Tronsoft Games · Field Series
The North African Campaign
From Agheila to Alexandria, every mile depends on supply.
The desert war from Agheila to the Delta, two turns to the month, thirty-eight turns to settle it.
Take an army:
Take Alexandria and the campaign ends at once. Lose Agheila, or lose your whole army, and it ends the other way. Otherwise the front line at the close of October 1942 decides it: El Alamein in Axis hands is an Axis win, Matruh a draw, Tobruch a narrow Allied win, and anything short of that an Allied one.
Everything the board tells you, and the few places where this version differs from it.
Supply arrives, reinforcements come up, you move, then you attack. Each side does this in turn; two turns make a month.
Every fighting formation must trace a clear path to a dump — three hexes for the Axis, four for the Allies — or it fights at half weight. A second consecutive turn out of supply and it is struck off. A headquarters standing in the net passes it on. Enemy formations and their zones of control cut the path.
Axis dumps come by sea and can be sunk. Early in the campaign the convoy is lost on a one or a two; through the second half of 1941 on anything up to a three; from December 1941 only on a one.
Entering an enemy zone of control stops a formation. It may not move straight from one zone of control to another. Crossing an escarpment except at a road pass stops it. The Via Balbia and the desert tracks are worth ten extra hexes, but only between two road hexes.
Die roll down the side, odds across. This is drawn from the same table the game resolves against, so what is printed here and what happens on the board cannot differ.
Total the attack factors, total the defence, halve nothing except what supply has already halved, then cut the ratio down to the printed column. A fortified city doubles the defence; so does an attack in which every hex comes across the escarpment. The two do not stack.
Worse than one to seven is automatic defeat and is not counted as an attack. Seven to one or better — five to one against a surrounded hex — takes the hex without a die if you expend a dump within five hexes.