Tronsoft Games · Field Series

19411942

AfrikaKorps

The North African Campaign

From Agheila to Alexandria, every mile depends on supply.

FrontAgheila to the Delta
Time38 campaign turns
CommandAxis or Allied

Operational Briefing 01

Afrika Korps v1.37.0

Choose one army against the machine, or command both armies locally.

01 Choose your command

02 Machine commander

Machine commander difficulty

Used for one-player campaigns; hot-seat mode gives both armies to the players.

03 Campaign number

Share the same number to replay an identical campaign.

Rules in brief

Everything the board tells you, and the few places where this version differs from it.

The turn

Supply arrives, reinforcements come up, you move, then you attack. Each side does this in turn; two turns make a month.

Before movement or combat closes, the command check warns about formations still able to move or worthwhile legal attacks still available. Return to the map to finish the work, or explicitly proceed anyway.

Supply

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.

Movement

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.

The combat results table

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.

The Axis convoy

The ground

High-contrast mode

Use High contrast in the Map controls or press C to apply stronger terrain separation, black map lines, brighter movement and combat overlays, distinct counter inks, and heavier interface focus outlines. The setting is remembered on this device.

After-action replay

The after-action controls step through or automatically replay every recorded march and battle in the current command turn. Choose All, Marches, or Battles to filter both the map and replay sequence. Drag the Action Timeline directly to any matching event; choose Slow, Standard, or Fast, pause at any time, or return the slider to zero to restore the complete filtered overlay.

Stack totals

Use Stack totals in the Map controls or press X to reveal combined live attack and defence above hexes containing two or more formations. The leading number is the formation count; the sigma values are attack and defence after current supply reductions.

Front-line pressure overlay

Use Front pressure in the Map controls or press V to mark every occupied hex adjacent to enemy combat formations. Red, amber, and green outlines indicate Severe, Exposed, and Guarded positions; each label shows adjacent enemy attack against local defence.

Reserve advisor

During movement, the Reserve Advisor finds threatened friendly positions that another formation can legally reach. Select a recommendation to pick up the proposed reserve and preview its complete route; the march remains under your control.

Attacking

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.

Operational notes

Place an Attack, Defend, Supply, or Observation marker, then choose Note and select that marker to add up to 160 characters of orders. A gold dot identifies annotated markers. The live ledger lists every marker from west to east; use it to locate, edit, or delete an order. Notes travel with saves and exported campaigns and appear in campaign reports.

Where this differs from the board

  • Stacking is unlimited, as in the original.
  • Doubling is capped at twice and does not accumulate.
  • Retreats and the units paid for an exchange are chosen for you, cheapest first.
  • Allied battle groups sit in the replacement pool at a cost equal to their attack factor rather than substituting for a particular named formation.
  • Formations cut off for a second turn are removed during the supply step rather than as a combat sub-phase.
  • The at-start deployments are reconstructed from the map; the counter sheet's setup codes were not legible enough to copy.

Keys

  • Arrows or W A S D — pan the map
  • + / — zoom, F — fit the whole board
  • Shift 1–3 — recall a saved command view
  • R — toggle the battlefield range ruler
  • [ / ] — inspect the previous or next formation in the selected hex
  • Point to a reachable hex to review its route, expenditure, and stopping condition in the left sidebar
  • N — next formation still to move
  • G — focus the named-place navigator
  • O — open the Order of Battle
  • H — open campaign history
  • P — toggle operational-planning mode
  • T — toggle the enemy threat overlay
  • J — toggle this turn’s after-action overlay
  • X — toggle combined strength above formation stacks
  • V — toggle front-line pressure on the battlefield
  • K / L — previous / next recorded action
  • C — toggle high-contrast battlefield mode
  • U — take back the last move
  • Arrows with a formation picked up — move the cursor over the board
  • Enter — move there, or attack the hex under the cursor
  • Esc — put the picked formation down
  • Q — quick save to slot 1
  • 15 — load that slot
  • ? — this sheet