We all know when a game of ‘Monopoly‘ starts, but not when it ends. It is common that between hotels, houses and tickets, the game has to be left on the table from one day to the next, or, if there is a cat in the apartment, it ends in a draw because of the risk of finding all the elements scattered on the floor. If we already feel lazy to continue playing one of the simplest toys on the face of the Earth, imagine what it must be like to play ‘The Campaign for North Africa’, a board game that needs from 2 to 10 players and lasts 1500 hours. Yes. You read that right.
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Sixty days, sixty days
If you only played for two and a bit months, without sleeping or eating breaks, you might be able to finish a game of this 1976 classic that is a gem for the most intrepid gamers because of its three-meter map made up of five smaller maps depicting the war in North Africa during World War II. If you get together with your friends once a week and play for about three hours each session, in just ten years you will have finished the trial game. It’s worth it, isn’t it?
The most interesting thing about ‘The Campaign for North Africa’ is its exhaustive attention to detail. Here it is not enough to move pieces against each other, no: players are divided into two teams and each takes one of the main positions. They can be Commander, Logistics Commander, Rear Zone Commander, Air Commander and Front Commander. And each has to look after the welfare of his troops to the point of, for example, needing enough water for the Italians to cook pasta or having to determine the weather each turn: the hotter it is, the more water evaporates.
To give an example, it is like playing Monopoly but taking care that the washing machines in the hotel are not broken and every room in your house does not have dust on the floor. If you are amazed by the attention to detail and playing “just for a little while” does not convince you, you know what to do. The game comes with 1600 counters of all kinds (you’re going to need them) and a 45-page manual that, after all, is not so much to explain everything that can happen.
To give you an idea of the realism it wants to emulate, on each turn, each unit loses 3% of its gasoline to evaporation, but the British lose 7% because they used a different storage method that prevented it less. On Board Game Geek, the site for board game fans, it has a 6.2 rating. Mind you, good luck finding it: it’s a suicidal project that went on sale for $44 and no one else has dared to release it. So, anyone have something to do for the next twenty years and want to play a little game?
