Undaunted: North Africa

The same core, tightened

The system is unchanged in its essentials: your deck is your squad, cards are individual soldiers, and casualties permanently remove cards for the rest of the scenario. If you have played Normandy you will be playing this within a couple of minutes.

What differs is scale and pace. Osprey lists 100+ cards and 22 large map tiles against Normandy's 108 cards and 18 tiles, and the scenarios resolve faster. The desert setting also opens the maps up -- there is less cover to hide behind, which pushes both sides toward committing sooner.

Why the shorter clock matters more than it sounds

A game that runs 30-45 minutes fits into a weeknight after dinner. A game that runs 45-60 needs the evening cleared for it. For a two-person household that difference decides how often a box actually gets played, and it is the single strongest argument for buying this one first.

It also lowers the cost of a bad scenario. When casualties are permanent, a run of poor draws can decide the outcome early, and losing thirty minutes to that is easier to take than losing an hour.

What the open desert actually changes

Terrain is the part of this that reads as pure theme and is not. Normandy's hedgerows and villages give you cover to advance behind, so a cautious player can work forward a tile at a time and stay hard to hit.

The desert takes that away. Osprey lists 22 large map tiles against Normandy's 18, and the maps they build are wider and emptier. With less cover to move behind, sitting still stops being safe -- you are visible either way, so the advantage shifts to whoever commits first and forces the other side to react.

The practical effect is that scenarios resolve faster and more decisively, which is most of why the stated time comes down. It also means the game punishes hesitation more than Normandy does. If you found Normandy slightly grindy, this is the fix; if you liked the careful positioning, this is the trade you are making.

Both games use the same fog-of-war substitution: nothing is hidden on the map, and the uncertainty comes from which of your units are in hand this turn. The desert simply gives you fewer places to hide while you wait for the right card.

Which one to buy

If you are buying exactly one Undaunted game, buy this one. It is shorter, it teaches the same system, and it is standalone.

Buy Normandy first only if the European theater is what appeals to you, or if you specifically want the longer scenarios. Osprey positions the two boxes as equivalent rather than one being the premium option, so this is mostly a preference decision -- but the retail prices drift apart, so compare the live figures on both buy buttons before deciding.

Owning both gives you two campaigns rather than two games. That is worth doing if the system clicks, and worth knowing before you buy the second box expecting something new.

Who should skip it

Skip it if you already own Normandy and expected a meaningfully different game. The core system is identical, and reviewers who describe it as more of the same are being accurate rather than unkind.

Skip it for the same reasons as Normandy if those apply: permanent casualties are the mechanism and cannot be dialed back, and the historical subject matter is treated seriously rather than abstractly.

Skip both if you want something that plays in under twenty minutes. Even the shorter one is a main-event game.

What we did instead of playing it

We have not played this. What we did: took the player count, ages, playing time, contents, designers and publisher from Osprey Games' own product page, and confirmed the stock status on that page before featuring it. It was listed as in stock when this was written.