Silent Victory Review

With the advent of the personal computer, the doom of solitaire board games appeared to be nigh. Why would anyone take the time to set up a whole session of Ambush! or B-17: Queen of the Skies, fiddling with chits and counters and charts, when firing up the ol’ IBM to play at being a general for a couple hours is just so easy? Thankfully, solo gaming has seen something of a resurgence, growing alongside the rest of the hobby, though admittedly as part of a much smaller niche than the industry as a whole.

The latest offering in this niche of a niche of genres is Silent Victory by Consim Press. In this fine little package, you’ll take the helm of a US submarine tasked with sinking as much Japanese tonnage as you can in the Pacific Theatre of World War 2. Building upon previous narrative-driven solo wargames like Avalon Hill’s B-17: Queen of the Skies and Consim Press’ own The Hunters, it’s a game of pressing your luck and managing your scant resources as best you can to score big points over the course of a larger campaign.

So the game ought to be examined at two levels: one, does an individual patrol, taking up one short game session, deliver a compelling experience? And two, does the game provide an interesting narrative throughout the scope of a campaign?

On a patrol, your submarine will be assigned a route on the included map of the Pacific Theatre. You’ll roll for encounters at different points during the voyage. Often, the outcome will be nothing but a boring few weeks at sea as no juicy targets pop up for you to turn into flotsam and jetsam. Sometimes, however, a perfect opportunity will arise: a lightly guarded freighter carrying many tons of cargo to help the Japanese war effort, perhaps.

This is where the light decision-making element comes into play. While B-17 offered very little in the way of meaningful choices beyond which incoming fighters to unload your ammo into, Silent Victory lets players decide how far and how often they’ll push their luck to become the most legendary submarine captain in the Pacific. Do you unload all torpedo bays into a juicy target? Or do you steer her to the surface and let loose with your deck guns? There’s almost a month left on your journey: do you risk a large percentage of your torpedoes? What if they’re all duds?

By far the most exciting moments within an individual patrol are the daring escapes. Once the enemy is aware that you’re stalking your prey, escorts and air patrols will begin to give you hell. The push-your-luck motif pervades this part of the design as well. You can dive well below your sub’s recommended depth in order to avoid depth charges and risk taking damage, or you can risk the deadly explosives and cross your fingers.

The level of detail and granularity within the design should come as no surprise to fans of B-17. There are charts for everything: charts for how badly your sub is damaged, charts for target sizes and identities, charts for enemy detection, even charts to see what chart you roll on next. While this can get a little fiddly throughout the play, it’s well worth the cost in terms of how much detail the narrative delivers. You’re not pushing abstract units of cardboard or wood around: you are the sub captain.

All in all, this would be a fine little design even if it were just one-off patrols of the Pacific. But what takes the game to new heights--and depths--is the persistent campaign. You can play the whole of the Pacific naval conflict, with subtle changes throughout. Whether it is the experience and accolades your commander and crew gain from each successful voyage, or the quantity and size of targets available as the Japanese fleets began to dwindle, seeing the War through the eyes of a grizzled submarine crew is something to experience.

Playing the campaign just raises the stakes for everything: one wrong move and your career as a war hero is scuttled. It makes those push-your-luck decisions all the more tantalizing at every step of a patrol. I absolutely love games with high stakes, games that make things personal, and there’s probably no better way to do that than what Silent Victory and games of its ilk do with their persistent statistics and session tracking. It’s really a delight.

While many people have moved on from the joys of solitaire gaming, I for one am ecstatic that there are still fantastic games out there that cater to the lone wolf cardboard generals out there. Silent Victory is one of the very best of its type: games that don’t just tell you their story, but make you the star of the show, from the first patrol to the last.