I’ve never really been into board wargames. Sure, there are a number I enjoy, like Maria or the Commands & Colors series, but I always kept away from the traditional hex-and-counter games. From all I knew about them, I had the suspicion that one really had to enjoy bureaucratic processes, or accounting, to enjoy them, and the self-important seriousness of some players rather turned me off.

Fortunately, things have changed. There has been a new and lively culture of innovation surrounding board wargames, with designers experimenting with new mechanisms and expanding the field to include all kinds of historical phenomena besides war, such as political and social movements. Recently, I’ve come to enjoy Land and Freedom very much and even used it in teaching.

Being interested in all things naval, I perked up my ears when I first heard about Atlantic Chase a year or so ago. It’s a game about surface operations between the Royal Navy and the German Kriegsmarine at the beginning of World War 2, and it just looked gorgeous. It uses a big hex map, but the units are not represented by counters, but by trajectories. I bought it on a whim, played the first two tutorial mission and then stored it away – not because I didn’t like it, but because something else caught my interest… However, a couple of weeks ago, I suddenly decided to give it another go. And for those who don’t want to read any further: I’ve rarely been as impressed by a game as by Atlantic Chase. Highly recommended!

For those who want to know whence my enthusiasm, let me give you a bit more information. First, Atlantic Chase has incredible production value. The huge map is mounted on very study cardboard, the wooden pieces are nice, and the amount of paper is staggering: there is a tutorial book, a rulebook, a scenario book for two players, a scenario book for solitaire play, and a book of advanced battle rules. However, what could be daunting is actually really helpful: not only does it package the information in digestible chunks, but the books also themselves are very well structured and laid out. The rules are written in a colloquial style and would probably fit on a quarter of the space in a more traditional format, but at least for me, the style helps with reading them without immediately getting drowsy. I played the tutorial mission over a couple of days and then was ready for my first proper game. (Due to the number of counters and wooden sticks, I would strongly recommend getting a counter tray, as otherwise, you’ll spend too much time rummaging through the box trying to find stuff.)

So what it is all about? The core concept is the following: in Atlantic Chase, the game map does not represent the North Atlantic. Rather, it represents a map of the North Atlantic. Understanding this distinction is essential to understand the logic of the game.

During World War 2, the admiralty had charts of the oceans which were regularly updated when new information came in. The courses of task forces and convoys were indicated as lines – e.g. taut strings – between stations. This is how it looked like in the British Navy:

The map in Atlantic Chase represents just such a map, and the trajectories, which are laid out by the players with wooden sticks, represent the strings indicating the routes of ships. A trajectory in the game represents information: the knowledge the officers in the Plot Room have about the course and position of their own was well as the enemy’s task forces. Of course, this information can be old. Luckily, it will be updated according to the different actions the player takes, such as ordering naval searches, getting the people from signals intelligence to work, or having a U-boat report the position of a convoy. The players’ job is to get as much information as possible about the enemy ships, to narrow down their location and guide their own task forces to engage them – or to escape the superior forces of the enemy…

Atlantic Chase, therefore, has a command-and-control system as well as a fog of war mechanism that is baked into the very fundamentals of the game itself. This is probably why it achieves to give such a seamless and immersive feel of being in command without being in control: while you don’t move around ships at will, you still have the feeling of planning and plotting operations. Some of those won’t turn out the way you intended, and often, your task force will be at the wrong place at the right time or vice versa. However, the game offers enough mechanisms to give the players agency in formulating and executing their strategies. While there is a lot of dice-rolling involved, usually you know the odds beforehand and can take calculated risks. For example, after most actions, the opponent can try to seize initiative. For the first attempt, there is a 75% chance that you will keep it, so you can usually assume that you will get two actions in a row. After that, there’s a 50:50 chance the initiative will change – do you try to enact another complicated plan, or play it safe? Incidentally, these odds also make for a very dynamic game, as both players are constantly involved, and no one will get a long series of actions while the other has to watch and twiddle their thumbs.

Another aspect I like is that task forces won’t necessarily engage each other – in many cases, it is in the interest of one player not to come to blows with the opponent’s ships. If battles do happen, there is a quick and elegant combat system that allows you to resolve ship to ship combat without significantly slowing down the game. This makes sense, as Atlantic Chase is firmly focussed on the operational level. For those who enjoy a more detailed system of ship combat, the game included advanced rules that cover this. However, I very much like that the game is not slanted towards creating huge fleet slugfests (although I have already though about playing out some of the engagements with miniature rules, e.g. Find, Fix and Strike…).

I have not only greatly enjoyed the two-player game, to my surprise I also very much enjoy the solo game. Up until now, I haven’t considered myself to be a solo player, and several attempts have left me bored (the notable exception being the sci-fi campaign I played during lockdown, but that was a somewhat unique situation). However, the solo scenarios and mechanisms of Atlantic Chase just captivate me. It really manages to keep the sandbox feel of the two-player game, in a way perhaps even amplifying it, as scenarios don’t state clear victory conditions. Instead, they give you an objective, or even better, several objectives, some of which can be contradictory. For example, in scenario 2, the player in the role of the British gets the following mission briefing: “Score Hits on German Convoys. Protect British Convoys. Sink Germain raiders. Do not spark an international incident.” So, here we have three different objectives, the pursuit of each of them endangering the others. And we must watch out not to make the Norwegians angry by making aggressive moves in their waters! The scenario description then goes on to state when the game will end (when two convoys have reached their destination) and lets you figure out what to do.

To evaluate how you have done, you get a list of victory points which you can tally up after the scenario. This will give you a short narrative outcome. Of course, you can look at the victory points before starting the game, but I found it interesting and challenging to only look at them afterwards, trying to figure out for myself what actions the Admiralty will reward higher. In either case, the scenarios really put you into the position of someone who has to make hard decisions about priorities and then plan accordingly, and all of this on a map that offers you a huge decision space. The physical size of the map as well as the way trajectories work really give you a feel for the vastness of the North Atlantic – a vastness that can be a boon (if you are the hunted and want to slip away) or a bane (if you try to find and engaged a slippery surface raider).

There are some more great mechanisms in the solo engine, for example that enemy task forces start unidentified and only get revealed when engaged. All of this makes not only for an excellent playing experience, but it also makes for a really great narrative.

As I’ve already said, I’ve rarely been as impressed by a game as by Atlantic Chase. It delivers in the two-player mode as well as in the solo mode, it has impressive production values, and it gives an insight into the historical problems of command and control of naval forces. I’m looking forward to having many more games!