The Desert Fox

Rommel’s Campaign for North Africa April 1941-December 1942
Designed by Richard H. Berg
Published by Simulations Publications, Incorporated (1981)


Games on this topic that have been previously reviewed include The African Campaign (Jedko), 8th Army (Attactix), Rommel in North Africa (West End) and The Legend Begins (Rhino).

Richard Berg has been a prolific designer of games over the last 35 years. He has designed several games covering the North African Campaign 1941-1943. I think that The Desert Fox is one of the best games that he has designed and is certainly, IMHO, the most enjoyable and playable of his North African games. Part of the reason for this is the scale of the map and the quantity of units. The map is small enough to be taken in a single glance. The relatively small number of counters makes playing the game quite manageable (27 Italian units, 27 German units and 76 Allied units). Having said that, the game has some novel features and it takes longer to play to completion than you would expect, looking at the size of the game – the game has a short scenario as well as the full campaign. The short scenario should be playable in a single session. How long will depend upon the level of experience the players have with the game system. Even though there are no set-up charts it doesn’t take much time or effort to set-up the units as the counters are marked with their turn of entry.

TDF was published in Strategy & Tactics magazine #87. The map comes in two sections and measures 17” by 44” when the two sections are placed together. The game comes with 200 counters. Many of the counters are markers. The Allied units are orange in colour while the Axis units are light yellow (Italian) and light tan (German). TDF is a rather unusual game to play as it feels much more intensive than it looks – it has the look of a fairly small and simple game and yet feels like a quite serious simulation.

Movement: the motorized units have movement allowances from 22 to 28. Given that it only costs half of a point to move along roads these motorized/mechanized units can move fairly quickly and leap tall buildings in a single bound (or at least it feels like that). Rapid, wide flanking movements are all part of the situation in this very fluid arena of warfare. Infantry units tend to have a movement allowance of 14. Interestingly, the Via Balbia (the coastal road) has milestone marks every ten hexes to make it quicker and easier to calculate a unit’s movement when travelling by road.

Sequence of Play: the basic sequence of play is rather straight-forward. A die is rolled to see which player moves first. Players allocate air points to Malta. The phasing player moves all of his supplied units (over-runs may take place). The non-phasing player may react with units that are currently within two hexes of an enemy unit. Combat between adjacent enemy units is mandatory and is resolved at this time. The phasing player moves his motorized/mechanized units. The non-phasing player may perform reaction movement with their motorized/mechanized units. The second combat takes place. The phasing players turn finishes with their refit phase where they convert supply dumps into mobile supply units (and visa versa), units are recovered/re-fitted, units may recover from disruption and then unsupplied units roll for attrition. The sequence is then repeated for the second player.


Supply: supply is a big issue in the game (two of the twelve pages of rules are devoted to supply). The Allied player receives supply on a regular basis while the Axis player receives supply on a random basis (the more effort the Axis player puts into raiding Malta the more likely the Axis player is to receive larger amounts of supply).

There are three types of supply sources – permanent supply sources which are never consumed (Alexandria and Tobruk), supply dumps and mobile supply units. Both players receive supply units (dumps and MSU’s) during the game as reinforcements. Units check for supply at the start of movement – units out of supply have their movement reduced. Units also check for supply at the start of combat. Units must trace supply to either a permanent supply source or to a supply unit. Supply dumps may be converted to MSU’s and visa versa. Each supply dump has a supply radius of 12 motorized movement points – the supply radius can be extended by the use of MSU’s (MSU’s work like a supply chain but must ultimately be able to trace a route back to a supply dump). Each dump is limited in the number of units that it may supply and may be consumed in the process of supplying units.

For both players the managing of resources and effectively deploying your supply units is a crucial aspect of the game.

Combat: TDF has a novel system for combat resolution. The combat strengths of units involved in combat are compared – supply, combined arms, disruption, hexside terrain, anti-tank units and fortifications will have an effect on the strength of individual units. A ratio is calculated (attacker/defender). This ratio is located on the CRT on the line appropriate for the terrain occupied by the defender. This gives you a number and you add this number to the roll of a die to get a final column result. The results in this column are then dependent upon the defending unit’s morale – a unit’s morale is quite significant regarding the effect on the unit. Results can include disruption, depletion (unit counters are double-sided with a full strength side and a depleted side – importantly, the unit’s depleted side has a lower level of morale as well as a weaker combat strength, thus making it even more vulnerable to attack), elimination and/or retreat. The combat system is light years ahead of the traditional classic CRT that was ‘standard’ in the 1970’s.


The Units: both sides have a wide range of units – both sides have strong units and weak units, good morale and poor morale, high speed and low speed. One of the interesting aspects in TDF is that you really do need to look at your units and work out how to make the best use of each one. Putting unit’s in a situation where they can work effectively with other units is crucial.

Air Power: both players receive air points during the game. Both players have the choice of putting their air into the desert to give ground support to combat units or to put them into or against Malta. The more effort the Allies put into Malta the less supply received by Rommel and visa versa. It is often difficult to choose between the short-term gain of muscle on the battlefield and the long-term gain of working on the logistic side of the campaign.


North Africa: you would expect that North Africa games would/should have some similarities despite each designer’s own design concepts. I feel that TDF was way ahead of its time as a design. It is quite playable and had many interesting design features. Of the five games on this topic that I have reviewed it is hard to say which is best out of TDF, The Legend Begins and Rommel in North Africa, but these three are clearly superior to both The African Campaign (designed in the early 1970’s and is now dated) and 8th Army (is designed as an introductory level and lacks a certain amount of detail).

Some of the aspects of TDF that I find appealing are the size of the map (not too large), the number of units (small enough to manageable), the supply rules (a limiting factor that requires planning) and the combat result table (which makes morale a crucial aspect of combat without excessive complexity).

I think that Richard Berg has done a really nice job with this game and can’t understand why anyone would want to play Campaign for North Africa when they could play a delightfully elegant game such as The Desert Fox.


“Dead Men Tell No Tales!”