Back in the day, when I was young, my nerdy high school friends and I would while away many a late-night playing boardgames. These were not your run-of-the-mill games, but rather monster games. Their boards were so big that a ping pong table was required for setup. Hundreds, if not thousands of ½” square playing pieces were involved. Rule books and tables ran dozens of pages. Play of a single game would run the summer. We never finished a game. They would usually peter out, before a new one took its place. Campaigns covered by these monsters include Normandy, Operation Market-Garden and the Battle of the Bulge. While all of these monster games were huge there was one that was in a class by itself, Campaign for North Africa. It was so big that we never ever attempted to play it.

According to the New York Times, two blokes from England are planning to play all 111 turns of this game. They are documenting their play with a website and a podcast, War with a Mate. They estimate that it will take them twenty years to finish their game.

With a game this far from the norm there has to be some odd rules. There are also some rules that are simply puzzling. Aircraft are allowed to transport dead camels but not living camels. Yet nowhere in the rules does it explain where you might come across a living or dead camel. The German general Erwin Rommel has his own game piece, and the rules mention that his truck has access to only AM radio. This seems to have no bearing on play. The one rule that we have always enjoyed ridiculing though is the Italian Pasta Rule:

One of the biggest mistakes the Italians made during the entire Desert Campaign was to provide their troops with a diet which was composed, in large part, of spaghetti and macaroni. Aside from providing insufficient protein (this wasn’t Buitoni Brand), pasta has one serious drawback in -the desert: you need water to cook it! Therefore, each Italian battalion, when it receives its Stores, must receive an additional 1 Point of Water when Stores are distributed. Any battalion-sized unit that does not receive their Pasta Point (one Water point) may not voluntarily exceed their CPA that Turn. Furthermore, Italian battalions not receiving their Pasta Point that have a Cohesion Level of -10 or worse immediately become Disorganized, as if they had reached -26. As soon as such units get their Pasta Point, they regain the original Cohesion Level (i.e., the level they had before they disintegrated).

This trip down memory lane, recounting my misspent youth is not totally in vain. As it turns out I own a copy of Campaign for North Africa. As the Times article relates, my copy could be worth $1000 now. When published in 1979, it retailed for $44. Pretty good investment.