Battle for the Deep: Powered by Axis & Allies

Battle for the Deep: Powered by Axis & Allies is a crab-and-prawn scrap with no interest in being polite. It is Axis & Allies without the icing: take control points, hit each other, bring in more units.

At its centre, you are contesting control points and using combat to keep them or prise them away. The familiar Axis & Allies engine arrives with very little decorative baggage: fight, reinforce, fight again. It moves cleanly, and someone will soon step into a space they cannot really afford to lose.

The factions are asymmetric, so they need a little study before you charge in; each one asks for a different response. The small map packs several vital fronts into the same bit of table very quickly. You block, threaten, snatch a point, and leave somebody else to decide which whale deserves saving. Then the dice arrive. At that stage, you may as well go fishing.

If the odds treat everyone fairly, though, you can have a splendid time slaughtering whales and feeding sharks. The production did not impress me as much as it should have, while the other Axis retheme, the G.I. Joe one, looks like the smarter physical package — though I have not played it. Battle for the Deep is not refined, but it is an honest, brisk excuse to quarrel across the sea.