Sniper Elite the Board Game and Eagle's Nest Review

He's there. You know he's there. Even before you found the bodies, it's almost like you felt his presence. Always watching. You feel like you're under a constant crosshair. But to save yourself from going mad, you've fallen back on your orders. Guard the facility, patrol the routes, but he's still there. You know he's there.

Sniper Elite the Board Game is based on the popular Sniper Elite video game series. In this review, we'll look at how it plays and how it stacks up against the video game it's based on, and we'll also check out what the Eagle's Nest expansion adds to games. Sniper Elite the Board Game was a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2020, and another expansion, Operation Kraken, is planned on Gamefound.

Hidden Sniper Moving Target

Sniper Elite the Board Game is a hidden movement 1 vs many board game. What that means is that 1 player takes the role of the Sniper, and up to 3 players (or an AI card deck if playing solo) take on the role of the guards. The guards are split into 3 teams of 3, and their miniatures are placed on the map. During their turn, they can move and search areas, looking for the sniper.

The sniper, using a smaller separate copy of the game board, uses a dry-erase marker to track their movement, as they try and complete 2 objectives. Their miniature is kept off the board and secret, creating noise if they move too fast, which the defenders can track, narrowing their search area. The sniper miniature is only placed on the board if the defenders discover them, they complete an objective, or if they create too much noise when taking a shot.

Shooting in Sniper Elite the Board Game uses an interesting, unique mechanic. It's an almost completely diceless board game (except a single die for solo play), and instead, when making a shot, players draw tokens from a bag. A number of aim tokens is required, equal to the number of spaces between you and your target (including your target's space). The number of tokens you draw is up to you, but if you draw 2 or more noise tokens, then your position is revealed, and if you draw a combination of 5 or more noise and recoil tokens, then you miss your shot regardless of how many aim tokens you draw. Tokens are added to the bag as the game progresses, such as more noise tokens for being spotted, or more aim tokens for taking out enemies.

Boom Headshot

There are only 2 maps in the core game box, but the variety comes from the random objectives, keeps the game varied for the sniper and the guards guessing. There are also 6 specialist abilities that each one of the guard commanders can choose 1 of, and 10 items that the sniper can choose 2 of. This combination of objectives, specialists, and items means that rarely will a game be the same.

The hidden nature of the game also keeps things fresh, and playing the guards made me super anxious. It's much simpler to have one player playing all 3 guard units, as they can work overlapping search areas, but having 3 makes it as complicated as 3 independent units would, each with their own ideas for where the sniper might be.

For the sniper player, I honestly thought going into the game that I would be blasting away the enemies of the Allied campaign as you do in the game, but it's actually better to fire no shots at all, and when you do fire, shoot an irrelevant target to confuse your opponents. Moving a target out of your way alerts them to your rough area and possible objective.

Where Eagles Dare

The Sniper Elite the Board Game Eagle's Nest expansion adds a lot more variety to games. It includes 2 new maps, with solo defender control cards and new objective cards for them. It also includes some new equipment cards to help you navigate the cliffs and water of the Heavy Water map. The other map is set entirely inside Eagle's Nest, a challenging, claustrophobic room-to-room mission.

Eagle's Nest also includes 4 new sniper miniatures and stat cards to go with them, offering a variety of special abilities. Karl, the original Sniper Elite character, starts with the most aim tokens in the bag and can fire twice a turn. Rosa from Sniper Elite 4 can only target enemies 5 spaces away, but only starts with 1 noise token. Jun, from Zombie Army 4: Dead War can remove multiple adjacent targets with a single shot, at the cost of adding noise tokens to the bag, and Major Eazy, from Battle comics, and starts the game with 3 noise and 3 aim tokens, but noise tokens count as aim tokens for him, so you can freely blast away.

Sniper Elite the Board Game Final Thoughts?

I honestly thought that I would have a completely different experience going into Sniper Elite the Board Game. I thought shooting would be a lot more prevalent than it is, and I didn't expect the hidden movement element to be so much fun. It captures an element of the video game perfectly, with the sniper having a feeling of such control, until things go wrong, and then things can deteriorate quickly. It is 2 vastly different experiences playing the guards or the sniper, both fun and challenging in their own right. The token bag for shooting plays into it all perfectly, and the risk/reward element is a pivotal focus of the game.

The Eagle's Nest expansion adds a lot more variety, with the extra maps doubling the number in the core set, and the extra snipers adding some very different styles of play. The core game stands alone as a great experience out of the box, and while the Eagle's Nest is a great addition, it is simply adding more variety on top of an already great and varied game.

The copy of the Sniper Elite the Board Game and Eagle's Nest Expansion used to produce this review was provided by Rebellion Unplugged.