The Designer Deluxe edition from Compass Games game replay.

This is a bit of a truncated effort as we stopped part way. But I did enjoy some of new elements and certainly appreciate the physical updates and the timely corrections to errors made in production. It seems that while these Designer reprints are a cool idea the execution is still evolving. The good news is that Compass has to date done an excellent job on tracking these issues, and providing excellent communication.

 

At start locations for the campaign game.

This game encompasses just about ten pages of rules. Physical map is a stunner, and counters and charts are excellent. All that said, lets focus on game play:

Turn 1:

Commonwealth forces advance to attempt to fix flank and isolate Mussolini’s fighting forces.

These attacks result in the following situation:

The Commonwealth did not do well here. If the Italians escape its a mess!

The Axis take their turn and valiantly fight the Commonwealth onslaught. Forcing a valuable step loss on them.

The Italians move and make their forced attacks, suffer wholesale losses and then a step loss for being OOS. This cleans out almost to the day the Italian surge.

 

Start of Turn 2:

 

In our second turn we move up a replacement step and bring some force to beat on the Italians in a 6:1 attack. I again forget the +2 DRM on the attack which means the 1B retreats a bit further but the Brits still take a step loss. Along the coast our attack cleans out the last of the Ities there!

At our extreme range, we attempt to Interdict the Axis forces, in an effort to slow the reinforcements up.

Axis Turn 2 & 3 units focus on manoeuvre for both side with the Axis shipping forces in.

End Turn 3 January II:

The Allies must be mindful of the Nazi surge coming. They will face better units, and faster units. Time to dig in and clean up the board a bit, and perhaps forego the historical rush for Tobruk.

How important is it to the Axis in terms of the game is something the Commonwealth needs to sort out quickly.

Turn 4 Jan II, Allied turn.

 

The Allies knock out another Itie at 5:1. Push up reinforcements via Strategic Movement. I think using the break downs soon will be required, to get an edge on the coverage of the front.

While I have them locked up I cant kill them!!

Now Rommel spreads out and heads across desert… why not! I can see getting caught cross wise here. There are not enough Allies to keep the Italians locked up and the Germans at bay. Will Rommel dance on the head of the Sphinx?

My challenges getting turns back due to travel called the game to a close at this point. But it would be fair to say that Rommel was going to rip a new one, with Tobruk still in hand.