice.
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Brian Uhrig
United States
Brooklyn Center
Minnesota
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Atomlad wrote:
The game is actually more similar to the Silent War/Steel Wolves system, with a simpler strategic step but a more fleshed out tactical component.
I've played Silent War and I think what turned me off was the scope of the game - too strategic and less tactical - which this game seems to focus more on. You got me sold on it!
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Posted Tue Nov 22, 2011 6:10 pm
