Originally published at: 1970s board game The Campaign For North Africa takes 1500 hours to play | Boing Boing
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Someone will eventually encode the game and its rules and components to finally be played through by AIs at high speed. When that happens, I’m sure that the Italian pasta rule or the British fuel drums will be the least of the game’s problems.
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S11, E16. Everything you need to know about Campaign for North Africa, really.
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It’s up to 6.2 from 5.8 on BGG in the years since that article!
Never change BGG. Always skewing for longer, more complex games!
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There are actually computer wargames of similar complexity already – Gary Grigsby’s Pacific War probably being the most famous one. But yes, I imagine that an AI for The Campaign for North Africa would discover game balance issues that were undiscovered in playtesting if nobody ever really played a full game.
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as an avid table-top gamer from the age of 15 on, i can tell you that there were numerous games that were “mercilessly tedious” out there. i never played that game although i did know a group of 8 guys who played through the first 30 of 100 turns. four guys on each side, on the allied side trhe leader of the team called himself general eisenhower the leader of the axis team called himself generaloberst rommel, the other three guys on each team were the staffers who split the administrative details between them while the leaders dictated strategy. they were all staying in a dorm on campus which was set aside for juniors and seniors with high averages. they started the game dueing the fall semester of 1983 and they had done 30 turns by the end of the spring semester of 1984. i sat in on a few of their turns and found it pretty hilarious to watch.
the game broke up because half of them were graduating and would not be continuing after that point. i later played a game called “vietnam 1965-1975” which was remarkably tedious. it was also remarkably realistic in that it would have required either a miracle or the indiscriminate use of thermonuclear weapons in order for the american side to “win”… the turn sequence was a nightmare of paperwork and tedium. strangely enough my friend and i liked it but we never wanted to play it again. we were both accustomed to tedius games because of our long experiences with “advanced squad leader” which, despite the complicated rules and numerous counters was a much more fun game. when we just wanted to “let our hair down” and have fun we played the tactical simulation card game “up front”.
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the best i was able to do in playing “vietnam” was to avoid losing until spring of 1973. under the circumstances, i thought it was quite a feat. if i hadn’t started withdrawing troops in 1970 i would have lost in 1971 but i managed to hold off a complete collapse of u.s. public morale for three years. woo-hoo!
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“Up Front” is a fascinating example of what happens when you get rid of the element that people assume is central in wargames: the map.
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with “up front” the map is replaced by the tactical equivalent of the “fog of war”. with the terrain cards one has in one’s hand there are choices to be made regarding what the troops will enter into as they go through the terrain towards the enemy.
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There were a couple people playing that game for a semester or so at the gaming club in college. The pasta rule, and the ridiculous unit stacks turned me off ever trying it.
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My brother and I played many hours of Killer Angels. Quite tedious and detailed. I don’t know how we did it. Still nowhere near as tedious as North Africa.
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You know what might be a more effective way to play this game is LARPing: just gather up a huge mass of people from across Europe, outfit them with uniforms and equipment and the like, and deploy them to Libya, Egypt, Morrocco, Algeria, Tunisia, etc. We could split it up into a few different campaigns and then just have big battles in the deserts.
I think if we played our cards right we could finish the game in a little under 3 years.
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Not only that, but you have to play it intensively for 10,000 hours if you want to achieve mastery
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And it works surprisingly well.
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I’m reasonably certain games like that exist only to make Panzer Leader look playable.
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The most annoying part of Panzer Leader was trying to find all the little pieces needed for a given scenario.
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SPI was always the ridiculous one, compared to Avalon Hill. Quantity over quality, both in the number of games released as well as playability vs. detail and scope.
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Arguably, Avalon Hill outlasted SPI because it wasn’t run by gamers. It was run by the box printing company for, and largest creditor for, the ORIGINAL Avalon Hill company when the went bankrupt.
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I think that’s been tried already.
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