Destroyer Captain

About this board game

Destroyer Captain is a hex-based simultaneous-move naval wargame for 2–6 players, with sessions lasting about 90 minutes. Released in 1979, it focuses on destroyer actions—and occasional light cruiser actions—across the 20th century.

Players plot and resolve movement and combat within the game’s simultaneous-move system, which was created by the same designer and uses the same system as Ironbottom Sound. Gunfire is calculated in factors, while an ordered-pair dice roll determines the number of hits based on the factors firing and the range.

A second ordered-pair roll identifies the location of each hit. A struck location is knocked out unless its armor is superior to the shell that hit it, and most destroyers have no armor. Torpedoes use a similar process, but they must travel to their target before possible hits are determined.

• Ship plan sheets for typical World War I and World War II turret layouts
• Extensive ship statistics lists
• Thirteen historical scenarios and two hypothetical scenarios
• Rules that support creating additional balanced scenarios

Before play, players fill out the ship plan sheets using information from the ship statistic sheets. This preparation represents the turret layouts of the ships in use and provides the basis for resolving incoming damage.

With its detailed hit-location system, armor interactions, range-based gunfire, and traveling torpedoes, Destroyer Captain presents a focused tabletop treatment of 20th-century destroyer combat. The game was republished in Command Magazine Japan #51 in 2003.