The Daring Escape of Pancho Villa (2021)

In the early morning hours of March 9th, 1916, Pancho Villa launched an attack on the sleeping town of Columbus, New Mexico, and the adjacent US Army camp. Villa’s intelligence operation had failed. Having ordered the men forward, he was unaware that so much of the US 13th Cavalry was at Camp Furlong that night. After hours of confused combat in the streets and through the Army camp, Villa suffered many casualties and was forced to withdraw back across the border into Mexico, thus starting what would be known in America as the Punitive Expedition.

The Daring Escape of Pancho Villa is a tabletop miniature campaign which uses a moving battlefield design as the game engine. The Villista Army is always on the board, executing their escape always in front of the players. Instead of using a scrolling game mat or moving terrain around the wargame miniatures, the battlefield moves as the figures move. The US player attempts to gain contact with the retreating band of Villistas and bring them to battle using an abstracted pursuit mechanism.

The battlefield itself is divided into four 2-foot by 4-foot separate game boards which are connected to form a moving 4x8 foot gaming surface. They are then repositioned using card play to create a constant sense of movement as the figures move from town to town, cross railroads, through mountain escarpments and even cross a river. Always trying to avoid Federales mounted patrols, garrisoned towns, and the United States Cavalry Regiments in pursuit.

If Pancho Villa can exit the final game board before the last card is drawn and played or avoid being killed or captured in the process, he escapes into history.

—description from the publisher

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