A couple of years ago, I backed the Kickstarter for Dan Verssen Games’ Spruance Leader (I’m linking to the Boardgame Geek page rather than DVG’s product page because the company… um… doesn’t have the greatest web site). We promptly adopted a pair of kittens, which are not really compatible with big boardgames that need to stay set up for days for protracted campaign play. Between that and mental health haze, the game’s been sitting around unopened for the year and a half since the Kickstarter delivered.

I’m currently living alone while the girl and the cats and I work through the phases of our cross-country move, and I had the foresight to bring my DVG solo games along with me. After watching a couple of actual-play videos, I broke out Spruance Leader this afternoon and set up a first campaign and mission.

Things were getting hot in the North Atlantic. My task force’s first assignment was to go after a Soviet ASW task force operating off the Norwegian coast between Ålesund and Bødo:

To neutralize this threat, I had a U.S. Navy task force composed of USS Ticonderoga, USS John Rodgers, USS Scott, and USS Pharris. Tico had an SH-60B embarked for additional ASW capability.

We located the target task force without running into any patrolling Soviet ships:

One of the Udaloys got a shot on Pharris early, but missed. Scott‘s return fire did not. The Victor closed in on the task force, which was a fatal error as a spread of ASROCs from Pharris sent it to the bottom.

Shortly thereafter, the second Udaloy took up a new career as an artificial reef, but not before assisting the Kirov in landing a missile hit on Pharris. That Kirov was now on its own, but its formidable missile defenses gave the task force a hell of a challenge, with several RGM-84 salvos fired to no effect. The damaged frigate managed to get a solid radar lock on the battlecruiser and handed off her target data to Rodgers, which promptly launched a pair of RGM-109s to end CBN Kalinin‘s career.

Setting up the campaign and first mission and playing through this encounter took about three hours, all told. I’m sure future operations will go faster with less referencing the rulebook (which, while mostly usable, is just as poorly-organized as the other DVG products I own). While there are naval warfare PC games that cost a third of what I paid for this, I think it was healthy to have a purely analog gaming experience and get away from screens for a Saturday afternoon. Moreover, this was fun in a mode that I’ve largely fallen away from since my high school games of Ogre and Battletech. I’m going to try to finish out this intro North Atlantic Skirmishes campaign over the next week or so, and hopefully Spruance Leader will stay in rotation in the future.