March 28, 2024

#UnboxingDay! The Hunters

Billy Riley, 17 December 2020 ~ #UnboxingDay

I’m a bit in the middle about this one. On the one hand, I like the idea of a submarine game. On the other, it’s a “story” game…much like Queen of the Skies or Target for Today – games that I couldn’t get on with.

However – the claustrophobic setting of this pushed me over the edge. I held off on The Hunted 1943-45 (the sequel) until I decide whether I like this or not. Keep yer eyes open

click images to enlarge

Box Art

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Tells you exactly what it is – and it’s not a game about aircraft

Box – Rear

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The rear of the box shows some blurb about the mechanics, lays out the situation as it stood in 39 through 43, some detail on the game as a commander of a U-Boat, contents and details on mechanics – including Replayability set to Very High which is always welcome

 

Rules

Not an overbearing rule book. 19 pages with an additional 3 pages for Optional rules. There’s also some prints of the counter sheets (handy for when you misplace a counter), Designer Notes and a Historical Brief outlining some of the top U-Boat commanders.

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The back has a useful Index

 

U-Boat Combat Mat

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You will use this to play out your Engagements and it has a very handy ruleset at the side to show the sequence of the engagement

 

Player Aid Cards

There are 4 double sided Player Aid Cards.

 

Patrol Charts

 

There are two Patrol Charts and the types of submarine that you command determines what chart you should use.

 

A Patrol Log Sheet

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There are a lot of sheets in this log book – I suspect they think you’ll be playing it a lot.

 

Dice

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3D6, 1D20 and 2D10

 

Commander Cards

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There are 16 double sided THICK (and I mean thick) Commander cards. One side shows the Commander’s history and the other shows some game advantages

These link to the Historical Brief in the manual where I mentioned you get to see the top 10 U-Boat commanders – though there are only 8 cards (the second side has the same commander)…I wonder why they left out Gunther Prien and Georg Lassen (( and 10 in the list in the manual)?

 

Counter Sheet

Yep – I said sheet – singular. There’s only one sheet of counters. To be honest, that’s a relief after punching and clipping Fields of Fire Vol 1 and Fields of Fire Vol 2

 

U-Boat Cards

There are 4 double sided U-Boat cards on decent card stock. They show various parts of the submarine, the damage it can take, it’s weapon loadout, the patrol zones and status of the crew

The cards specify the dates these machines came into service

 

 

Bonus Material Card

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This card show a list and gives an explanation of the bonus material in this 3rdPrinting.

 

So that’s The Hunters 1939-43. I look forward to being able to get this on the table…but I say that to all my games.


Thanks for joining this month’s #UnboxingDay with the Armchair Dragoons and we hope you enjoyed our recon of our recent acquisitions.
You can always leave us your feedback in our #UnboxingDay thread, or in the comment area on this article, below.
The regiment also occasionally musters on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and occasionally at a convention near you, once we’re allowed to hold them again.

Brant G

Editor-in-chief at Armchair Dragoons

View all posts by Brant G →

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