British concession on German action #2, turn 11. VP sits at 9, and not looking to decrease much!

Summer 1940: Invasion of Greece. Italy advances to Halfaya, but not interested in going further. Ultra and Codebooks indicate each player is holding a 'fleet' card, so general sitzkrieg results.

Fall 1940: Balbo appears, but also poor Italian morale. Allies advance in East Africa with heavy troop additions. Italians not feeling like conquest at the moment.

Winter 1941: Rommel appears, along with the Balkan campaign and the 21st Panzer. Axis advance further into Egypt.

Spring 1941: Barbarossa and Malta Convoy #1 put the crimp on German plans to sieze the rest of Egypt. An Iraqi revolt worries the Allies a bit. 15th Panzer races for the front. Axis nearly completes an Auto Victory via the capture of Mersa Matruh; a surprise discovery of a minefield allows the defenders to hold.

Summer 1941: Operation Exporter signals the end of the Italian East African Empire. Command Friction puts the skids on the allies in the Western Desert. Rommel goes on a rampage, overrunning Mersa Matruh and El Alamein. Rommel, however, discovers caution and does not advance into El Alamein, due to all of the German units being damaged with no RP on the way. Baghdad falls.

Fall 1941: 1941 tank upgrades and the Atlantic Charter embolden the allies. Kesselring appears on the scene, directing plans for Herkules. A surprise play of Crusader on round #6 severely damages the Germans, who had been attempting to hold Mersa Matruh for another "El Alamein" VP.

Winter 1942: Siege of Malta arrives just in time to rebuild the shattered Afrika Korp. Monty arrives, sending massive stacks of units to the Bardia-Sidi Azeiz-Sidi Omar front. Totensonntag puts paid to these plans for a bit. However, the allies just keep coming, so the axis falls back to the Tobruk-Southern Flank Line.

Spring 1942: 1942 tank upgrades and Panzer upgrades leads to stasis. C3 continues the Herkules preparations.

Summer 1942: Rommel suspects an ill-wind and prepares an air-supported Venezia to smash Monty back to Egypt. Fate and the treachery of Gambara causes the attack to be merely attrition. As Rommel suspected, Torch appears. The Afrika Korp sprints across the map, reaching Gabes just in time. Monty pursuit is hampered by poor logistic planning (4-unit stacks), and Italian speed bumps (...uh, I mean important rear guards). Operation Sturmflut erupts, causing a near panic in the Americans, until it is found that the same fate element that wrecked Venezia is still present. While the Americans are beaten, they hold their ground; Patton, who is now on the scene, claims it was his generalship and not fate.

Fall 1942: Ramcke arrives, followed by Herkules. Massive convoys of troopships begin shipping RP's to North Africa (both Rising Sun and Plan Orient are spent on RP's). All German units flee Cyrenaica for fortress El Agheila, while the Italians are instructed to hold Tobruk and other rear guard positions. To the surprise of all, the Italians actually repulse a Monty attack, while the 15th Panzer races back from Gabes to El Agheila. The 15th Panzer, 90th Light, and a healthy dose of 88mm puts paid to another attack on El Agheila.

Winter 1943: The arrival of the Fall 1942 troopships (6 IT and 5 GE RP's), along with the 334th and HG Divisions, heralds bad tidings for the Allies. All along the Tunis front, axis units attack with support from Rommel, Artillery Support, Air Support, and Green Troops.

Allies concede, with Beirut, El Agheila, Tobruk, Tripoli, Gabes, Tunis, and Bizerte still in Axis hands, along with 2VP for Malta.

Axis Commentary (me): lucky with a drawing Herkules cards in a reasonable, fast order. Movement and attacks with Afrika Korp seemed to work well, but escaped being knocked OOS once due to an over-cautious allied advance after Crusader - more care next time (place units to prepare for overrun)! Should of RD'd an Italian armor to East Africa so that it wasn't such a cakewalk. Should have played Unternehman Irak as an event, instead of going for a risky auto-victory in Mersa Matruh (of course, if it wasn't for the minefields!).

Allied Commentary (not me): It was all due to bad dice and bad cards.

Axis Commentary of Allied Commentary (me): Monty needed to be less cautious and press on the Afrika Corp when they were all damaged without RP on the way. Reliance on stacks of three and even four units all of time caused the allies to burn actions on 1OPS. This lead to the Axis going through the deck faster, one of the prime results being that Spitfires was never drawn. Play of all VP cards as OPs created a situation at the end of the game that every VP point had to be captured for a win!