It is considered one of the most complex wargames ever published, with ten recommended players and an estimated total playtime of 1,500 hours.

[1][2] Reviewer Luke Winkie pointed out that "If you and your group meets for three hours at a time, twice a month, you’d wrap up the campaign in about 20 years.

"[3] It has also been called the most complex wargame ever designed,[4][2] with the commonly cited example (noted in SPI's advertising) that Italian troops require additional water supplies to prepare pasta.

To give an idea of the game's complexity, reviewer Nicholas Palmer outlined the actions for one side's single turn.

As a first step, before playing, the player or team must make unit organization charts for every one of the hundreds of counters on their side.

In the mid-1970s, SPI's house magazine Strategy & Tactics gathered feedback from players that indicated the desire for a massive game.

[11] Responding to this feedback, SPI envisioned several huge wargames that would be called the "Heuristic Intensive Manual Simulation Series".

Well apparently the feedback responses that governed Jim Dunnigan and SPI indicated that gamers wanted such monster games.

"[11] Following the demise of SPI, Decision Games acquired the rights to CNA, and in 2016-2017, started the process of streamlining and simplifying the rules, with an advertised publication date of 2020 for the retitled "North African Campaign.

"[4] In a retrospective review almost 40 years after CNA's publication, Luke Winkie called the arcane complexity of the game "transparently absurd", pointing out the example that each turn, every unit loses 3% of its fuel due to evaporation, except for British units, which lose 7% because historically they used 50-gallon drums instead of jerry cans.

"[3] In season 11 episode 16 of The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon Cooper gathered his friends to play the game.