Infernal Machine: Dawn of Submarine Warfare is a solitaire board game that casts the player in the role of inventor/entrepreneur in mid -19th century America. The game is set during a historical moment when the business environment has gotten rather dynamic - it is the tumultuous landscape of the American Civil War. The player's task is to design, build, and put to use a submarine during that war.
Infernal Machine can be played either in scenario form or campaign. In a campaign, you can choose the city or port where the project's machine shop will be located. Since construction materials and labor costs money, your role as entrepreneur comes into play as you seek out Investors to join your team; their cash will provide the funds that help your Fishboat take shape. As Inventor, your design gives form and substance to the size and shape of your submarine, and to its capabilities. Will it carry a snorkel? Will its prow have a spar-mounted torpedo as the primary weapon- Will it tow a captive mine instead? Will it have dive planes? Will it be powered by the muscle strength of a crew cranking the propeller or will you install a boiler engine?
To bring blueprints to life, you will need to hire Mechanics, whose engineering expertise keeps your infernal machine's construction on schedule. Once assembly is complete, your Mechanics can join the crew, using their repair capability to keep the machinery and the vessel running smoothly. Journeymen can also lend a hand on the shop floor and inside the Fishboat, while Sailors bring nautical know-how as well as sheer brawn.
While your machine shop is busy getting started with the submarine's construction, the game reminds you that the war drags on, and it is an unstable business environment. Prices for materials and labor fluctuate. Current events can affect your construction schedule and your machine shop's performance. Public, and even personal circumstances may force your hand. You may decide to push your Fishboat into the water before you feel it is optimal, or push your crew into battle with little training. So many decisions. Where do you turn and how do you find out what you need to know?
Fortunately, in this game the rules and player aids are designed to give the player's question a direction to its answer, done through insertion of a clever Rule book and Cyclopedia page notation within the text and the player aids, quickly directing you to the correct answer being sought. This simple tool helps you to garner valuable experience, enabling you to learn the game quickly and accurately.
Later missions will be directed at the enemy. In this game, you may play either side, Union or Confederate. There are a variety of missions and targets. Will your Fishboat be aimed at the Federal blockade? Will it pull a captive mine at the end of a rope? Will the crew survive contact with the enemy? Will they survive their own weapon's detonation? Perhaps the nature of the mission will be quite different. Will you carry a spy into enemy territory? Or will your Fishboat deliver "something nefarious" into the heart of the enemy's stronghold?
Secrecy is vital. Will you send your machine out under a moonless sky? That will help conceal crew and machine but it will make locating your target difficult. Will you limit the number of machinists and investors, thereby reducing the chance of rumor or gossip leaking out? Too few of either on your team and you compromise your machine's capabilities. Your Fishboat's chances are much better if the machine is kept a secret. You must always be conscious that its new technology can make your creation a cantankerous machine that will punish mistakes.
A successful mission means your coffers will be filled with prize money. This is a capitalist's war, and the War Department is offering juicy bounties. In contrast, there are many ways to fail. Coming back without making contact with the enemy is one way, but it could be far worse. Will you add the names of your crew to the Rolls of the Missing?
Scenarios and Campaign
Historical scenarios use only part of the rules to present such events as the CSS Hunley's successful attack outside Charleston Harbor in 1864. It was the first time a submarine sank its target, a landmark event in military history. The heart of the game is the campaign, which allows you to design and build your Infernal Machine, select a crew, train that crew, and perform missions against the enemy. You manage funds and personnel, and navigate the fortunes of war as well as the waterways in enemy territory. A scenario will take approximately two hours to play while a campaign can last several gaming sessions as it spans the calendar from 1861 to the end of the war in 1865.
Sequence of Play
Each season gives you an opportunity to recruit personnel (Investors, Mechanics, Journeymen, or Sailors), each represented by a deck of cards. Each recruit comes with one or more benefits as well as costs or drawbacks. An Investor, for example, may be a generous provider of funds, but he may insist on being the captain of the ship. Does he know what he's doing?! One sailor may be strong on the crank and cool under pressure, while another sailor has repair skills that could save the boat. Will lack in any crewman's required skill jeopardize the safety of his crewmates?
You must take each season's opportunity to work on your Fishboat. You purchase hull sections, plus a bow and stern for your craft, each represented by tiles. They cost funds and require mechanical expertise to incorporate into a seaworthy vessel. You also purchase a variety of mechanisms as you make decisions about what capabilities your Fishboat might have.
Recruitment and Building is followed by the passage of time when the Season marker is moved forward on the calendar. Debts must be paid, if you have any. You must also check the Fortunes of War table to see if something unexpected happens that season. Will prices rise? Will one of your Journeymen get engaged and leave your shop? Will he develop his mechanical expertise and rise to Mechanic-level? Will your Machine Shop receive a request to make parts for the War Department, giving you a contract that generates additional funds? Will the enemy capture the town where your Machine Shop is located, forcing you to move to another location, or perhaps, join the other side? Each month has its own table of random events, and there is one set used when playing Union and another when playing Confederate. This adds to the feel of the historical experience while also increasing replayability. The Confederate experience is quite different from playing the Union. The latter is an industrial business environment, while the Confederacy's economy gradually spirals into oblivion.
Each season you have the option of taking your seaworthy Fishboat into action. There are four Mission Boards in the box, each providing its own unique historical and nautical conditions: seacoast harbors of Charleston and Mobile, and riverine systems depicting the lower Mississippi River from New Orleans to Natchez, and also the James River from City Point to Richmond.
You set up a mission by establishing meteorological conditions on the Mission Board (drift direction, drift intensity, visibility, and weather), while assigning each crewman a position inside your Fishboat. Will you call off the Mission because the current is too strong or the Moon too bright? Or, will you wait for a better opportunity, or just push ahead in spite of the risk?
Your submarine will move from one zone to the next as it executes its mission. During a mission you assign jobs to each crewman (crank, repair, rally, or operating a mechanism). Since this is new technology (and the submarine is an untried machine), malfunctions are likely; so you will assign crew to manage and hopefully repair them. In many cases, just getting out there on the water and locating a target is a victory of sorts, and getting the crew back home can feel like a triumph. Of course, your mandate is to do more than make contact with the enemy and survive. To gain prize money (and, if Union, promotion), you will have to prove your machine's efficacy against the enemy. It's an old story: higher the risk, greater the reward.
If you manage to navigate your machine and crew to make contact with its target, action shifts to the Tactical Board. There, the Fishboat closes in for the attack and you hope conditions are right so that it remains concealed.
Decisions you've made leading up to this tense moment have put your Fishboat and crew in a good position. Or maybe in a bad one.
In either case, history is watching.
Game Components:
- Three Countersheets
- 117 Small-size Cards
- 49 Regular-size Cards
- One Wooden Block
- 41 Wooden Cubes
- Two Mission Boards
- One Tactical Board
- One Gauges Board
- Two Historical Submarines Displays
- Three Playeraids
- Five Booklets
- Three Dice
