FOCUS ON.........Campaigns for North Africa

[bayonetbrant]

Both are good games with all due respect.

no offense taken and not at all trying to pick any sort of fight...     just trying to get the discussion flowing on what it was people liked about the games, so we can all gain some knowledge from the chat

[judgedredd]

This guy is doing  brief playthrough of Afrika Corps.

All I could think was it's a big map for a pretty boring looking game (not many units, not alot of options). The Benghazi unit was basically sacrificed and it seems like it's the only real play...and I hate games like that - where there's no actual option.

I could be wrong - but that's what I got from the video. He still managed to make it sound interesting

[bob48]

You are pretty much correct, JD, but I think you have to bear in mind that the game is now over 55 years old. It really goes back to the very early days of board wargames and, by todays standards, is quite unsophisticated.

[W8taminute]

I'll echo those sentiments with PAA as well.  By today's standards it's not really a great game.  My childhood experiences with these games does have a strong pull and biases my opinions heavily. 

That being said upon revisiting these games recently I found that their simplicity, again by today's standards, was quite appealing.  I'm too old now to process a 15 volume rules collection. 

[judgedredd]

The guy does a good job of making it exciting mind.

In that video, he does 1-3 odds when attacking which actually has all negative results for the attacker (4xattacker retreats two and 2xattacker eliminated) - what's the point of those attacks if there's no risk to the defender? Why even make them? Is there something in the rules?

[bob48]

Yes, its an awful rule that makes you conduct 'soak-off attacks'. If you are adjacent to an enemy unit, it has to be attacked (within certain restrictions). So if you have, for example, two enemy units next to each other, and your main attack is adjacent to both, then both must be attacked. So, you do a crap poor odds attack against one unit, and a concentrated attack against the other. I seem to remember it was a common rule that was used in other AH games from that period.

[Barthheart]

... I seem to remember it was a common rule that was used in other AH games from that period.

This was indeed a very common rule from games back then. Most were earlier period games, Nappy etc., but a few WWII games had it as well. Adds a bit more thinking to your attack setups and maneuvers.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I was fascinated by the Desert Campaign as a teenager but that interest has definitely waned.  I never owned too many Desert Campaign games but I've sold off most of the ones I did.

I've only got one game that's exclusively centred on North Africa.  All the others I have include some N. Africa components within a larger gaming system:

Tide of Iron:  The Desert Fox (but when we do play Tide of Iron, it's almost never a North Africa scenario)

Undaunted: North Africa (I've tried selling it but no buyers.  I don't mind the gameplay but the art is so godawful that I can't stand to look at it.)

Tanks!: Desert  (I'm still in the process of painting up my Desert tanks.  Got the Brits and Italians done.  I'm halfway through the Germans and then I've got 7-8 US tanks to do).  Haven't played this in ages but it's always good for a laugh when we do.

Wings of Glory: WWII (I've got a fair number of planes that were used in the Desert but I don't think we've ever done a N. Africa scenario.  We always seem to end up over Malta or Sicily instead.)

Cruel Seas. We've done a fair number of small boat raids on convoys off the coast of North Africa.  The little Italian MAS boat minis are too pretty not to use.

2nd World War at Sea: Regia Marina. I got the older version of this as a used copy (Bomb Alley).  I'm hoping to get a game in this autumn but creating all the taskforce spreadsheets is a gring.