The other big thing, of course, in Normandy is we’ve added tanks on both sides. This was interesting because there’s obviously a tank in the North Africa base game, but they work quite differently here because of the scale.

This is where things get weird. The bot has no options that give it an effective reaction to my inept display. What it still has is a lot of machine-gun cards that spring into action, suppressing my remaining counters. In turn, all I can do is unsuppress them and take the odd pot-shot, hoping for a hit. The scenario bogs down into a repetitive stalemate and I give up, handing the win to the bot as it controls the most objectives. The casualties on each side are murderous. Undaunted: Reinforcements is a modular expansion that introduces a range of new rules, scenarios, and units. Unleash the might of the German and American tanks and see how your new squad options fare against them in Undaunted: Normandy, or make use of mines, assault aircraft, and other new units as you attempt to outfox your opponent in Undaunted: North Africa. Whether you have one Undaunted game or the other, with Reinforcements you can play for the first time in a four-player mode, or test your mettle in a solo mode by Dávid Turczi. Undaunted: Reinforcements really brings the design for Normandy and North Africa to conclusion. It allows us to give players what they've been asking for from the first days of Normandy 's release. From the both of us, as well as Dávid Turczi, David Digby, and the entire Osprey team, we hope you all are as excited to play Reinforcements as we are! The Undaunted series of games are asymmetric World War 2 games, which up until this expansion was a two player affair based on historical battles from both Normandy and North Africa and have been praised for their mechanics and gameplay. Reinforcements is a modular expansion that requires one (or both) of those two games to play, offers additional scenarios and units for both games, a four player variant and solo rules to play every scenario from both games plus the new ones. Wait, that’s not all! It also contains a handy size storage box which accommodates both original games plus the expansion.

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DT: Team play, for sure. My favourite part in any game, ever, is team play. Like Birth of America: 1775, or Quartermaster General – any sort of light wargame that supports team play – that’s my jam. So on the Reinforcements Normandy side, each tank is a single unit on the board, and each card is one of the crewmen. It’s abstract, but essentially each of the cards can perform all of the actions of the tank. We haven’t specialised the crewmen cards. The biggest change of this expansion must be the solo mode. Armour and Armament, Under the Cover of Night, and Friendly Fire all kind of add in things you’ve already seen. Sure, there are new units and scenarios, but it’s nothing that feels wholly different from the core games. It’s more content that you’ve already come to know and love. I mean, I’ll take it, but it’s not the star of the show. The AI card will handle the enemy’s tactics for solo play.

Undaunted: Reinforcements introduces a range of new rules, scenarios, and units. Unleash the might of the German and American tanks and see how your new squad options fare against them in Undaunted: Normandy, or make use of mines, assault aircraft, and other new units as you attempt to outfox your opponent in Undaunted: North Africa. In either arena, test your mettle in a solo mode by Dávid Turczi and David Digby, or play a four-player mode that takes Undaunted to an unprecedented scale. David Thompson: For the eight new scenarios we’re adding, you can play each of those two-player or four-player. But the solo play is a little bit out of control. It’s literally every single scenario from Normandy, every single scenario from North Africa, plus the eight new scenarios. And you can play each one as either side [US vs. Germans, or Italians vs. British]. So there’s 62 ways to play solo, and every one of those is tailored to the scenario. Pre-pub link is up, and the game is getting great numbers to start. https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1083-wings-for-the-baron-deluxe-gmt-edition.aspx WWII fetishism is a lingering turd clinging to the ass of Boomer America. Younger generations have inherited this turd from aging and now elderly gamers. It’s time to cut it loose and move on. Virtually all of the really interesting, compelling, and successful war games of the past decade + have either NOT been about WWI or about some underexplored niche subtopic. And maybe the hype didn't help it in my eyes either. I expected a lot going in (I remember it being termed a "Memoir 44 killer" which it certainly is not) and so my bar was kinda high.Anthony Howgego and Filip Hartelius (Osprey's game development team) were responsible for transforming David Digby's design concepts into an elegant card system. The end result is the "Enemy Unknown" system of playing Undaunted solitaire, a system that when combined with Normandy and North Africa allows you to play either faction in 31 different scenarios for 62 total different solo play experiences! Likewise, Joint Operations is… fine. While yes, it does allow you to play the game with four players instead of two, all it really does is split your role into two halves. Much like Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit or War of the Ring does, it takes a two-player game and shoehorns in more players by dividing up things that one player was already doing. I’ve never been a fan of this style of player scaling. But it’s there if you really want it. So Osprey turned to one of the top designers in the solitaire boardgame world: Dávid Turczi . Dávid set about designing the core solitaire system, eventually settling on a card-based system that tailors the AI for each unit in every scenario. While this system does a fantastic job of simulating the experience of playing against another human player, it also meant that every single scenario needed to be deconstructed for the creation of the tailored AI. This Herculean task fell to David Digby , who set about implementing the specific AI routines.

If you haven’t played an Undaunted game before, the gameplay is through card drafting, hand management and throwing dice to determine hits taken. You can choose any single scenario to play on its own but the real value of this game comes through playing through the whole campaign with another player, and that’s the way I experienced it. The new scenarios and units offer some new variability and options for two player games, with the ability to add on to existing campaigns which is particularly helpful for me as my last campaign of North Africa ended in a stalemate and this gives the perfect opportunity to determine the overall winner.Undaunted: Reinforcements is a modular expansion that introduces a range of new rules, scenarios, and units. Unleash the might of the German and American tanks and see how your new squad options fare against them in Undaunted: Normandy , or make use of mines, assault aircraft, and other new units as you attempt to outfox your opponent in Undaunted: North Africa . Whether you have only one or the other, you'll be able to play Undaunted for the first time in a four-player mode, or test your mettle in a solo mode by Dávid Turczi and David Digby.

DT: One thing we’ve introduced for North Africa is mines, and the ability to create chokepoints. They play significantly in the design of the new scenarios. That is probably the biggest new addition, especially for the LRDG [British Army]. You can place and remove mines, which only damage your opponent. So it gives you the flexibility to do some really interesting interactions with the board that didn’t exist in the game before. You couldn’t really interact with the board state. DT: One thing that also helped us, I think, is that Duncan Malloy [who signed the game to Osprey Games] actually commissioned Undaunted: North Africa before Normandy was ever even released. So Trevor and I have worked on Undaunted games two years out. We were done with the design for North Africa before Undaunted: Normandy released. Having that prepped and ready to within a year of Normandy being well received and released, I think that helped, too. I think you are right- WWII still sells for some godforsaken reason and without greater specificity the game may as well be red versus blue. But I’d like that better, because then I don’t have to be the Nazis or think about Nazis or watch Nazis win the game. DT: I think Guide is the only action that you can take to help your partner’s units. Otherwise, you can’t control their units. Fail to find one and that unit is removed from the game. Interestingly, given the nature of scenarios, we had several missions in our playthrough with no casualties, where both sides focussed on the objectives and this seems counter to other war games I’ve played but thematically fit perfectly. So, Is This Expansion For You?

I genuinely struggle with why I can't put my interest in WW2 away, despite all the horrors of conflict and Nazism. But I can't. Sorry. It makes me feel like a bad person. I've spent very many long hours trying to reconcile my thoughts on this, and the closest I've come is summed up by this quote from Dispatches: Rather than rest on their well-earned laurels, Osprey games are deciding to spoil fans of the Undaunted series with even further treats. Undaunted: Reinforcements.