Sniper! (board game)

Sniper! was a board wargame originally released in 1973. Some sources refer to "Sniper/Patrol" as a sort of series of games: a similar game by Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) was released at the same time as the original Sniper!, called Patrol (1975).

Sniper! was rereleased in 1986 in an expanded and improved edition by TSR. Both games dealt with combat on a man-to-man scale in the Second World War, and the rerelease expanded the scope to include the years 1945-1990, as well as combining material from the original Patrol game also. Three companion games to the Second Edition were also released; Hetzer and Special Forces focusing on World War II and post-1945 combat respectively, and Bug Hunter set in a science-fiction setting.

The first Sniper! game was released in 1973-74, designed by James Dunnigan. According to the BoardGameGeek website, developers included Hank Zucker, John Young, Ed Curran, Bob Felice, Bill Sullivan, Angel Gomez, and Hal Vaughn. Game play focused on urban combat, being subtitled "House to House Fighting in World War Two".

The game was published in three different formats by SPI alone; in a simple white box (a trademark of early SPI games), in a "very" common SPI black box/tray, and a "Designer's Edition" with color box and mounted mapboards.

A set of "footnotes" (actually optional rules) was included, covering such things as sewer movement/combat.

The mapboard was unique in depicting buildings as trapezoids (technically, parallelograms, though printed material related to the game usually uses the more general term trapezoid) - the abstracted shapes allowed for consistency in Line of Sight rules.

The game included 1 34" x 22" Map, 2 Sniper charts and tables, Game Rules, 1 Pad of Simultaneous Movement Sheets, 1 tray with game pieces, two sets of 2 tanks, two sets of 2 APCs and two sets of 2 trucks as well as 400 die-cut counters in two colors, olive green for Allies and Grey for Germans, with information counters in white. The map itself was in shades of pink/red. The sets of vehicles were printed on cardstock and had to be cut out; they were also trapezoidal in shape.

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Wikipedia