The Campaign for North Africa

What are we doing? This is War

with a Mate, where we are playing the entirety of the campaign for North Africa, a board game that has, from as far as we can tell, never been finished in a competitive sense.

Certainly not documented that we found.

Not documented.

This actually happened, and we are still in shock.

It's crazy.

This wacky tale of us two subtle, humble, and brave gentlemen playing the campaign for North Africa has caught the public and journalistic eye.

And that is very much down to the mythos of the game.

Sometimes this comes at the expense of the gaming experience.

And there is one notorious war game from 1979, The Campaign for North Africa, a board game so detailed, complex, and cumbersome to play that it is thought that no one has actually finished it, including its creator.

Now, two guys from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England are trying.

James Purcell and Andrew Tager have spent nearly two years just mastering the rules and practicing, and they are ready to start playing the game for real.

We, we didn't even have a name for our podcast.

We had bought the, the board game, uh, the board game being the campaign for North Africa, a board game notorious for not having been finished.

We plucky fools thought we'd take on the task of spending however long it takes to finish it, starting with a six-turn practice run.

That turned into a 22-month-long journey full of ups and downs.

That's where most of the units were, were positioned.

And the first clash that we had was at Fort Maddalena.

So that ended up for some reason becoming the, the fulcrum of, of the entire campaign for North Africa.

So sort of smack in the, in the middle there.

Yeah.

Well, what we're here for today is God's Honest Analogue Truth, and that is our preparation for the full playthrough of the Campaign for North Africa.

Going well.

It is.

It's making some real steady headway.

For the uninitiated, we finished a six-turn practice run of the Campaign for North Africa, a board game notorious for never having been finished before.

That took us 18 months.

Yeah, that was a longy.

But there's another game that's so detailed and complex that it's almost certain that no one has ever completed it.

The game in question is called Campaign for North Africa, and two friends in Britain have taken on the task of playing the game to its conclusion, something they estimate could take several years or even decades.

The Newsroom's Pete Ross picks up the story

storyYou've perhaps been there.

it.

Personally, I think the worst board game to make into a movie would be The Campaign for North Africa, just because it has mechanics for how Italians need more water to boil spaghetti.

He's like, do you have 27 minutes of runtime on pasta water?

That's right.

You still have to do that bit, did you? You caught that? Yeah.

Play the Campaign for North Africa, a board game notorious for never having been finished.

As you probably know, if you're listening at this stage, we are not playing the Campaign for North Africa currently.

We're in a hiatus during which we're preparing for the full playthrough.

We've wrapped up a six-turn practice play and the full 111-turn game awaits us in the future.

I'll give you that big time, Matthew.

Secondly, just confirming whether you know that Benghazi, Derna, Tobruk, and Bardia garrisons have lots of guns that are immobile and can only fire at the Royal Navy.

yes we do know that now absolutely yeah at the time when we when i first moved them no i did not know that i've since learned that and it's something that we will be employing in the full game but at the time no i was under the impression that those were mine to just move around and dilly-dally as much as i wanted in the deserts of north africa and and do whatever the fuck i wanted with them i've since found out that is not a that's a foul it's an illegal move You can't actually do that in the campaign for North Africa.

Me, Andy.

And it's the podcast about the campaign for North Africa.

It's the one you've been reading about.

It's that one.

It's the only one.

There's no other podcast about the campaign for North Africa.

That we know of.

God, I hope not.