The Campaign for North Africa (1979)


  • Hi all! It’s been awhile since I’ve written on here, but i’m back. I’ve been deeply involved in constructing and finishing my latest game table, so I haven’t had a ton of free time. I’ve been looking to purchase (or trade) for the game “The Campaign for North Africa”, and was wondering if anyone had this game, and if they would be willing to part with it. I know that it says the average game lasts for about 60 days, or about 1500 hours, and it doesn’t have a ton of play testing, however I’m in the process of creating a strategy game of my own and would like some of the implementations from this game, and I would like to play it myself. Please message me if you have any information on how I could obtain a copy of this game, thanks!

  • '17 '16 '15

    Hi Requester45

    welcome back :)

    Haven’t heard of it. Can you post any links ?

    Sounds like fun or “as if it would be” if you wanna take the long route : )

    FandG

    P


  • He’s likely referring to this game: boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/campaign-north-africa. Which is a legendary monster of a game if ever there was one. Playing time: 60,000 minutes. Or 1,000 hours, or 41 and 2/3rds playing days. Or more than a month of played time.

    No biggie.

    -Midnight_Reaper


  • That’s the one!

  • Liaison TripleA '11 '10

    Yikes man, 1500 hours for 10 men? (5 people a side!)

    For average trades persons I employ, if this was a work contract, ($50/hr) it would cost $750,000 to complete this game in the scheduled man hours.

    WTF.

    And I can’t begin to imagine:

    #1. Where do you set this up?
    #2. Who takes a month off work or a half year of weekends to do this? 
    #3. Has anyone ever completed a game?
    #4. Can’t there be an electronic conversion to get rid of the tediousness of some of this?
    #5. Is the goal to recreate the workload of actual conflict/war management? The next step being wearing uniforms and camping out in the field?


  • Garg, I had a friend who told me it would be easier just to invade North Africa haha. I’m more interested in the game for purposes of research and not actual playtime. I read somewhere that they never even completed the play testing for the game because it was projected to take 7 years.

  • '18 '17 '16

    I just saw this game on a recent episode of Big Bang Theory. Sheldon was playing it with Bernadette to take her mind off of being pregnant. He was the only one enjoying it. :lol:


  • To be honest, the best place to buy one is likely off of BGG as well. One person is looking to sell (for $350) and seven people are looking to trade (what you would trade that for, other than a pile of other games, is beyond me). Maybe you can work something out.

    As for me, I’ll stick with saner pursuits…

    -Midnight_Reaper

  • '20 '19 '18

    From what I’ve read, CfNA perfectly fills the niche market of strategic wargamers who are actuaries or accountants in real life and love their jobs so much they wish to continue working off the clock. I’d love to run a marketing campaign for it: “If you’ve mastered The Cones of Dunshire and seek a new strategic bookkeeping challenge, CfNA is the game for you!”

    That said, a part of me is seriously intrigued by this ridiculous behemoth of a game. Unfortunately, my wife has informed me that A) our apartment isn’t big enough, and B) our marriage isn’t strong enough for The Campaign for North Africa.


  • @Requester45:

    I know that it says the average game lasts for about 60 days, or about 1500 hours…

    If you and your group meets for three hours at a time, twice a month, you’d wrap up the campaign in about 20 years.


  • @Nowhere:

    @Requester45:

    I know that it says the average game lasts for about 60 days, or about 1500 hours…

    If you and your group meets for three hours at a time, twice a month, you’d wrap up the campaign in about 20 years.

    A wargame which takes seven time longer to play, in practical terms, than the duration of the actual military campaign it depicts strikes me as being somewhat excessive, or at least as being a little too ambitious.  It reminds me a bit of a magazine comic strip I read as a kid, in which spies from various factions were fighting each other to learn the secrets of a 30-foot-long “scale model” of a new type of submarine created by an eccentric inventor.  It turns out that the “scale model” was actually an oversized prototype of what was intended to be a three-inch-long toy submarine.


  • @CWO:

    A wargame which takes seven time longer to play, in practical terms, than the duration of the actual military campaign it depicts strikes me as being somewhat excessive, or at least as being a little too ambitious.

    This game has details for every aspect… The Italian troops in World War II were outfitted with noodle rations, and in the name of historical dogma, the player responsible for the Italians is required to distribute an extra water ration to their forces, so that their pasta may be boiled. Soldiers that do not receive their pasta point may immediately become disorganized, rendering them useless in the field. It’s a fact of life really: if the Italians can’t boil their pasta, the Italians may desert.

    It was a joke, by the way. Richard Berg, the game designer and author of The Campaign For North Africa, said so himself. He’ll happily admit that this was an unreasonable game for unreasonable people.

    Every military division has a sheet of paper, and on it you’ve got a box for every battalion. It’ll tell you how many guns you have, but more interestingly, it’ll also list the fuel and water. Every game turn, three percent of the fuel evaporates, unless you’re the British before a certain date, because they used 50-gallon drums instead of jerry cans. So instead, seven percent of their fuel evaporates. Every F’ing turn you go around and make a pencil note of how much fuel you have. The pasta rule is funny, but this is what the game is about. Just doing tedious calculations all the time.

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