Libya. 11 January 1941. The LRP has been renamed the LRDG and has been given the task of attacking an airfield at Murzuq. However, for this scenario, the Italians had a potent defense: a medium tank!

Yes, it is the second scenario of Undaunted: North Africa. This game started just after we played Scenario 1 and is another of the introductory scenarios to the game. This, of course, introduces vehicles.

Mikey, again, played the British LRDG. I played the Italians. The objective for this scenario was to control (Italian) or destroy (British) two objectives. With only three objectives, this would be another short scenario.

Here is the set-up. Note how the Italian medium tank has a separate card with both a driver and crew token aboard. It also has a token on the board.

In Undaunted, both players start each turn by drawing four cards from their deck. Then each player puts one card face down in front of them and reveal them simultaneously – the higher number wins initiative and gets to play all of their hand immediately. Then the loser of initiative plays all their hand. Then a new turn starts.

In this game, I won every single initiative. On a tie, initiative is retained by whoever had it last turn, with the scenario determining who begins holding it. It is the LRDG for this scenario, but I played a high card to begin with, and then just held it.

It is quite notable the initial cards I played in my first turn: a Platoon Sergeant and a Tank Commander. These together allowed me to add five cards to my deck – two Tank Drivers, two Scouts and one Rifleman. All of a sudden, the quality of my deck dramatically increased, and I was able to activate the key units much quicker than Mikey, who spent the early game getting his scout to the first objective. Unfortunately for him, scouting also added Fog of War cards to his deck, so he spent a lot of the game drawing blanks.

His scout reached the large water tank (Or is it fuel?) as my scout reached the supply dump. However, he wasn’t able to bring up his other forces. He rushed his scout up to reach the supply dump, adding more Fog of War cards, as my Rifleman moved up and took control of it.

His other forces took pot shots at my troops, but to little effect.

And then my tank started rolling into action.

If you look carefully, you will see that the tile to the left of my tank has a “no vehicle” symbol on it (bottom right). I had hoped to go right through the rough ground to the first objective, but the scenario designers had thought of that easy win and prevented it! So, I went up the right instead.

My scout made it to the second objective, and Mikey kept choking on Fog of War cards. Scouts can remove them from your deck, but I do not know if he just did not try doing it, was very unlucky and never drew a scout card and a fog-of-war card at the same time, or something else. In any case, as my tank rolled closer, his anti-tank trooper came into play.

The chances of hitting were low – and Mikey’s rolling was a lot worse this game than in the previous scenario – but he still managed to get in a couple of hits as I rolled closer. A hit on a tank both damages the tank and removes a card from one of the units inside. I decided to lose the Crew card first – the Driver could move the tank AND control tiles. The Crew could only attack – and attacking was not that important.

Mikey finally began to move his Engineer up – it would be able to try disabling the tank as well as destroying the structure – but time was not on his side. Ultimately my extra Tank Driver cards in the deck were enough to take control of the second objective and win the game.

The Italians had won a game! Hooray!

As much as anything, I believe that my initial play of Tank Commander and Platoon Sergeant to add more useful cards to my deck – while Mikey was adding more Fog of War cards to his while scouting – was key. It gave me a deck quality that meant I was moving quickly towards my goals while Mikey was drawing poorly. And he was drawing incredibly poorly. He lost every initiative of the game as he was just trying to get rid of Fog of War cards.

The next scenario involves both sides possessing tanks; it will be interesting to see how it plays, when we get back to Undaunted: North Africa!