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| "The Hunters" (GMT Games 1317-19) |
When Gregory M. Smith’s game The Hunters was first released by Consim Press in 2013, I was busy with life and my youthful interest in wargaming had been long-neglected. Upon my rediscovering of the hobby a few years ago, I was just in time to catch his second title, Silent Victory, but Hunters was long out of print, and even a second printing had come and gone. Fortunately, the game’s popularity prompted a third printing in 2019, and I was able to reserve a copy. It’s been sitting on my shelf since then, and I finally decided to punch out and submerge myself in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Hunters is not a traditional hex-map-and-counter wargame; it is a narrative-driven game that has its roots in both wargaming and role-playing games (RPGs). In his “Designer’s Notes,” Greg Smith states that the initial impetus for the game came from the Avalon-Hill game B-17: Queen of the Skies which has some similar design elements and mechanics. Hunters, however, has a different focus from B-17, and it is reflected in the way the game flows.
Hunters is not a complex design, and has a gentle learning curve. I started with one of Smith’s other games in the series, Silent Victory, and I picked up the basics of the game within an hour. It’s simplicity is deceptive, however; it is not an easy game to win. Designed as a solitaire game, Hunters puts the player in command of a German U-Boat from September of 1939 until June of 1943. The U-Boats were best suited to waging handelskrieg (“commerce war”) and that is the primary focus of your command: sink as much Allied commercial ship-tonnage as you can while keeping your crew and boat alive. Success is rewarded in the form of decorations, rank increases, and better equipment. Failure is punished by being removed from command.
The game is divided up into month-long patrols, in which your boat navigates one of several historical (albeit somewhat abstracted) patrol routes. During each patrol, you may encounter enemy anti-sub aircraft, solo merchantmen, escorted ships, convoys, or even military capital ships with their escort screens. It is up to you to look carefully at each encounter and consider the potential risks along with the potential gains of engaging a target because every decision in The Hunters has consequences. Play too conservatively, and you may end up losing your command for lacking aggression. Play too aggressively, and you may lose your boat and your life, or bring home a boat so damaged that you face extended refit periods which limit your number of patrols in the course of the game. Challenging the player to make difficult decisions is exactly what Smith set out to do when designing the game: “I wanted the player, as the U-boat commander, to be confronted with a continuous stream of decisions” (Designer’s Notes).
Die-rolls, of course, play a significant role in the game, but they are not such that they negate the player’s ability to influence the game-play by competent and intelligent decision-making; the game does not boil down to ‘the luck of the roll.’ Rather, the numerous die-rolls are the abstraction of many different elements inherent in the combat: equipment failure, human error, unforeseen consequences, etc.. Tables laid out on a number of reference cards govern Combat, Detection/Evasion, and potential Damage to your boat. The cards, along with a patrol map and a Combat Mat, are standard Letter size, and the game fits easily on an average table top or desk.
From a historical perspective, the game is well-researched, but the designer, himself, is quick to point out that he wanted to achieve a balance between historical accuracy and a game that was enjoyable to play. Personally, I think he has achieved that objective. If you immerse yourself in the game as you would a RPG, you definitely get a feel for the pressure command decisions place on those who are responsible for fighting a ship while keeping their vessel and the men who crew her alive.
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