Up Periscope

Each player has four merchant ships which they are trying to race across their own "side" of the board to the home port. They also have a submarine (which can attack the merchants) and a destroyer (which can counter-attack the sub).

The game is basically like "Battleships" with movement. The cool part of the game is the board.

The board stands up vertically and each player plays his own side of the board. The ships stay in place as their bases are short pegs that fit pretty tightly in holes on the board. The board is made of a sandwich of two thick card boards with a thin sheet of rubbery plastic in between, so you can't see which holes your opponents ships are in. But you can push your "torpedo" and "depth charge" through the hole, stretching out the rubber and popping your opponents ship off the board. Coolest physical game mechanic ever! No, wait, it gets better! At the bottom of the board is a periscope. Yes, it really has mirrors. You slide this left and right to any column of the board, and then peek through the eyepiece to sight the enemy. You get a view of one column of the board and a peripheral view of the columns each side. If you get a sighting of an opponents ship on the central column you can try and estimate the range and torpedo it. The enemy destroyer then gets a shot at counterattacking your sub. The view through the periscope looks just like looking out from a sub and seeing ships peeping out of the ocean (nicely painted board) along the line of sight. Absolutely the coolest physical game mechanic ever!!!

Board: 13 x 13 square grid

Pieces each side: 4 Merchant ships, 1 Sub, 1 Destroyer, 1 Torpedo, 1 Depth Charge

User summary:

The playing field is put into a plastic frame and placed on edge. Each player equips the field on their side with ships, which are inserted into the holes in the playing field. An opaque plastic sheet between the layers of the playing field makes it impossible to see the opposing ship positions. At the bottom of the playing field a "periscope" is hooked, with which one can spy out the opponent's side of the playing field under limited conditions. The goal is to remove the enemy ships from their position with the help of torpedoes and depth charges. These are inserted into a hole on your own side and push out the enemy ship on the opposite side.

The winner is the player who is the last to have their own ships left in the playing field.