Andy Taeger & James Purcell are trying to become the first people ever complete the board game Campaign for North Africa. The is so complex it could take decades to finish.
Transcript
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
In the U.K., two friends have begun a challenge that many people believe is impossible. The board game Campaign for North Africa is legendary for its complexity and detail and its extreme time commitment. Andy Taeger and James Purcell are trying to become the first people ever to complete it. Hi to both of you.
JAMES PURCELL: Hi. It’s James here.
ANDY TAEGER: Andy here. Hello.
PFEIFFER: So this board game covers a period of World War II that lasted roughly three years. Yet the game itself could take almost 10 times that, you know, many years more. What is it that makes it what you guys have described as comically complicated?
PURCELL: I suppose, first and foremost, we aren’t generals. So we have no experience in warfare. There is everything to keep track of in this game down to how much water each unit has to drink, how much of that water evaporates, just about every granular detail you can think of.
PFEIFFER: (Laughter).
TAEGER: There’s a rule Italian infantry uses more water so they could boil their pasta.
PFEIFFER: The pasta is that the Italians are going to go through drinking water faster, and they need to calculate that in?
PURCELL: Yeah. Apparently, they have to use more to boil their pasta. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but that’s part of the rules.
PFEIFFER: All right, so the big question is – why? Why are the two of you doing this, if you know it could take years or even decades to complete?
PURCELL: We’d love to give an answer that makes some aspect of sense, but we really don’t know why we’re doing this.
PFEIFFER: (Laughter).
PURCELL: We heard about the game from a friend in passing. A few weeks later, me and Andy realized that we’ve been thinking about the game, and we thought, we may as well give it a try. We had no reason to think we could, and even now, two years into preparation, we still don’t really know that we have any claim that we can do it. But we’re going to try.
PFEIFFER: You just mentioned your two years of prep. You’ve created this companion podcast called “War With A Mate.” I think it has about 100 episodes so far. The first 14 episodes are just about the rules. Do you think that by the time you actually start playing the game, it will still seem fun and interesting after all the practice?
TAEGER: I hope so, at least getting back into it ’cause we, yeah, finished our practice run. We’re just about to start the main game. So we’ve got that excitement going in at the minute, but we’ll see how long that holds before it turns to regret.
PFEIFFER: To do this kind of commitment means your friendship is going to have to stay strong, and you’re going to be with each other a lot playing this game. How do you think your friendship will fare as you start doing this and know that if the friendship doesn’t survive, you can’t finish the game?
PURCELL: Andy and I used to be housemates for about three years, so we’ve spent a lot of time around each other previously, and our thinking is, if we’ve managed to live together, surely we can play a board game for 20 years together. That should be fine.
PFEIFFER: (Laughter).
PURCELL: But if the friendship suffers partway through, maybe we’ll just have to play the game in silence.
PFEIFFER: What is your best estimate – when could you be done by?
TAEGER: Based on how fast we were going with our practice run that we wrapped up a few months ago, we – still be looking at about 15 to 20 years. We’re going to add a bit onto that. We’re realistically looking at somewhere between 20 and 30.
PFEIFFER: That is Andy Taeger and James Purcell. They are trying to be the first people to finish one of the world’s most complicated games, which no one has finished before. Thank you.
PURCELL: Thank you.
TAEGER: Thank you.
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