Undaunted: North Africa: A sequel to the WWII deckbuilding game (Games)

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In Action Point 4, which is the conclusion to this series, we will cover some basic concepts of strategy to keep in mind about how units are best used and how to exploit their special abilities. For fans of the historical simulation aspect of wargames this is not going to be a good fit. To me it is a war game as it is an abstraction of tactical combat that is driven by playing cards from one’s hand. It is no different than other Card Driven Games on the market in that sense. After initiative is set, each player plays out their hand, one card at a time, performing an action with the corresponding unit. A variety of actions exist within Undaunted, depending on the units represented on the board. Moving, firing, and seizing control of important tiles are standard, but there’s a lot more going on. And that’s before you even decide what to do with the cards you have left during your actual turn. I’ve found that trying to ‘rush’ objectives can be useful if you happen to pull the right card combinations, but never under-estimate the value of trying to suppress or otherwise kill a key opposing unit. Many scenarios involve specific ‘kill’ objectives anyway, but for the control/destroy missions, making sure the enemy’s Demolition Expert or Rifleman is killed early will slow down your foe, giving you time to complete your objectives.

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. This also makes the choice of objectives to pursue important. Is that weakly defended structure the Itallians have already taken control of a better target, or getting into a firefight over a two point objective which, if they capture it, wins them the scenario. Destroying either prevents the win. Which one provides better odds?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. 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?

One of the most exciting things about Undaunted: North Africa is how different it feels depending on which side of the table you’re sitting. Vehicles are one of the major new additions in Undaunted: North Africa, allowing both sides to jump in and traverse the desert. | Image credit: Sarah Jarvis 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. In this first picture you will see that the Italian Rifleman has a combat counter that represents that soldier on the board and then you will see his card to the left of the counter. Each of the 4 Rifleman Cards included is a picture of the same soldier. How do we know it is the same soldier, aside from the fact that the picture is the same on all 4 cards? It is found in the name of the soldier which is Benito Romano, and the fact that it appears on all 4 cards. 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 and David Digby.This fact doesn’t majorly change the way the game plays but it does create a more intimate experience of a small team of commandoes or individual soldiers that each bring a unique role and set of skills to play in the missions. In fact, there are only 4 cards representing each of the soldiers on your team in North Africa and this means that you cannot take as many hits as you would have been able to in Normandy with 5 soldiers represented by a combat counter. This subtly changes the way you have to play the game though and gives you less expendable assets and forces you to play a bit more cautiously…or to throw caution to the wind and just go for objectives.

The main draw of this box has to be the solo content it offers. I play a lot of games solo and was delighted to try out the first few scenarios of both Normandy and North Africa to see how they matched up against their two player counterparts and I was delighted at how much of a challenge they presented. There’s two main ways to do war on the tabletop. Many like to attempt a simulation. Hundreds of tokens or miniatures, rules for every part of the conflict from reloading to morale, and a sense of a complete machine being turned by your hand. The other is abstraction, focusing on the broad strokes and, in truth, getting to the most meaningful parts of conflict. The vehicles are a shrewd addition to the gameplay, giving the encounters and environments of North Africa a distinct feel versus Normandy’s solely squad-based tactics without adding any extra heft or headaches to the rules. The increased troop variety on both sides means that unit types now consist of a single unified squad, plus a separate squad type for the Italians’ tank crew, rather than up to three squads for the same unit type as in Normandy. As a result, units feel far more distinct and there’s greater tactical consideration in how each unit’s unique abilities are utilised, whether it’s the sniper’s ability to move outside of scouted tiles, the engineer’s use in repairing damaged vehicles or the saboteur’s power to blow up the newly-added building tiles. All of this leads to an incredibly thematic, tense and, dare I say it, fun experience. “This was their finest hour.”Osprey games and designers Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson are on to a winner with this series. I can see this running for many more years. There are so many stories to tell, and this mechanic does justice to not only the stories that unfold, but also the genre and industry. This game has done, and will continue to, open modern tabletop gaming to many more players over many more years. And in doing so, will keep alive the memory of the many people who made the ultimate sacrifice. I for one will follow this series closely and hope to play them all in their entirety. Everything you loved about Undaunted: Normandy is here, with polish, and a sprinkle of novel new features. There are few war games that are accessible while remaining ‘truly’ a war game. This one is nearly perfect, and with enough community scenarios in the future, might be the only one you need. PLAY IT? MUST-PLAY With how much we enjoyed playing Undaunted: Normandy, and with us both having ownership of a copy of Undaunted: North Africa (I’m still needing to get Normandy at some point…), we decided a few weeks ago to do a PBEM (actually, text…) of the first scenario in Undaunted: North Africa. Carl had things ready long before I did, and was all excited, asking who would be the fascists – well, I didn’t know which side that was but I had the higher roll so I was pegged to be them…and would later learn that I had Italy – and we played the game in relatively short time. The PBEM works well with this one, assuming neither of us cheats the system on revealing our initiative cards. I trust Carl enough to roll with it. Perhaps I was just used to playing a campaign of Undaunted with a friend which meant I had adapted to their tactics and strategies but I felt that this offered a whole new set of challenges and puzzles for me to solve.

Trevor and I aren’t that familiar with this. My general stance on solo design is if I’m working on a solo game, I like it to be solo from the start. And if it’s a multiplayer game that we worked on, then I feel way more comfortable with somebody that has the skills of turning a multiplayer game into a solitaire game, which is a skill set I don’t have. Across the series, each player controls either Axis or Allied forces. Your specific units are represented by tokens on the board, and those tokens are controlled by cards. Each round, both players draw a hand of four cards, choosing one to discard as a bid for initiative. Highest initiative goes first, which can be a big deal depending on the state of the board. It’s almost always better to be setting the immediate terms than it is to be responding to them. One of the most glaring differences in the game from Normandy to North Africa is the differences in objectives and unit composition for each side in the various scenarios.I wish I was, but at 40, I just know I’m not. But I will play Undaunted: North Africa until 3am on a school night when I know my two kids will jump on me in four hours with zero consideration to my grumpy tired state! That is just me. And if you are like that, if you also love board games and want to have a wonderful experience in a two player game that will immerse you in a gripping story; that happens to be true and teaches you something about one of the most significant moments of the 20 th century; then this game may be for you. 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.