by Billy Riley, 21 September 2023 ~ #UnboxingDay
I’m a huge fan of Mark Simonitch’s games. I have France ’40, Ardennes ’44, Normandy ’44, Sicily ‘43 and Holland ’44. I wanted Stalingrad ’42 – but alas the map is just too big.
Anyway – North Africa ’41. I’m a huge fan of the system – so let’s see what’s in the box.
Box Art
Maybe someone can tell me the exact model of the Panzer IV(?) on the cover with what looks like a Storch above.
click images to enlarge
The back has the usual information and examples of the contents – and also shows the size of the map. And here I let myself down. It’s always a bug bear of mine that developers don’t put the actual map size on the box…and I didn’t take the size to help you. Apologies. It’s “around” 22” deep by perhaps 60” long.
The Rule Book
It’s standard paper stock and is 28 pages…24 pages of rules and the rest have miscellaneous info and the scenarios, of which there are 3.
It’s in colour and there are some examples in there – but mostly it’s text and in 2 column with a decent font.
The Playbook
There’s a 20 page Play Book included. This has 6 pages for an Extended Example of Play, 2 pages of Designer Notes and other information – including historical stuff like all the tanks used in North Africa and their ratings which is very interesting.
Setup Cards
There are two, double sided setup cards. One for Crusader and the other for the main campaign.
The Counters
There aren’t a huge amount of counters in the game. Two sheets in fact and one of them contains admin counters! Rather surprising given the scale of the map. But that’s ok.
Player Aid Cards
There are two player aid cards which are A4 booklet (fold out).
The Map
As I mentioned – the map is long. And – well, it shows some desert. It’s nice – I like.
Dice
And here you are – two dice with the game.
That’s all. As I said, I love the system. I have actually only played Holland ’44 – but I got the others because I really liked the system. This is my only North Africa game – and I’m glad it’s one of Mark Simonitch’s.
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In the world of wargames, a delight,
Unboxing is quite a grand sight.
With bated breath, we tear,
Through the packaging, we swear,
To unveil the fierce battles we’ll fight!
The miniatures gleam, so precise,
As we open the box, oh so nice.
With rulebooks in hand,
We’ll conquer the land,
In epic battles of strategy and fights!
