Undaunted: Normandy came out of nowhere in 2019 and became enough of a hit to spawn a sequel and an expansion. As you can guess from the title, it’s another game in a very long list of games about the battles in northern France during World War II. What made Undaunted different was the way it represented soldiers and officers using a deck of cards that players could add to during the game to tweak their strategy. It was so good we put it on our best deck-building games and best war board games lists.
With Undaunted: Stalingrad, the designers have moved the action to Eastern Front, but this isn’t just a reskin. It’s a whole new game with a novel, dedicated campaign system.
What’s in the Box
Undaunted: Stalingrad comes in a big, heavy box with a big, heavy price tag. There are two colossal stacks of cardboard tiles that are used to build the city-scapes the players will fight over during the course of the campaign. In fact, if you lay out all the tiles in rows and number order, it’ll make a rough map of the historical city. One set of tiles is for the starting situation of the map. The other is a set of replacements for those tiles if the originals get destroyed or fortified as part of the action.
It’s a similar story for the decks of cards that make up the remainder of the weight. There’s one lot for the German player and another for the Soviets. The starting decks are functionally identical. But as play goes on, your deck will suffer permanent casualties as well as expand with new options. These additions are not the same for both sides but represent operational and material differences between them, addressing a common critique of the original game.
Some 10-sided dice and sheets of punch-out counters representing different squads, vehicles and scenery as well as battlefield markers round out the contents. The slightly cartoonish style used in the cards and tiles across the Undaunted games is a bit of an acquired taste given the serious subject matter. But for this fourth outing, artist Roland MacDonald has nailed the balance of realism and caricature required. It’s also good to see some realistic diversity among the Soviet forces, including women and various ethnic backgrounds.
Rules and How it Plays
Deck-building, where players start with a core of cards and use them to buy additional cards during the game, is a well-worn design concept. However, in most deck-building games the deck-building is the entire point. What sets Undaunted apart is the way that the designers make the deck stand in for aspects of morale and unit cohesion without any additional rules overhead. There is, of course, a decent luck factor in the card draw that may, or may not, support what you need to do on the board. But there’s plenty of strategy, too.
Players start each turn with four cards: they play one in a nerve-wracking bid to see who will go first, and the other three on their turn. Most cards represent battlefield units and allow the player to take an action with the corresponding counter on the board, such as moving, or shooting, which is resolved via a d10 roll. On a hit, a corresponding card is removed from the deck. So the more units come under fire, the less likely they are to act and the less reliable they become, simply because their cards are less likely to get drawn.
Decks also include non-commissioned officer cards. These don’t activate units but add cards to your deck or draw more cards from it. This corresponds to pep talks, courageous leadership and using reinforcements to patch up ailing forces. But try to coordinate too many different units and you'll find your key cards won’t turn up in the confusion. The final type of card is Fog of War which does nothing but clog up your hand. These represent battlefield uncertainty and are gained when you scout out new tiles, a prerequisite for moving.
Adding to your deck and taking actions on the board are your levers in trying to meet the scenario objectives. These are far more diverse than previous Undaunted games, which were mostly a race to control specific victory tiles. That’s still a thing here but it’s complemented by frantic timed defenses and desperate demolitions, helped by a wider range of tiles with simple scenery rules. There are even scenarios with secret intelligence that you don’t reveal to your opponent until triggered. This variety means there are multiple ways to approach each battle, with subtleties of strategy that you might not tease out until it’s too late. You’ll also need to change your plans on the fly in response to the dynamic situation on the ground.
It’s a system that forces you into endless awkward compromises. Riflemen, for example, are the only cards that can control tiles. But unless you have multiple matching cards you can’t both move and take control in the same turn. Instead, you have to risk them creeping forward, closing range and making them an easier target while allowing the enemy the chance to move up and contest the tile themselves. Most units have special actions, like engineers launching smoke or machine gunners laying suppressing fire, that you’ll have to balance with the need to move, shoot, and complete objectives. It’s an ongoing, fraught series of tough trade-offs.
Scenarios get teed up according to a branching structure that depends on who won the previous battle. Each side has a scenario book with the setup and a brief narrative introduction to the next fight. Many scenarios make new cards available to your deck, from off-map assets like bombers to on-map tanks. Victory always wins you something, maybe it’s control of a section of the city or an extra promotion. Depending on how things unfold, the campaign can come to a sudden end -- or it can culminate in a colossal battle for final dominance over the city. However, the loser in a scenario often gets a slight starting advantage in the setup for the next one, helping to keep things even.
As a result, Undaunted: Stalingrad encourages you to think long-term. At the end of each fight, you take casualties depending on how many cards you lost. If these turn out to be line soldiers, they’re replaced with inferior reserve cards, while specialists like snipers or engineers are lost permanently. You also promote two cards, which get swapped for superior alternatives. So it’s no longer a case of sending in the troops, gung-ho to secure objectives. Every decision is a compromise where taking a risk might pay off with a win but hobble your deck for the remainder of the campaign. This adds a brilliant frisson of danger to even simple choices and makes conceding a strategic decision rather than a cop-out.
The scheme of swapping out cards or tiles for replacements means you pay for a lot of stuff in the box that you won’t use. But it also forms the basis of a superb campaign system. Ongoing campaigns are tricky things because as one side ekes out an advantage it tends to snowball. Between the balance changes in scenario setup and the regular, vicious grind of attrition that both sides suffer, this is unlikely to happen here. At the same time, the constant churn of components and the risk of a sudden victory keep you feeling like every battle matters. And the way the city and your forces disintegrate around you packs an increasingly potent emotional punch as the campaign goes on. When you’re done it’s easy to reset the game ready to do it again, with a high likelihood you’ll see different scenarios.
