Game Overview: Sniper Elite, or The Art of Sneaking Past Your Friends

David Thompson and Roger Tankersley's Sniper Elite: The Board Game from Rebellion Unplugged is a new hidden movement game for 1-4 players based on Rebellion’s popular, stealth-shooter Sniper Elite video game series. Sniper Elite: The Board Game was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter (KS link) in September 2020 and is now available directly from the publisher and at retailers. Rebellion Unplugged graciously hooked me up with a review copy of Sniper Elite so I could play it and share how it works.

In Sniper Elite, one player takes on the role of Allied sniper Karl Fairburne, dropped deep behind enemy lines to complete objectives critical to the Allied effort in World War II, while their opponents team up to control squads of Axis soldiers tasked with defending their base and dealing with the intruder. To win the the game, the sniper player must sneak around or shoot their way past the defenders to complete two secret objectives before time runs out. Meanwhile, the defenders must guard key objectives and hunt down the sniper to prevent them from winning.

Sniper Elite comes with a double-sided game board featuring two different map options. Each map has its own flavor with unique areas, along with its own set of nine objective cards, and a separate hidden version of the board for the sniper to secretly record their movement throughout the game.

For setup, the sniper secretly draws two objective cards with different suits to ensure each objective is in a different sector of the map. The sniper also loads up their shot bag with aim, noise, and recoil tokens. The shot bag abstractly represents the sniper’s accuracy and level of concealment, and the contents change over the course of the game in tandem with changes on the battlefield. For example, if the sniper successfully shoots a soldier, you add an aim token to the bag which increases the sniper’s odds when shooting defenders going forward. Alternatively, if the sniper is spotted by the defenders, a noise token is added to the shot bag, which worsens the odds for the sniper’s future shots.

The sniper also secretly select three loadout cards of their choice during setup. Each loadout card is a special piece of equipment the sniper can use once per game. There are special weapons, and there are also cards to help the sniper move around without making noise, and even a rock you can toss to distract the defenders.

Setup for a 2-player game on the Submarine Pens map

After the sniper is set up, the defenders place their miniatures on the starting spaces matching their colored bases and then they choose three specialist cards to assign to their officers for the game. The specialist cards give the officers a powerful special ability they can trigger twice per game. There’s also a countdown track where you place two colored cubes per squad to keep track of the defenders' actions and how many rounds the sniper has left to complete an objective. In addition, there’s a token to keep track of the sniper’s wounds if the defenders are able to successfully hunt down and attack the sniper.

In a game of Sniper Elite, the sniper player takes the first turn of the game, after which the defenders take their turn in any order. The sniper and defenders alternate taking turns in this fashion until the game ends.

On your turn as the sniper player, you can move, use a loadout card, and take an additional action, in any order you choose. You can even choose to do nothing at all on your turn which is a fun way to keep the defenders guessing. For example, if you decide to do nothing, it’s fun to pause for a bit, analyze the main board and your secret board as if you're making a tough decision, and then say you’re finished your turn. Then sit back and watch the defenders start discussing where you might’ve moved as you keep a poker face while giggling inside.

When you move, you secretly mark your new position on your hidden board. You can move zero to three spaces from your current location. If you move zero or one space, your movement is considered to be silent and doesn't alert the defenders even if you brush shoulders with them. However, if you move two or three spaces and end up adjacent to any defenders during your move, you have to tell them they heard a noise. You don’t need to tell the defenders how many adjacent spaces you moved through or the order in which the units are alerted. The sniper cannot enter a space that contains a defending unit, so the defenders will be working to position their units strategically to make it challenging for the sniper to reach their objective areas.

The sniper successfully shot an officer two spaces away...

For additional actions, the sniper can shoot at an enemy using the shot bag, loot to gain additional loadout cards, or complete an objective. To shoot, you secretly pick a target in line of sight and declare how many tokens you’re going to risk drawing to fire the shot. At a minimum, you must draw one aim token for each space between you and your target, plus the target’s space. So if my target is three spaces away from me, I have to draw at least three aim tokens. Considering the shot bag also has noise and recoil tokens, I might opt to draw five or six tokens to be safe. In that case, I hope to successfully draw the three aim tokens I need. If your shot is successful, the unit you targeted is removed from the board.

If you take down a soldier, you add an aim token to your shot bag. If you take down an officer, you add a suppression token to the bag, or an aim token if you’ve already added that officer’s suppression token to the shot bag. Either way, the added tokens in your shot bag are beneficial, in addition to the perks of removing defenders from the board. You have more options for efficiently moving around without making noise, and it forces the defenders to spend actions to redeploy them.

In addition to the benefits of shooting the defenders, there are also some risks to consider when it comes to drawing from the shot bag to target an enemy. If you draw five or more combined recoil and noise tokens, you misfire. Also, regardless if you misfire or hit, if you draw two or more noise tokens, you have to reveal your position and place your sniper miniature on your current space on the board. If you misfire and don’t make a lot of noise, your opponents won’t even know who you were targeting, but when you make noise, they’ll see you. Therefore, it adds suspense on both sides when the sniper is drawing tokens from the shot bag. Also, each suppression token drawn cancels a noise token, which is one of the reasons it is usually preferred to target the officers over the soldiers.

I really like that you can take your actions in any order too. It gives you the option of shooting, then moving, in which case, if you do create noise, you might be able to sneak away and throw off the defenders. Again, other times it could be best to stay put as well. Whatever it takes to throw off those ruthless defenders!

As an additional sniper action, you can loot to draw three loadout cards and keep one if you’re on a numbered objective space that doesn’t match one of your secret objectives. If you loot, you mark the space on your hidden board because each space can only be looted once. It seems in most cases, the sniper is trying to beat the clock and focus on getting to their objectives as quickly as possible, but if there's a lootable space on your path, it's definitely worth it to pick up another loadout card since they're super helpful.

Examples of loadout cards

In one of my games where Matt was the sniper, I suspected he planted a mine and I knew the general area where he might've set it, but a few turns later I totally forgot. I used my Scout specialist ability to move one of my soldiers on the mine space, and then at the end of my turn, he blew up. We both cracked up! I almost chose a different space, but again I wasn't even thinking about the mine.

The sniper’s main goal is to stay alive and complete two secret objectives. The sniper player has ten rounds to complete each objective. If you’re able to complete an objective within the first ten rounds, the countdown track resets and you get another ten rounds to complete your second objective to win. To complete an objective, simply reveal your objective card while you’re on the matching space. Then you have to put the sniper miniature on that space, add a noise token to the shot bag, and reset the defender’s action cubes on the countdown track. The action itself is simple, but obviously crucial to winning the game, and it can be very challenging when you are up against tough defenders. Whenever I played as the sniper, I felt so nervous and had an adrenaline rush moving around the board while trying to outsmart the defenders.

While the sniper is sneaking around the board, shooting at defenders, looting, and attempting to complete objectives, the three squads of defenders work together to find and attack the sniper, while also slowing them down enough that they run out of time. Considering the sniper can never enter a space with a defender unit, positioning your officers and soldiers to control the sniper’s movement is imperative.

Using tracking cubes to deduce where the sniper might have run off to...

On the defenders’ turn, each squad can either gather intel or take two actions with their units. To gather intel with a squad, the officer must be in their own sector (matching color), then you ask the sniper if they’re in that sector. Since the officer needs to be in their own section to gather intel, that’s another reason the sniper might prioritize shooting officers over soldiers. Gathering intel can be super helpful to narrow down where the sniper could be, especially early in the game when you don't have much data. However, the squad won’t be able to take any other actions that round, so it is costly and you have to decide when it's worth it.

If you’re not going to gather intel with a squad, you can move a unit up to two spaces, attack the current space in hopes to wound the sniper if they’re on the same space, sweep or spot to see if the sniper is nearby, or deploy units that were removed to bring them back onto the board. In addition, before or after any action or intel gathering, each officer may use their specialist ability once per turn.

You keep track of each defending squad’s actions by moving the corresponding action cubes down the countdown track. On the defender turn, you have a lot of flexibility since you can have the squads take actions in any order you’d like. It’s also possible to take the same action twice with each squad, or a single unit can take two actions as long as they’re different actions.

Kennel Master specialist card

The defender spot action allows you to choose a space adjacent to a unit and if the sniper’s in that space, they have to put their miniature on the board and add a noise token to their bag. Alternatively, to sweep, you choose two adjacent spaces to a unit and if the sniper is in any of those spaces, including the space the active unit is on, the sniper has to say so. Of course, they don’t have to say which of the three spaces they’re on, but it's still helpful data.

Then there are also specialist abilities that you can add to the mix when plotting against the sniper. Each officer is assigned a specialist with unique abilities which they can use twice per game. During set up, you add two colored action cubes to associate the corresponding officers to their specialist ability. You also use these cubes to keep track of how many times you've used the ability since you can only use each ability twice per game. The defenders can use the abilities of multiple specialists in each turn, but cannot use the same specialist twice on a single turn.

There are six different specialists you can assign to your officers. There’s a Scout that lets you move a soldier from the corresponding squad to any empty space on the board. There’s a Medic which allows you to keep a soldier in the corresponding squad alive after the sniper shoots them. One of my favorites is the Kennel Master who can place a dog token in their space, and then for the rest of the game, the dog will be alerted if the sniper moves into or through the dog’s space. There’s even a Sniper which can attack targeting a space in their line of sight using the sniper’s shooting rules and shot bag. All of the specialist abilities are pretty juicy and it’s awesome to additional options for the defenders.

The sniper and defenders continue taking turns, back and forth until the game ends. The sniper wins immediately if they complete their second objective. The defenders win immediately if they wound the sniper a second time, or if their action cubes are on the final space of the countdown track at the start of their turn, which means the sniper ran out of time.

Sniper Jackie completed her second objective in the nick of time!

While I've never played any Sniper Elite video games, and I've only played a few hidden movement games, I found Sniper Elite: The Board Game to be very fun. Each game I played felt tense and exciting whether I was playing as the sniper or the defenders.

The rules for Sniper Elite are pretty straightforward, including the line of sight rules which can sometimes cause confusion. Once you learn it, it should be a relatively quick teach. They also include a couple player aids which are helpful, but I wish they would've included more than one player aid for the defenders.

Confident stance for someone who missed the sniper walking by...

The art and components are all great and the wash on the miniatures was such a nice touch. Everything looks and feels premium which I always appreciate. The shot tokens are nice and chunky too.

Speaking of the shot tokens, I really dug the push-your-luck aspect of using the shot bag to target defenders. It's such a clever way of abstracting the sniper's accuracy when shooting, and it feels suspenseful whenever you're drawing from the bag. Also, the way you add tokens to the bag, for better or worse, makes thematic sense which is really cool.

The loadout cards are great in Sniper Elite too. I really dig that the sniper player gets to choose three cards at the start of the game and there are only six different types of cards, but some cards have two copies, so you never know exactly what will be in play. It's not only cool to be the sniper and have these spicy cards up your sleeves, but it's another thing the defenders can deduce throughout the game. Some of the loadout cards are not revealed immediately when played, so it could be that the sniper placed a mine or they could use the sound masking card that allows them to move two or three spaces adjacent to defenders without making noise. Either way, the loadout cards add an awesome dynamic to the gameplay.

I managed to play Sniper Elite at all player counts. I enjoyed it best at with two or three players. The 4-player experience felt too long. It might be a matter of too many cooks in the kitchen since the defender turns took a while. Even with everyone owning their own squads' actions, there's still a lot to discuss and collaborate on, which is cool, but can definitely make the game drag. The 2-player experience only took about an hour and felt like chess at moments, if you can imagine playing a chess match where your opponent can see all of your moves, but you can't see their moves most of the game. The 3-player game could be a sweet spot if you enjoy having someone to bounce ideas off of when you're trying to track down the sniper.

Sniper Elite also has a solo mode designed by Dávid Turczi and Noralie Lubbers. In the solo mode, you play as the sniper against the defenders whose turns are driven by a deck of cards which is easy to run, but it doesn't necessarily capture the tension that comes with playing a hidden movement game with human opponents. I think it's nice that it has a solo mode, but I'm probably going to stick to the multiplayer mode in this case. It also includes some officer challenges to adjust the difficulty which is always a plus when it comes to solo modes.

AI opponent goodies

While there is plenty of replay value in the base game with two different maps, each with nine different objective spaces, plus a variety of specialist officer and loadout cards, the modular expansion Sniper Elite: Eagle's Nest is also available. Eagle's Nest adds two new maps to the game – the infamous Eagle’s Nest and the Heavy Water Facility – each providing the Allied sniper and the defending Axis forces with new challenges to face. In addition, it includes four alternate snipers to choose from at the start of the game, each with their own unique skillset and miniature to represent them. Eagle's Nest doesn't seem like an essential expansion, but if you really dig the base game and play it a lot, you'll probably enjoy the extra goodies.

If you're looking a for a fun, tense hidden movement game, be sure to check out Sniper Elite: The Board Game. The design and production are top notch, it's relatively easy to learn and teach, and it can be played in less than two hours. I'm looking forward to playing it more to strengthen my deduction skills and misdirect my friends.

Eagle's Nest map in action

If you're interested in learning more about Sniper Elite: The Board Game, and how it came to be, I recommend checking out the insightful designer diary David Thompson posted.