Tobruk (game)

The game board is a featureless desert terrain, the only defenses being man-made, such as slit trenches, bunkers, wire entanglements and tank revetments.

Barnard noted, "The game is complicated, and can be very long winded in terms of the amount of player work that must be expended to determine quite minor points ...

Palmer found two major issues with the game: the lack of excitement around gradual attrition of units leading to surrender; and "the extraordinary number of die-rolls required."

"[6] The following year, in his book The Comprehensive Guide to Board Wargaming, Palmer confessed that he did not like the graduated system of rules, commenting that "Early scenarios are very simple indeed and not very interesting."

He noted that "the most controversial feature is the legions of die rolls required, as each round of fire is checked in exhaustive detail."

"[2] In his 1980 sequel, The Best of Board Wargaming, Palmer added a further comment about the "interminable die-rolls ", saying, "This aspect of the game is its greatest weakness [...] Tedium can set in rapidly."

[7] Andrew Marshall, writing for Boot Camp & Military Fitness Institute, noted that despite the use of SPI's new Simultaneous-Sequential-Play-System (SSPS) that allowed for much greater realism without sacrificing playability, Tobruk did not sell well due to the detailed artillery penetration tables, which ironically undercut the new SSPS game system by increasing realism at the cost of playability.

"[8] John Keefer, writing for The Escapist Magazine in 2014, listed eight old Avalon Hill games that he felt deserved to be reprinted.