When comparing Power Grid vs Captain Sonar, the Slant community recommends Captain Sonar for most people. In the question“What are the best strategy board games?” Captain Sonar is ranked 6th while Power Grid is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Captain Sonar is:
All player roles have great synergy with one another, so by performing your role to the best of your abilities, it allows your teammates to work more efficiently. Regardless of which role you choose (captain, first mate, engineer, or radio operator), each and every one is important and vital to the success of your team. For example, each time the submarine is moved, the captain decides the direction, the engineer ensures no systems are overloaded, the radio operator will be determining the position of the enemy sub, and the first mate can start getting the weapons charged and ready to deploy. It's a lot of fun when your team becomes a well oiled machine, communicating and working together to bring down your opponent's submarine as a group effort.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to understand but still allows for good micromanagement/strategy
The concepts are pretty easy to grab a hold of (buy power plants, connect different cities together, buy resources for your power plants, then make money and repeat). Each step has strategy involved with it - when you buy power plants you want to diversify from others as resources more in demand cost more - when connecting cities you are looking at pricing but also blocking other players off - you can buy extra resources to boost the price on other players, or buy the bare minimum for that turn etc etc.
Pro It's hard for 1 player to hold onto the lead
You know those games where one player has a great start, and nobody can even dream of catching up? That doesn't happen in Power Grid. It balances itself out - the player currently winning goes first when buying power plants (they get only the current selection), and they build new cities last (worst selection) and pay the most for raw materials.
While the game punishes (at least in a way) the leading player, it helps to balance games and make them more fun overall. In addition, you can strategically not build more cities and hold yourself back if you need the advantage.
Pro Very little randomness
There is almost no randomness involved in the game, making achieving mastery of the game about understanding your opponents' plans and working around them.
Pro A great teamwork experience
All player roles have great synergy with one another, so by performing your role to the best of your abilities, it allows your teammates to work more efficiently. Regardless of which role you choose (captain, first mate, engineer, or radio operator), each and every one is important and vital to the success of your team.
For example, each time the submarine is moved, the captain decides the direction, the engineer ensures no systems are overloaded, the radio operator will be determining the position of the enemy sub, and the first mate can start getting the weapons charged and ready to deploy.
It's a lot of fun when your team becomes a well oiled machine, communicating and working together to bring down your opponent's submarine as a group effort.
Pro Pace can be as relaxed or frantic as you want
The game has rules for both real time and turn-based play. With real time, everyone on both teams is able to perform their roles simultaneously which usually results in a bunch of people shouting over each other in excitement and panic. On the other hand, turn based play is much more relaxed. Teams are able to take their time when making decisions and forming strategies.
Pro Versatile thanks to its many different roles
Each team controls their own submarine with four different crew member roles to choose from. For one game you might opt to the be the captain and plot the course of the submarine, and the next you may choose to be the first mate who prepares and deploys weapons. Depending on which role you play, your game experience will be vastly different as each role has very different responsibilities.
Pro Tense gameplay
Communicating with your team and trying to coordinate your submarine's movements, track the enemy sub, and keep all your systems running can be tense in all the right ways. Relying on your teammates to perform their crew member roles effectively while you scramble to perform your own results in an atmosphere where everyone is frantically working towards outplaying the other team. This is all compounded by the fact that a team of real human opponents is doing the same thing to you in a suspenseful game of cat and mouse.
Pro Scales to groups of various sizes
Captain Sonar scales well to groups of anywhere between two and eight players. While ideally, you'd want 4 players on each team to ensure all four roles are filled, it's entirely possible for you to take on multiple roles if needed. This means, even with 2 players, it's fully playable.
Pro Extremely easy to set up and start playing
The game consists of a game board for each player depending on their chosen role, clear plastic sheets, and a black marker. Setting up is as easy as taking the game boards out and placing a clear plastic sheet over each one. There's no tokens, dice, or other pieces to keep track of.
Cons
Con No room for creativity
Once you fall behind, there aren't many ways to catch up. Virtually everything can be calculated (only power plants are random), meaning there is little surprise. Once you get started, you keep trucking along the same path until somebody wins.
Con One bad player can ruin your team effort
The game is highly dependent on your team working together to track and damage the opposing team's submarine. Since each role is vital to success, if a teammate is playing their chosen role badly, it will negatively impact the entire team.