In 1943, to mask the upcoming invasion of Sicily, the Allies undertook a massive intelligence project. Called Operation Barclay, it included a number of smaller projects. The most famous of these, Operation Mincemeat, dumped a corpse with falsified information off the coast of Spain. Others included an inflatable landing force indicating a landing zone in the Balkans and increased resistance activity in Greece. The German High Command fell for the ruse, diverting ten divisions and the Italian navy eastward.

Now Maurice Suckling has turned this landmark deception into a board game. Operation Barclay is the latest in Salt & Pepper Games’ catalog of unusual wargames, following up on Resist!, The Hunt, and The Battle of Versailles. It’s the most abstract, most teachable, and least grounded of the bunch, for better and for worse.

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