Hunt for the Belgorod

Big world oceans chart but small, fast 3-12 turn "sudden-death" game system. 15 minutes? Free print-and-play.

Russian doomsday super submarine Belgorod - it's even a mothership for little subs, although that's not in the game - is trying to get on the loose to threaten one of our coasts. Can you detect and shadow it for 4 of the 12 turns to win?

Or can it stay UNdetected for 3 turns, then ending up near one of our coasts to win?

She starts in the Arctic Ocean, and our US Navy and allied Anti-Sub Task Groups ... and a couple missioned attack submarines (Illinois and Minnesota) ... must find and ride her. VERY good solitaire game as the Allied player. Just use the 2-side Russian pieces upside-down, randomly mix them up, and move each logically.

With 1 or more combinations of coin tosses or 50% die rolls, the Allied player's naval units attempt to detect her and then if successful shadow her from on or beneath the sea area she is in, with improved odds of continuing to do so. 3 continuous turns of successfully shadowing her wins a quick/sudden-death victory. However, if she can remain (or again become) unshadowed - whether or not she is detected by satellite - for 3 turns, the last one being in a U.S. coastal sea area, the Russian player instead wins the game.

12 playing pieces - only 1 more than SPI's Strike Force One's 11! - Belgorod and 3 Decoys and 4 Allied ASTGs and 2 SSNs and their decoys.

And I can attest that she and her Decoys can bedevil a solitaire Allied player at least as much as a second, Russian player could.

Applicable quotes from the film (and presumably the book) The Hunt for Red October of (Sean Connery's) Marko Ramius:

"Once more, we play our dangerous game, a game of chess against our old adversary - The American Navy. For forty years, your fathers before you and your older brothers played this game and played it well. But today the game is different. We have the advantage.

We will pass through the American patrols, past their sonar nets, and lay off their largest city, and listen to their rock'n'roll while we conduct miss-ile drills. Then, and when we are finished, the only sound they will hear is our laughter, while we sail to Havana, where the sun is warm, and so is the comradeship. A great day, comrades! We sail into history!"

And later:

"... years I have been at sea. A war at sea. A war with no battles. No monuments. Only casualties."

-description from designer