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The Undaunted series of games are asymmetric World War 2 games, which up until this expansion was a two player affair based on historical battles from both Normandy and North Africa and have been praised for their mechanics and gameplay. Reinforcements is a modular expansion that requires one (or both) of those two games to play, offers additional scenarios and units for both games, a four player variant and solo rules to play every scenario from both games plus the new ones. Wait, that’s not all! It also contains a handy size storage box which accommodates both original games plus the expansion.
The new units include tanks and aircraft for Normandy, vehicles that were added for the North Africa box, and offer different strategies to those that you may be used to. Additionally, mines are added to the campaigns that have the possibility of damaging your own troops should they be unlucky enough to get caught on the wrong tile when it goes off!
What’s Undaunted?
If you haven’t played an Undaunted game before, the gameplay is through card drafting, hand management and throwing dice to determine hits taken. You can choose any single scenario to play on its own but the real value of this game comes through playing through the whole campaign with another player, and that’s the way I experienced it.
Each turn you draw four cards, use one to determine initiative and then play the others as you wish, choosing one action on each card. Cards offer a number of different actions that can be taken and I won’t go into them all here but they allow you to move and attack across the map, either by foot or in vehicles, scouting tiles adds fog of war cards to your deck making it harder to perform the actions you might want to achieve but can be a necessity of the scenario. Certain cards allow you to bolster your deck from the piles of cards in front of you and choosing the right ones to allow you to succeed is key.
Combat is streamlined and simple to understand, each unit has a defence value, some tiles also do, add these two values together along with the distance and roll your allotted number of dice to determine hits. It’s fluid and quick, and if you secure a hit on an enemy, the opposing player must discard firstly from their hand and if they can’t then they must search their discard pile, followed by their deck for any remaining copies of that card.
Fail to find one and that unit is removed from the game. Interestingly, given the nature of scenarios, we had several missions in our playthrough with no casualties, where both sides focussed on the objectives and this seems counter to other war games I’ve played but thematically fit perfectly.
So, Is This Expansion For You?
The main draw of this box has to be the solo content it offers. I play a lot of games solo and was delighted to try out the first few scenarios of both Normandy and North Africa to see how they matched up against their two player counterparts and I was delighted at how much of a challenge they presented.
Perhaps I was just used to playing a campaign of Undaunted with a friend which meant I had adapted to their tactics and strategies but I felt that this offered a whole new set of challenges and puzzles for me to solve.
Solo play is streamlined and works surprisingly well with different unit cards selected based on the scenario you are setting up and all of this is explained clearly in the rule book. It works by using the new order cards that act like a flowchart of sorts, with different levels of prioritisation based on your or the objectives positions. It can occasionally be a little tricky to work out but the rulebook helps to clarify any initial queries.
The new scenarios and units offer some new variability and options for two player games, with the ability to add on to existing campaigns which is particularly helpful for me as my last campaign of North Africa ended in a stalemate and this gives the perfect opportunity to determine the overall winner.
Four player mode works by giving the third and forth players fewer cards but ultimately is a simple re-hashing of the main game, I’ve only had one opportunity to try it and it didn’t overcomplicate or elongate the scenario too much and it felt like a nice optional addition should the chance to play with four arises.
Finally
This expansion feels like it brings together both of the games from the series so far and makes the package feel complete. If you have both games, want more content and want the challenge of playing Undaunted solo then this is a must buy but if you only own one of the previous campaigns you are probably better off buying either Normandy or North Africa first.
