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Game Info
Year
2021
Collection
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Description
Corvette Command is a strategic level solo narrative generating game giving you the chance to experience the worst that the Atlantic can throw at you while taking on the German U-boats. Your crew starts out raw and with basic skills which they get the opportunity to improve over the course of the campaign. Your mission is to protect the convoy from attack and success is measured by the scale of the losses incurred rather than by how many U-boats are sunk. If vital supplies are lost then this can impact on how quickly new technology becomes available to you such as radar and HF/DF detection.
It is May 1941 and the Battle of the Atlantic is reaching a critical point. The Royal Canadian Navy has extended its convoy cover eastwards and the Royal Navy has pushed their cover west so that convoys are now escorted the whole way across the Atlantic. For the purposes of game play only these two forces have been combined and you command a single Flower Class Corvette all the way across the Atlantic. Although the “Escort Gap” has been closed the “Air Gap” remains. The escorts are still waiting for the arrival of ship borne radar and spotting surfaced U-Boats and keeping station on convoys in the dark and poor visibility is still reliant on the lookouts. Ship to ship communications is also via signal lamps and flags and occasionally by loud hailer. The game ends on 31st May 1943.
There are optional advanced rules that enable you to play a quick set up one-off game or a two player game and introduce greater level of detail. If you enjoyed Nicholas Monsarrat’s book or film “The Cruel Sea” then don your sea going gear and head out into the Atlantic.
—description from the designer
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All mentions
Browse transcript mentions, sentiments, pros/cons, mechanics, topics, quotes, and references.
Total mentions: 2
This page: 2
Sentiment:
pos 2 ·
mix 0 ·
neu 0 ·
neg 0
Showing 1–2 of 2
Video PR7go984Fb4
Zilla Blitz Other at 0:01 sentiment: positive
video_pk 87182 · mention_pk 284926
Click to watch at 0:01 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
- Long and meaty campaign with 25 months of potential gameplay.
- Strong solitaire design with campaign and skill advancement.
- Visually sharp and clean design with effective use of color.
- Engaging U-boat attack sequence and combat modeling.
- Clever and elegant core mechanic for resolving actions.
- Excellent designer support and responsiveness on Board Game Geek.
- Variety of U-boat encounters with different characteristics.
Cons
- Rulebook has some ambiguities, particularly in connecting rules to components and defining terms like HFDF and ASDIC.
- Lack of explicit systems for tracking time passage and crew skill advancement within the components.
- Uncertainty about player agency and how many meaningful decisions are made.
- The operations record book is provided for only one convoy, with uncertainty on how to obtain more copies.
Thematic elements
- Escorting Allied convoys across the Atlantic during WWII against U-boats, mechanical failures, and storms.
- May 1941, Atlantic Ocean
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Active vs. Passive Skill Resolution — A core mechanic uses a chart where an active skill (e.g., searching for a sub) is compared against a passive skill (e.g., U-boat's evasion) to determine success on a die roll.
- campaign game — Features a long campaign representing 25 months of action from May 1941 to May 1943, with a turnaround time of about a week between convoys.
- Card-driven encounters — U-boat cards detail characteristics and attack patterns. Convoy cards dictate speed, starting/ending locations.
- Convoy Escort — Players take on the role of a single Corvette escorting a convoy of 30-40 ships across the Atlantic, protecting them from U-boat attacks.
- Crew Skill Enhancements — Crew skills can be enhanced over missions, with advancements tracked. Skills can go up to a maximum value of six.
- Map Movement and Zones — The map is divided into zones like Canadian sector and the air gap, representing different levels of risk and support.
- random events — A sheet of random events can occur, impacting gameplay and the Corvette.
- Technology Advances — Over the course of the campaign, new technologies like hedgehogs, HFDF (Huff Duff), and ASDIC become available, improving capabilities.
- U-boat Combat — U-boat combat is modeled with different ranges, variable tactics, and skills. Attacks can come in sequence as part of a wolf pack (up to three U-boats).
- Weather effects — Weather influences convoy speed, can cause damage, and affects tactics in combat.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- The rules on the whole they are 12 pages long and I found them in in sections fairly clear and fairly easy to decipher.
- The biggest place I've struggled a little bit with these rules in though is connecting some of the rules to how they connect to the components and the systems for tracking them.
- So really nice to see that support behind the game and he did mention in his answer that he's going to be creating some more videos once his copy of this new version shows up.
- I really like the visual design on this game this is such a fresh clean vision of something and I love the way they have used the blue and the red in terms of and the red for ybot signifying danger it just feels like a really sharp and Polished design.
- This is extremely geeky in terms of it's yes no and you Branch off and tell you but it's so helpful because it tells you exactly what the order is and what to do and where your yes and no splits are and how things go back and forth.
- This chart in itself enables the designer to capture a lot of actions with the use of only one chart and at its heart here is this active skill against this passive skill.
- I don't yet have a sense for player agency in the game and by player agency what I mean is how many decisions and how many meaningful decisions do you make that impact game play as a player.
References (from this video)
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Video L22-HWX8Dmk
Zilla Blitz Other at 11:03 sentiment: positive
video_pk 87142 · mention_pk 284465
Click to watch at 11:03 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
- Aggressively priced at $40
- Sharp and flashy design
- Nice color palette
Cons
- Pronunciation of designer's name may be incorrect
Thematic elements
- Escorting convoys from U-boat attacks
- World War II, Atlantic Ocean
- Solitaire play focusing on a single ship for two years
Comparison games
- 1812: Napoleon's Fateful March
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Solitaire — Solitaire play game where you take charge of a single ship for two years of World War II.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- this G I will say this is a this is a type of game that immediately captures my attention
- it's got everything in here and if we look at the uh rule book here and let's just move this up a little bit to get a better look at it here if we dig into the rule book um it's 22 pages long which is not very long I mean the text is kind of small I was expecting it to be bigger but looking through it we can again see a lot of the elements of gameplay that are the things that I would be looking for to see so it's checking off all the buttons right
- this looks really cool I I'm very curious I will also it's again it's not to me it's a genre that I think has really struggled to capture the essence so while there has been often games that have had this Vision I think there's been very few games that have come close to pulling it off to capture that magic especially in a soliter format of letting you live the pirates life I hope golden age of piracy is that game
- this I now I don't know the original 2014 game that this was based on but basically it seems like they've taken every taken everything from Imperial stars that this two and built it into the game thrown all the uh the expansions in as well and and in essence what you've got here is a two-player head to-head game of space combat in the year of 4096 or something like that it's an epic 4X game
- these uh these Maps here look fantastic the counters look really sharp as well we've got updated cards it looks like there is event driven elements that are going to kind of change the nature of this head-to-head combat that you're facing
- I really like the potential and I think there's still a lot of untapped potential for space hex to heex hex encounters Space games and board games that take the combination of space and war game basically let's put it simply in there I think there's a ton of potential here to kind of expand off of this so when I see these colorful maps and see all these spaceships flying around I think oh this looks really this looks pretty juicy
- I'm working on a video called the 10 tabletop war games with the best Art and Design basically the 10 most beautiful tabletop war games and I've if you're familiar with the channel you know that I was gone from tabletop War gaming for over 20 years I've been back for 3 years so I'm catching up on a lot of stuff right I'm trying to catch up on 30 years worth of War games and the time that I've got left and so uh I I there's gaps and those gaps are things that I don't know and so I'm curious what you as a viewer would consider your most beautiful war games
References (from this video)
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