Undaunted: Reinforcements

Product Information

Rather than rest on their well-earned laurels, Osprey games are deciding to spoil fans of the Undaunted series with even further treats. Undaunted: Reinforcements.

And that’s the biggest feeling we got from this expansion – a huge exhalation of relief. There wasn’t any danger of it going wrong, but more that, Undaunted: Reinforcements makes the game complete. Undaunted: Reinforcements is a modular expansion that introduces a range of new rules, scenarios, and units. Unleash the might of the German and American tanks and see how your new squad options fare against them in Undaunted: Normandy, or make use of mines, assault aircraft, and other new units as you attempt to outfox your opponent in Undaunted: North Africa. Whether you have one Undaunted game or the other, with Reinforcements you can play for the first time in a four-player mode, or test your mettle in a solo mode by Dávid Turczi. Trevor and I aren’t that familiar with this. My general stance on solo design is if I’m working on a solo game, I like it to be solo from the start. And if it’s a multiplayer game that we worked on, then I feel way more comfortable with somebody that has the skills of turning a multiplayer game into a solitaire game, which is a skill set I don’t have. 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.

About the contributors

Following the wildly popular and award-winning Undaunted: Normandy and Undaunted: North Africa from the talented Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson, we are proud toannounce the arrival of our new expansion - Undaunted: Reinforcements.Fans have been asking for new content, four-player and solo modes as well as somewhere to store their cards. Never fear - Reinforcements have arrived!

Had my regular Cthulhu Wars crew over today. We usually try to start with something else (we've been playing a fair amount of Tiny Epic Crimes lately) and when talking about a couple other games, I...

Osprey Blog

DT: One thing we should say, just to give credit where credit’s due, is that Dávid Turczi designed the original concept of the solo system, but I think the vast, vast majority of the work that was done, was done by David Digby. He basically did all of the scenario development, and Anthony Howgego, who is a developer at Osprey, did a ton of the development on it, too. The other big thing, of course, in Normandy is we’ve added tanks on both sides. This was interesting because there’s obviously a tank in the North Africa base game, but they work quite differently here because of the scale. However, it’s not the new cards that are the real draw in Undaunted: Reinforcements. Rather it’s the unassuming set of AI routines that allow solo play of any scenario in the first two games, plus the new ones included here. What I’d been expecting here was a bot-like chart akin to something you might find in a COIN game. Instead, to my surprise, I discover that there are multiple routines by unit type and scenario. So a Rifleman unit in scenario 1 of Undaunted: Normandy will play differently from the same unit in scenario 2 and differently again in scenario 4. I worry this will slow the game down since there are too many variables to learn by heart.

I think you are right- WWII still sells for some godforsaken reason and without greater specificity the game may as well be red versus blue. But I’d like that better, because then I don’t have to be the Nazis or think about Nazis or watch Nazis win the game.

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Undaunted: Reinforcements really brings the design for Normandy and North Africa to conclusion. It allows us to give players what they've been asking for from the first days of Normandy 's release. From the both of us, as well as Dávid Turczi, David Digby, and the entire Osprey team, we hope you all are as excited to play Reinforcements as we are! So every scenario is inspired by a real scenario, but we are not trying to recreate that scenario accurately. And similarly, if you know about the structure of a platoon, and you’re playing the game like ‘Wow, there’s the correct number of riflemen in the squad’, you should be able to see those things. But you certainly shouldn’t need to know those things to play it. We will always err on the side of making it a good game before anything else.

David Thompson: For the eight new scenarios we’re adding, you can play each of those two-player or four-player. But the solo play is a little bit out of control. It’s literally every single scenario from Normandy, every single scenario from North Africa, plus the eight new scenarios. And you can play each one as either side [US vs. Germans, or Italians vs. British]. So there’s 62 ways to play solo, and every one of those is tailored to the scenario. Undaunted: Reinforcements is a modular expansion that introduces a range of new rules, scenarios, and units. Unleash the might of the German and American tanks and see how your new squad options fare against them in Undaunted: Normandy, or make use of mines, assault aircraft, and other new units as you attempt to outfox your opponent in Undaunted: North Africa. Whether you have one Undaunted game or the other, with Reinforcements you can play for the first time in a four-player mode, or test your mettle in a solo mode by Dávid Turczi and David Digby.Undaunted: Reinforcements can be used with both Undaunted: Normandy and Undaunted: North Africa. In it are five modular expansions that can be used together or mix and matched as necessary. But generally speaking, it’s driven by a system where you take a set of cards that are specific to the units in the scenario – so if you’re playing scenario four in Undaunted: Normandy, you’re going to go find the AI for each individual unit for scenario four. In most scenarios, scouts are trying to do basically the same thing, so the scout AI card might be the same for scenarios four through nine, for example. A modular expansion that adds a solo mode, four-player mode, and a wealth of new content to the award-winning Undaunted: Normandy and Undaunted: North Africa. The biggest change of this expansion must be the solo mode. Armour and Armament, Under the Cover of Night, and Friendly Fire all kind of add in things you’ve already seen. Sure, there are new units and scenarios, but it’s nothing that feels wholly different from the core games. It’s more content that you’ve already come to know and love. I mean, I’ll take it, but it’s not the star of the show. The AI card will handle the enemy’s tactics for solo play. Take the glamour out of war! I mean, how the bloody hell can you do that? Go and take the glamour out of a Huey, go take the glamour out of a Sheridan...Can you take the glamour out of a Cobra, or getting stoned at China Beach? It's like taking the glamour out of an M-79, taking the glamour out of Flynn." He pointed to a picture he'd taken, Flynn laughing maniacally ("We're winning," he'd said), triumphantly. "Nothing the matter with that boy, is there? Would you let your daughter marry that man? Ohhhh, war is good for you, you can't take the glamour out of that. It's like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones." He was really speechless, working his hands up and down to emphasize the sheer insanity of it.