Tobruk (board game)

Tobruk, subtitled Tank Battles in North Africa 1942, is a board wargame published by Avalon Hill in 1975 that simulates armored combat in the North African theatre of the Second World War. It was designed by freelance wargame designer Harold Hock and developed for publication by Avalon Hill staff member Randall Reed, who also produced its artwork. The game is a two-player tactical simulation in which one side commands German and Italian armor while the other directs British and other Allied forces, with tank combat at the center of play alongside secondary infantry, artillery and air-superiority elements. Movement and combat take place across a hexagonal grid map, with individual counters representing single vehicles or platoons of soldiers, and each game turn representing roughly thirty seconds of real time. Tobruk was notable for using SPI's Simultaneous-Sequential-Play-System, an alternating activation method the designer presented as offering more realistic combat resolution than the strictly sequential turn structures common in wargames of its era.