WWII series Undaunted leaves Earth’s petty struggles behind, flees to Jupiter at Gen Con
Historical wargames are caught in a bit of a Catch-22 at the moment. While the mechanics of the genre, particularly in the board gaming space, continue to evolve in exciting ways, the factions on the table can be particularly off-putting for modern audiences. That’s why the designers of the acclaimed Undaunted series (Undaunted: Normandy, Undaunted: Stalingrad) have decided to leave our planet entirely. Undaunted 2200: Callisto takes place on one of Jupiter’s moons, and it debuts this week at Gen Con. Polygon had an exclusive preview earlier this summer, and we came away thrilled at the direction the series is taking — even if it’s more than half a million miles away from home.
Of course, a change in setting of this magnitude didn’t come without careful consideration by designers David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin, as well as publisher Osprey Games.
“Undaunted 2200: Callisto is absolutely a response to significant public calls to push the system into a new theme,” the team wrote in a shared statement. “Over the years we’ve learned how to tweak and push Undaunted in many ways we never envisioned with the original Normandy design. [...] It was just a matter of building a setting that seemed consistent with what Undaunted has evolved into and mirroring it with existing and new mechanisms.”
In Undaunted 2200, one player controls the corporate security force acting on behalf of a well-funded mining conglomerate. This rigid and sterile militant faction consists of faceless grunts and support weapons that can supply a great deal of firepower and intimidation with their armored mech units. On the opposite side of the battlefield are the miners, a ragtag force wielding makeshift weaponry and adapted industrial vehicles. Their troops are given names instead of numbers, and they fight to improve their own welfare. Just as in previous iterations of the Undaunted formula, all of these combatants are represented by cards that are added to each player’s deck during the game and
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