SNAP Review – Super Snipers

Anitra, you saw the movie Saving Private Ryan, right? (Yeah)

Do you remember the scene in Neuville where there’s an American sniper and a German sniper, who’s up in like, a bell tower, and they’re in a bit of a sniper duel? (Kinda.)

They study each other while trying to dial in their shot, and of course, the American wins, since it’s an American movie set during World War II.

This week we’re talking about a game that doesn’t take place during World War II, but it does involve dueling snipers, and it does capture some of the kind of intrigue of dialing in a careful shot.

This is a SNAP review for Super Snipers.

Game

Super Snipers is a polyomino placement game about dueling snipers, so it’s only for two players. It was made by Galen McCown and published by Galen’s Games. It’s best for teens and adults, and takes about half an hour to play.

Art

So Anitra, let’s talk about the art in Super Snipers.

This is a game about dueling cybernetically enhanced snipers, and the art reflects it. It’s got a very cel-shaded look to the cards, with all of the characters sitting proud of the art. And strong iconography for the various abilities you have.

The tokens in Super Snipers feel fantastic – all of the circular tokens are really nice acrylic, and the boards are double-thick cardboard. Everything fits into its own place.

Mechanics

So, let’s talk about the mechanics of Super Snipers. In this game, your goal is to knock out the other player three times.

A game starts with each player choosing a character. The game comes with seven characters who all have unique abilities. Each character also comes with three of their own hiding discs.

There are six hiding locations, with three double sided target grids. Both players should agree on which three locations they’ll be hiding in, to keep the difficulty consistent.

Players will set up their boards with all of the ability tokens in their assigned slots.

And with three “Focus”, or polyominoes, in a row to the right of the “Line of Sight”.

Then, they’ll shuffle their three hiding discs and put one in front of each of their opponent’s targeting grids, face down. And now, it’s time to duel.

There are two modes to the game: Duel Mode and Quickdraw Mode.

Duel Mode is a little bit easier and also more strategic. Players take one turn at a time, but they do it simultaneously.

In the opening phase, the Locate phase, a player will take the first Focus piece in their Line of Sight, and pick a targeting grid in front of them. Place the line of sight [correction: the Focus piece] on the grid, with the goal of isolating the crosshairs in the center.

The surrounding pieces don’t have to be orthogonally adjacent, but it does need to be separated from the edges, like this.

Once this happens, flip the opponent’s hiding disc for this location. If it’s a miss, keep going. If the disc shows the picture of the opponent character, that player moves to the Target Phase.

The idea here is that the sniper has located the general area of their opponent, and is now zooming in for the kill. In this phase, take the corresponding target grid and put it in the scope insert board. Put the yellow meeples – these are innocents – on the eagle icons, and the red meeple – the primary target – on the target icon.

Keep playing in the same way, but now the player must isolate all of the innocents AND the target – and isolate them from each other. Once they have, they can place the Bullet focus over the target, and they’ve won the round.

During the Target phase, players can only create one connected chain of each color of Focus . This adds to the complexity of fitting those polyominoes together in a tight space to perform the isolations correctly.

Once a player has won a round, the player who was hit removes that targeting grid from the three available hiding spots.

Then both players reset everything, and do it all again. So now, there are only two spots to look for their opponent. Play continues until one player has won three times.

During the course of play, players may cover various icons on their boards with their Focus. These do all sorts of things, including enabling the bonus tokens on the scope board, or even adding “Surveillance”, which are free polyominoes to place at the start of the Target phase.

There are also asymmetric player powers, and Adrenaline, which is a free polyomino that activates after you’ve lost a round.

Finally, I mentioned the Quick Draw mode. In this mode, each player has a 30 second timer. This timer forces each player to only take one turn every 30 seconds, but it also means they can take a turn every 30 seconds, no matter how fast the other player is taking their turn. This makes the game a lot more frenetic, and definitely gets your heart pumping.

Expectations

So Andrew, what did we expect from Super Snipers?

Our son Asher fell in love with Super Snipers at CuseCon, which is our favorite local board game convention. He got to play it with Galen himself, who is just a wonderful person.

So, when I heard about Super Snipers, I had a feeling it had a bunch of extra little bits that made it very appealing to an ten-year-old nerd. I couldn’t actualize how you would capture this kind of mechanic in a polyomino game, so once I heard that polyominoes were the primary mechanic here, I was pretty interested.

When we first discovered this game at CuseCon, Asher kept coming back again and again. He loved this game from the very first time he played it. I, on the other hand, wasn’t super excited for a game that was themed around targeting at and shooting each other. Sorry!

Surprises

But we had some surprises. So many surprises. First of all, the usage metaphor works really well for me. I love this idea of scanning areas with your scope, trying to box in your enemy, and then when you figure out where they actually are, zooming in for the kill.

The extra size of the targeting grid, zooming in, makes the game naturally more difficult, and the inclusion of “innocents” as an added difficulty – that really helps for me.

I also love the sliding scale with the difficulty. We mentioned matching the locations with your opponent, to keep it fair. The grids do get slightly harder as you move up from one to six, so if you have a player who is just better, slide their scale up, and leave the “lesser” player’s the same.

Asher is a lot more experienced with this game (than either of us!), so I was surprised that when we played Quick Draw, I had no time to even think about the extra abilities, because there’s all those icons. I was just trying to get the polyominoes on the board.

And, let me tell you, he destroyed me.

I was also a little surprised that the single player mode didn’t really work that well for us. There’s just too many pieces – there’s a lot already for one player – and then when you have to manage two, it’s just too much.

I actually like the strategy in this game more than I thought I would. The polyomino puzzle part appeals to me. But I do have to remember that the bonuses aren’t worth agonizing over – especially if I won’t actually use them!

Recommended?

Super Snipers is a really clever way to use this tried-and-true mechanic in polyomino placement to reach for a theme and experience that hasn’t been done before.

Its novelty and its ingenuity is tempered a little bit by its limitation of a two-player game where both players need to appreciate the theme and how this idea maps to what would happen in the real world. So in that way, Super Snipers has a limited audience, but if you’re in that audience you’ll really enjoy the experience.

If this review has you interested, check it out at GalensGames.com.

We’re going to give Super Snipers 3½ bullets out of 5.

And that’s Super Snipers, in a SNAP!

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Super Snipers from Galen’s Games for this review.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?