Osprey Games has announced a new entry in the Undaunted board game series, Undaunted 2200: Callisto. After four excellent games exploring different theatres of World War Two, Callisto will be the first foray into sci-fi, and is due “in 2024”.
Undaunted is, flat out, one of the best board game series – check out our Undaunted: Normandy review, Undaunted: North Africa review, and Undaunted: Battle of Britain review to see exactly why we think that. Undaunted: Callisto will be a “standalone big-box game in the Undaunted series, adapting the core gameplay of previous games to a new science fiction setting”, according to Osprey’s press release.
Each version of Undaunted has iterated on the core system established by Undaunted: Normandy. Undaunted: North Africa added vehicles, Undaunted: Stalingrad added a full legacy campaign, and Undaunted: Battle of Britain transferred the whole system to the skies. Undaunted: Callisto promises mechs.
The takes place on Jupiter’s moon Callisto around a mining colony. War has broken out between the mining collective operating the base and strike-breaking mercenaries hired by its owners on Earth. As well as mercs and mechs, Osprey says we can look forwards to “industrial mining vehicles repurposed for combat”.
The game is designed by the same team that has worked on the rest of the Undaunted series, with rules by David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin, and illustrations by Roland MacDonald.
Osprey adds that the game will be playable in “two-player, four-player, and solo game modes” and that games will involve maneuvring over “barren lunar landscapes” to “sieze dominant high-ground positions”.
If you’ve never played any of the Undaunted games, they’re a compelling hybrid of war board game and deck-building game. Your forces are represented on the map with tokens, but controlled via a deck of cards.
The makeup of that deck changes over the course of a game, clogging up with useless Fog of War cards as the battle proceeds, or expanding with new units that you recruit. You have to grapple with your own past decisions as well as the enemy.
Can’t wait for 2024 for a hit of mech gaming? Why not check out the free 30 Minute Missions wargame, or MechaStellar, both of which you can play with Gunpla and similar mech kits.