Review: Undaunted: Battle of Britain

 

 

 

Nominated for the Charles S. Roberts Award for Best World War II Game, 2023

 

Since the release of Undaunted: Normandy (Osprey Games, 2019), David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin’s Undaunted system has proven to be a robust and adaptable framework for presenting tactical combat situations in a playable form, using unconventional mechanics that, either by accident or design, appeal to non-wargamers. Who knew deck-building and action restriction could work in a wargame? Obviously, a lot of people think they do, otherwise the Undaunted series would never have made it to series-status, and Undaunted: Normandy wouldn’t still be in print five years after its initial release.

Undaunted: Battle of Britain (Osprey Games, 2023) is the latest iteration of the essential system*, but it’s also something of a departure from the close combat of the earlier games. The canvas is broader – the skies over the English Channel and the eastern coast of England – and instead of sections of troops or a support weapon squad, each token represents a group or staffel of fighters or a handful of bombers, and conversely the stakes are higher. The field of battle is still somewhat abstracted but is granted a more familiar hex-grid; the game still uses a series of compatible map-sections to create unique altercation spaces over coastal regions of open ocean. There are differences in the way the cards work in Battle of Britain compared to the other land-based games, but the essentials of the mechanics are the same; you still work through and build a deck of command cards (and some filler cards, but we’ll come back to those), and the command cards for the units in play still act as hit-points or step-losses when that unit takes a hit. In most of the scenarios the goals of the two sides are different and their strengths asymmetric. And, as with the previous games, every turn presents challenging decisions for both players. 

The game's stack of large terrain tiles (26 in all). There are also three-hex extension
 tiles and single hex markers for things like cloud cover and barrage balloons.

Appearance

Like its predecessors, Undaunted: Battle of Britain is a visually stunning and decidedly tactile experience. If there’s one thing that Osprey Games does well (though I truth, there are several things they do exceptionally well), it’s their presentation, making a game look and feel not just gorgeous, but right. There is a weight to the board pieces and the components that conveys the seriousness of the venture. The game’s Battle of Britain incarnation dispenses with the four-inch square terrain tiles for a hex-grid format, but a morphic one created from sections that combine more neatly than the square pieces, creating an assortment of Channel and coastal backdrops for the aerial action. The plane pieces are top-down views of these familiar planes.

Sample hand for the Commonwealth player.

Like its stable-mates, Undaunted: BoB is a card-driven game, and the cards are where the game really shines. Each boasts a picture appropriate to the role that card fills; pilots and navigators for the aircraft, a view of the planes for the section command, a radio operator for squadron command, a destroyer for the Ship activation card, and a Bofors gun for the Anti-Aircraft artillery.

Osprey always spends time working out the best way to
store the games components, not just ship them.

As with the other volumes in the series, all of the art is provided by Roland MacDonald. I’ve heard some complain about the cartoon-iness of the art in the Undaunted games, but for me it harks back to the Commando comics of my childhood. There’s a heroic-realist quality to the work particularly in the portraits of flyers on the aircraft activation cards.

Set-up for scenario 8: 

As with the other Undaunted games, considerable thought has been put into the housing of the various components that make up Undaunted: BoB. It took a little while to work out, but the smaller three-hex board tiles and the single-hex object-overlay pieces (ships, barrage balloons, cloud banks, etc.) all fit perfectly into the space underneath the larger map-tiles. The aircraft tokens fit in the recesses under their own card decks, and the dice and target markers have their own places in between these. It’s all quite elegant.

Undaunted: Battle of Britain rulebook and scenario book.

That clarity of design carries over to the Rules and Scenario books. These are presented with wide margins and lots of space. The Rulebook covers the concepts and idiosyncrasies of the game in broad brushstrokes, then explains through examples how the elements work together in the context of play. To be honest, coming from a more traditional wargaming sensibility, it was a little jarring to be confronted with rules I didn’t have to wrestle with, and I kept thinking I was missing something crucial. There were instances during play that I simply couldn’t find a rule clarification for, in which case we’d muddle through with what seemed the most logical approach, and then going over the rules again after the game, I’d find that we had done what was intended. So, while the rulebook itself can be difficult at times (or maybe that’s just me), the rules, once you get into the cadence of the game, are quite intuitive and sensible.

Rulebook: sample page.

The Scenario Book is where the game shines, though. Two-page spreads offer a historical context for the situation, a breakdown of the materials needed, a visual aid for the placement of map tiles and starting locations of pieces, and short note addressing new rules incorporated into the scenario. The scenarios have some programmed learning built into them. They are however all interesting and challenging enough in their own right to warrant repeat play. As in other Undaunted games, they also appear in chronological order, lending a verisimilitude to the pay of the game when running through the scenarios consecutively.

Scenario 1: Battle of France.

Play

In Undaunted: Battle of Britain, the player takes the part of either the Royal Air Force (RAF) defending the central and south-east counties of England, or the Luftwaffe – the German Air Force – bent of destroying the industrial and defensive infrastructure of Britain and gain air superiority ahead of a planned amphibious invasion, Operation Sealion. Through the mission briefings and notes, the game conveys the sense of desperation on both sides of the English Channel.

The game is purely tactical. In a scenario, each player will operate a handful of planes and sometimes other resources. The German player has fighters (single seat Bf109s and two-seater Bf110s which serve double-duty as bombers) and dedicated bombers (Ju87 Stukas in the earlier scenarios, then later Heinkel 111s). The British player begins the game with just Hawker Hurricane IIs and Boulton Paul Defiants, with the Supermarine Spitfire (everyone’s favourite) coming into the game in the later scenarios, but they also have Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA) and barrage balloons to give the invaders pause. The game comes with eleven scenarios, all of which are eminently replayable.

Spitfires, Ack-Ack, and barrage balloons - oh my!

The game plays similarly to the others in the series, but not exactly the same. The system’s DNA is in evidence from the start. Each resource has a small set of cards, of which one will begin in your starting deck, with the others make a bank of cards you can draw to include in your deck, to be able to better – or at lease more frequently – utilise that resource. You may start with four or six fighter units, grouped into two sections (colour coded); in this case you will being with a deck comprised of one card for each plane (with another two available for drafting for each plane), one Section Comms card for each pair’s section, and a Squadron Comms card. You’ll also begin with two or more Discord cards. These serve the same function as Fog of War cards in the land-based Undaunted games – limiting your options in a given turn when drawn – but you will take another Discord card into your deck each time an ordered fighter finishes its movement more than two hexes from its partner unit.

Some elements in the game have a single action; when the AAA card is played, the anti-aircraft artillery can have a shot at any enemy plane in range, and drawing the Ships card will allow the destroyers to move a space in their indicated direction. Aircraft, however, are a different beast in this iteration of Undaunted.

Fly the (un)friendly skies.

When an aircraft is activated (a Command Card is played), it must move (at least one space) and may also commit one other action. A fighter will have a maximum movement of two or three spaces, while the bombers will move just one space. Fighters have the option of manoeuvring or firing, while bombers have the option of manoeuvre, shooting (usually in a choice of directions), or – like it says on the label – bombing. On an activation you must move, but you only get to commit one other action.  

The thing is, when a plane is activated, it has to move at least one space in the direction it’s facing before it does anything else, so sometimes the action has already been decided for you by the circumstances you find yourself in, like flying into barrage balloons or off the board in your next activation unless you take the Manoeuvre option to avoid said fate. fly off the board. The plane pieces on the board are cut in a teardrop shape that indicates the direction it’s going to be travelling in when it next moves. And this is the tantalisingly frustrating core of the action. It’s a game of positioning.

Aerial combat much more immediately dynamic than ground combat. For pilots and gunners, the hardest lesson to learn was diffraction fire, the discipline calculating the relative movement and speed and direction of your aircraft and the target’s and firing into the space where the target is going to be when the bullets or shells reach that point. It’s the same in Undaunted: BoB. To achieve your goals in the game, you must anticipate where the target, be it another plane, a ship, or a static ground target, will be during your plane’s next activation, and use your available speed and manoeuvre values to position your plane to put the target front of (or below) you on your next activation after you’ve moved at least one space. It’s tricky, and it’s never guaranteed to come off.

Shooting in Undaunted: BoB is handled in the same manner as the previous games; an aircraft will have a set number of dice to roll (indicated on the plane’s Activation card, usually two to three for fighters, one for bombers). The player has to roll a number higher than the target’s defensive rating the number in the shield on the counter plus the shooter’s distance from the target, adding any obstacles to the number (firing into or through a cloud-bank will add 2 to the difficulty of the shot). Sometimes you simply won’t be able to make the shot, but it’s the complications that make the game a rewarding challenge.

When it does come off, you then have to roll the designated number of dice and hope to roll a number higher than the target’s defensive value plus the shooter’s distance from the target. At the beginning of the Battle of Britain, the RAF combat doctrine called for a fighter’s armament to have a 250 yard focal range (meaning, for example, the bullets fired by all eight .303 calibre machine guns in a Hurricane would converge to a point a few inches across at 250 yard to maximise the damage caused), but within a few weeks of actual combat, the pilots would instruct their ground crews to set the focal range to around 150 yards to effect damage more reliably.

A lucky drop: The BF110 (top corner) claimed the third ship of the game for the win.
If it had missed, it would have been out of the game on it's next activation.

Similarly, the closer to your target when you do fire, the more likely it is to take a hit. The Heinkels in the game are particularly difficult to bring down (defensive value of 7), so you must be right on top of it (that is, an adjacent hex) to have a 20% chance of a hit. The bombers in Undaunted: BoB have four activation cards per counter, whereas the fighters (including the Bf110 fighter-bomber) only possess three cards at most. And the bombers can fire back when not engaged in manoeuvring or bombing. Protecting ground targets or ships from aerial assault is a tough gig for the Commonwealth player. But who doesn’t like a challenge.

In my experience a scenario will usually be resolved in between one and two hours, plus set up time. Set up is a lot easier and quicker if you put the map tiles back in their alphabetical order when you’re packing up a game (something I learned the hard way). There is a tally at the bottom of the Scenario Map page what indicates which tiles will be requited for that scenario. Similarly, the card chart will spell out not only which sets of cards will be required for the scenario, but how many of each should go into a side’s starting deck. Like all Undaunted games, a lot of care has been taken to make the game as easy to set up and play as possible.

German casualties at end of game. Still wasn't enough to save the ships.

Appraisal

I’m under no illusions that the Undaunted system wouldn’t be every wargamer’s idea of fun (or, indeed, every wargamer’s idea of a wargame), but I think there is clearly a place for them in the broad church of our shared hobby. I’ve enjoyed Undaunted: Normandy (you can read my review of the game here), and Undaunted: North Africa (Osprey Games, 2020) even more so. I have a copy of Undaunted: Stalingrad (Osprey Games, 2022), as yet unpunched, that I tell myself I must get to some time. But for my money, Undaunted: Battle of Britain is probably my favourite of the series. Stalingrad is probably the most complex and fully realised of the games, with its cascading narrative mechanics allowing the results of one scenario to influence the situation of the next, but the tweaks to the system, combined with the subject matter, make for a more satisfying play experience.

Messerschmitts negotiating the Barrage balloons to engage the Spitfires of Red section
in an attempt to keep them away from the bombers.

For a tactical air warfare game, Undaunted: BoB will feel clunky at first, given the random nature of the card activation, and operations can take on a staccato feel, quite alien to what one is used to playing a wargame. It doesn’t bear comparison to a more technically simulative game like Wings of War/Wings of Glory (Ares Games) or Age of Dogfights (Forsage Games), but neither is it purely a logic puzzle, though it has elements of such. There is a rhythm that starts to appear in the game, the more you play it. And like the two aforementioned games, much energy will be devoted to flying around in circles trying to gain the advantage over your foe. But I don’t think this is a valid criticism of the game; it simply mimics the reality of aerial combat for much of the discipline’s history.

Undaunted: Battle of Britain feels like the purest implementation of the design philosophy behind the Undaunted system thus far. The game that rewards careful planning and consideration of exigencies. Each player has a clear set of victory conditions in each scenario, and the player who can best adhere to those priorities will have a greater chance at victory, but as in all things, success is not guaranteed. The draw of a new hand each round brings uncertainty to the mix, though this can be somewhat mitigated by an awareness of how your deck is built (not card-counting per se, but knowing what is left to come out before the next reshuffle), but the requirement to bid for the Initiative with each round means that you may have to sacrifice a useful card to gain a useful position. 

Crowded airspace. A Bf110 and Heinkel jockey for a run at the fleeing destroyer (left).

Subtle adjustments in the mechanical aspects of the game reflect real aspects of the battle. Stukas are relatively easy to shoot down (Goering pulled them out of service in the Channel only weeks into the battle to preserve their numbers for the planned incursion into the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa), but the Heinkel 111 medium bombers were better armoured (as reflected in their defensive rating of 7 and four command cards instead of the fighters' three) and bristled with defensive weapons. Allied pilots soon learned the most effective attacks were to run in from behind and target the engines or brave the frontal defenses in a head-on attack, firing into the cockpit. The Hurricane was only armed with Browning machine guns, compared to the Spitfire's and Bf109's cannons, and had to put a sustained dose of fire into a target to effect damage (rolling two dice in attacking to the three dice of the Spitfire and 109). And ace pilots receive four command cards instead of three, to reflect the likelihood of them lasting longer in combat. The average life expectancy of a newly minted RAF pilot during the battle of Britain was just two weeks (about ten missions).

The Discord cards in Undaunted: BoB feel more visceral than the Fog of War cards in the land-conflict versions of the game. In the earlier iterations, Fog of War always felt like a mere hinderance, a speed-hump slowing the execution of your plans. The two flights of a Section operate best co-operatively, flying in unison. Sometimes it will be necessary to split the team to gain the advantage against the opponent, but that will come at a cost, and it’s not always a simple thing to bring them back into radio contact. Too many Discord cards can slow your response to immediate threats, leaving your aircraft hanging out in the open, easy prey for an opportunistic foe. Like the previous games, there are ways of mitigating the Discord in your hand, but that will come at the cost of not being able to do something more proactive in your turn. Again, difficult choices have to me made with every new hand.

As I said earlier, Undaunted: Battle of Britain isn’t going to be a game for everyone, that goes for the whole series. Some will look at the gorgeous production and components and the easy to read and understand rules, decide that it’s a child’s game (or, ye gods, a Euro) and dismiss it without further consideration. I was guilty of this when I first heard about Undaunted: Normandy. But this series isn’t just a teaser to get non-wargamers into the hobby. The Undaunted games offer a challenging wargame experience requiring a much shorter span of time to achieve a resolution than, say, Wacht Am Rhein (Decision Games, 2005). While shorter translates to simpler, it doesn’t mean easy or unengaging. Far from it.

Having played Undaunted: Normandy, I can now say I enjoy it (though I think I like Undaunted: North Africa a little better), but in Undaunted: Battle of Britain I have found a new favourite. Growing up, I was obsessed with World War II planes – mostly from the European theatre - and would save up my meagre pocket money to buy Airfix and Matchbox model airplane kits. This would account, at least in part, for my affection for Undaunted: Battle of Britain. But there’s also a greater sense of the historicity of the events portrayed. In this game more than the others there is present a sense of what is at stake, no less than the preservation or the extinction of the last defiant glimmer of Democracy in Europe.

 

 

* Yes, I know about Undaunted 2200: Calisto (Osprey Games, 2024), but being such a departure from the earlier games in the series, and with all the extra chrome built into the game, it feels like the start of a separate series. Related, but more cousins than siblings. I mean, the new game even has its own trade dress.