Matthew BaileySo now that Henry(1) has reached the giddy heights of one-and-a-half it seems that unlike Jack(7) and Toby(4) at the same age he is an absolute monster and requires almost 24/7 supervision. This has meant the amount of board game playing in the house has reduced a little recently as we all try to adjust to having a mini Tasmanian Devil in our lives stomping about and climbing the walls (quite literally).
I think an over 50-game Summer Marathon this year is going to be an even bigger challenge than expected.
This weekend though Jack and I got some time alone and decided to play Sniper Elite. Now first thing is the theme. Sniper Elite is based on a video game franchise of the same name but doesn’t actually contain much in the way of sniping.
The best way to describe the game is “a bit like Battleships where everyone is constantly moving about”.
One player plays the snipe and must enter the map from one of 4 starting points. They then need to traverse the map hitting 2 randomly selected points on the map before escaping.
The other player (or players) play the guards who are split up into 3 groups of 3 in different coloured areas and can each take 2 actions (move, search a square nearby and shoot (if they can see the sniper). Each colour also has a special ability such as being able to teleport one guard or leave a dog to guard an area.
So while these 9 guards are searching the player’s character the player is moving unseen on their own board which allows them to secretly track where they are going. They can move 1,2 or 3 squares as well as shoot guards but must always announce how far they are moving to allow the guard players to make informed guesses about where the sniper is.
As the game continues the sniper gathers noise tokens that can reveal his location and obviously the sudden shooting of a guard doesn’t go unnoticed.
It all turns into a super enjoyable and tense game of cat and mouse that normally starts tense and careful and then turns into a massive scramble in the closing moments as the sniper tries to flee.
The components are good quality with the miniatures having a prewash over them making them look particularly premium.
There is a high level of replayability and a full game doesn’t last that long (about 20ish mins once you are used to it).
It’s a brilliant and simple game that I would 100% recommend to older kids. Jack(7) was all over this as both sides of the game but I reckon Toby(4) could quite happily play especially the guards if assisted by an older player.
Great stuff
