Sniper Elite: The Board Game, based on the video game series, stakes out a place on Kickstarter
Gunning for pledges.
Hide and pick off enemy troops or co-ordinate a search for an intruder in Sniper Elite: The Board Game, a tabletop adaptation of the video game shooter series.
Taking place in 1943 - during the height of the Second World War - Sniper Elite: The Board Game sees two to four players going head-to-head as either Allied sniper Karl Fairburne or the team of highly trained German operatives attempting to find him. A one-versus-many board game, Sniper Elite provides an asymmetric experience - each team has unique goals and abilities - in which players can choose to work together or go it alone.
As the sniper, players will need to navigate the board as carefully as possible, avoiding the notice of the other players whilst gradually completing their set objectives. The upcoming board game challenges the sniper player to a hidden-movement scenario, where they will have to use their wits and abilities to outsmart their opponents. The sniper player can sneak around the board without the other players knowing their whereabouts, unless they happen to directly cross paths with an enemy player’s miniature.
Players in the role of the sniper can take shots at their opponents by randomly drawing tokens - with each token having a different effect, both positive and negative - in hopes of successfully landing a hit. Noise tokens will cause the sniper’s whereabouts to be revealed, should the player draw too many, and their weapon may jam - forcing them to miss their shot regardless of whether they draw a hit token.
The other players in the video game board game take on the roles of German officers attempting to discover the location of the enemy sniper. Working together, the players must move across the board gradually gathering enough information to ascertain where the infiltrator is and successfully wound them twice.
Every squad can either gather intel - ask the sniper player if their miniature is in the sector indicated - or perform two actions per turn. Each squad is made up of multiple soldiers who cannot do the same action twice in a turn, including moving and attacking a space they think the sniper currently occupies. There are always three squads of soldiers in play, regardless of the current player count.
Sniper Elite is a video game series set during World War II in which the player controls an Allied sniper whose mission is to infiltrate an enemy encampment in order to eliminate their assigned targets. Created by developer Rebellion - the owner of Rebellion Unplugged, the publisher behind Sniper Elite: The Board Game - the latest entry in the series, Sniper Elite 4, was released in 2017.
Behind Sniper Elite: The Board Game’s gameplay are first-time designer Roger Tankersley and David Thompson, who co-created two-player board game Undaunted: Normandy and its sequel Undaunted: North Africa, which was released earlier this year.
Originally announced last year, Sniper Elite: The Board Game is now on Kickstarter until September 1st, with a pledge of £40 ($52) getting a copy of the core game. It’s estimated to arrive with backers sometime in September 2021.