Players: 2*
Time: 1 hour
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)
* Though there are some rules for "team play".
The Components
Memoir '44 is a Days of Wonder release, and it shows in the high quality components:
- 1 game board
- Cardboard Bits:
- 44 terrain hexes
- 4 bunker/bridges
- 10 victory medals
- 14 special forces badges
- 180 plastic miniatures
- 2 card holders
- 69 cards
- 8 dice
- 1 rule book
Game Board: A six panel board printed on heavy, linen-textured cardboard. It's double-sided, with one side showing plain terrain and the other showing a beach, each laid out in hexes. Each side of the board also has places to put your victory medals, to make it very clear how well your forces are doing.
Throughout this description of The Components, you'll see me mention double-sided pieces. This is a really nice aspect of this game. The use of the double-sided board (and various cardboard bits) hugely increases the variability, and thus the replayability of the game. I'm very pleased that Days of Wonder decided to go this route, rather than holding onto additional boards and pieces as supplements (though I'd love to see a supplement too).
Cardboard Bits: These are all double-sided full-color linen-textured cardboard too. The die-cutting on all these pieces was terrific. They literally fell out of the cardboard holders when being punched.
The hexes depict different types of terrain, and are placed on the board during scenario setup. Hills, forests, hedgerows, villages, and more appear on these, each clearly iconic. The bridge/bunker pieces are small rectangular cardboard bits that go on top of hexes. They show bridges on one side and bunkers on the other. Apparently, at least some of these pieces depict real structures in Normandy--a nice touch.
The victory medals are used to mark specific scenario objectives. One side shows a German symbol, the other American.
Finally, the Special Forces medals are used for various special units, from the French Resistance to the U.S. Rangers. As with everything else, they're doubled sided, giving more potential units to choose between.
Overall, these pieces are all colorful, attractive, and add to the game's beauty.
Miniatures: These miniatures vary between 1:72 scale (for the infantry) to 1:285 scale (for tanks and artillery). There are men, tanks, and artillery, as well as sandbags, barbed wire, and hedgehogs (tank stoppers).
The coolest thing about these miniatures: they're already separated from their sprues when they arrive. This means you don't have to spend hours cutting them out, and also that there's never any problem with sprue residue making it hard for your miniatures to stand up, as happens with so many other games.
The miniatures are all molded from a soft plastic and generally are attractive and nicely detailed. (The only one I don't particularly like is the artillery, which is just a bit flimsy.) I'm surprised such similar colors were choosen for the two sides (olive green and navy blue), but since the miniatures for the sides are different, it's never a problem.
Card Holder: There are two three-segment card holders, molded out of hard plastic. Nothing fancy here, just something to hold up to six cards, so that you can easily see your options (and point them out to team mates if you have them).
Cards: The cards are all normal size, printed on medium stock in full color with no texturing or gloss.
Sixty of the cards are command cards, which you use to give orders during the game. Of those, 40 are section cards which use very clear graphics to show how many units you can move on which sections of the board. The other 20 are tactic cards which contain text that's sometimes quite lengthy which explain what special order you can give. Fortunately, the names and pictures on the cards are quite evocative, and once you know what a card does, it's easy to keep track of it.
The other 9 cards are reference cards. 7 explain types of terrain, 1 explains units, and 1 explains obstacles. The rules suggest you lay out the cards near the board each game, for the units and terrain used in the scenario. These are great. When you inevitably need to look up the modifiers for a hedgerow terrain or a special forces unit, it's all right here, with no need to flip through the rulebook. The unit and obstacle cards are, unfortunately, double-sided. I wished they'd instead printed two separate cards for each, as I sometimes need to flip these back and forth during play to remind myself of what different units do (though, it's minimal: the common units/obstacles are on one side, the rarer ones on the other).
Dice: These wooden dice are stamped with a special symbol on each side, in a unique color that makes it easy to pick them out even from across a table: blue infanty, black tanks, orange grenades, purple flags, and green stars.
Rules: The rulebook is a daunting 36 pages, but the rules proper are just pages 4-11. Besides that, we have references for special units and terrain, rules for team and other game variants, and then 17 different scenarios for play.
The rule book is all full color, glossy, and filled with colorful examples. They're very easy to follow. I've also used the references for in-game lookup a number of times, to very good effect, meaning they were quick and easy to use. The scenarios are each beautiful one-page designs, which show you how to layout the board, and in what order. There's also a bit of historical info, and various special rules and setups.
Overall, the rulebook is very attractive and very easy to use.
Box & Tray: The box is a standard, high-quality square German box. The tray inside is simple, but well molded for individual pieces, including a secret slot under the cards for all the tinier cardboard bits which might otherwise try and get away.
Overall, the components for Memoir '44 are great. They're high quality, they're entirely useful, and they're also beautiful. It gets a full "5" out of "5" for Style, no question about it.
The Gameplay
Memoir '44 is a tactical scenario-based wargame. In other words, the victory conditions can vary from game to game. You can always win by destroying enough enemy units, but sometimes capturing certain locations is vital as well.
Setup: Each game starts with choosing a scenario. There are 16 normal scenarios in the rulebook, spanning from June 6, 1944 to December of the same year. Scenarios depict how terrain is laid out on the board as well as where starting units go.
Scenarios also: describe the historical basis of the battle; list how many Command Cards each side gets; list the conditions of victory; and finally explain any special rules. I've only played three of the scenarios so far, but my favorite special rule is in the Sainte Mere-Eglise scenario, where you literally drop paratroopers onto the board at the start of the game.
Once the board is setup and players have taken their starting Command Cards (typically from 2-6), the game begins.
Units. Units are a core concept in Memoir 44. A unit is a group of 2-4 of the same type of figure (infantry typically appears in groups of 4, tanks in groups of 3, and artillery in groups of 2). A unit represents some number of troops on the actual battlefield and is both indivisible (you can't break them up) and uncombinable (you can't put them together). When a unit loses figures, you can't get them back, and when it loses them all, the unit is destroyed.
Order of Play: Each scenario also says who goes first. Afterward players alternate turns, taking the following actions:
- Play a Command Card
- Order Units
- Move Units
- Battle
- Redraw
Play a Command Card: The first thing a player must do is choose a command card. The majority of the cards are simple "section" cards. The board is divided into three sections (middle, left flank, and right flank) and a section card will give players the opportunity to move a certain number of units in certain sections. For example, a "left flank recon" lets a player move one unit on the left flank. One of my favorites, the "pincer maneuver" lets a player move two units on each of the left and right flanks.
The other twenty "tactic" cards all do special things, and in general add color appropriate for the World War II era. There's some cards that move certain types of troops (e.g., "Infantry Assault" and "Armor Assault"), some that move units with bonuses (e.g., "Their Finest Hour" and "Behind Enemy Lines") and some that just have special effects, like an air strike or a medic. Many of the cards allow normal orders, moves, and battles, though not all.
Order Units: Once you've played a card, you must then identify which units you're ordering, per the restrictions of the card.
Move Units: Then, you can move those units, one at a time. Movement is pretty simple: artillery can move 1, infantry can move 2, and armor can move 3 (though artillery and infantry can't battle if they move their full allotment--of 1 or 2 spaces, respectively). Certain types of terrain stop movement (villages, forests), block it (rivers, oceans), or just slow it down (bluffs, in some special scenarios). This is all easy to keep track of, thanks to those aforementioned reference cards. Finally, units block movement: you can't move through each other.
(I should note that I'm ignoring special forces units here, which sometimes get better movement rates.)
Battle: Finally, you can battle with your selected units. Different units have different efficiencies at different distances, noted as a number of dice. These ratings are:
Infantry: 3 / 2 / 1
Tanks: 3 / 3 / 3
Artillery: 3 / 3 / 2 / 2 / 1 / 1
In other words: at a range of 1 hex, an infantry gets to throw 3 dice, or 2 dice at 2 hexes, or 1 dice at 3 hexes.
In order to attack someone, you must be able to see them. Troops can block line of site (measured as a straight line between two hexes) as can forests, cities, hills, and certain other types of terrain.
In addition, certain types of terrain reduce battle efficiency for attacking into a hex (common) or attacking out of a hex (rare). For example, both forests and villages give units seeking cover there a 1-dice reduction to all infantry attacks. Barbed wire is one of the rare obstacles that gives a minus to someone attacking from that hex, another -1.
This system is overall very simple. It's counted out loud as you do your attack. For example if my infantry was attacking an infantry in a forest two hexes away I'd count "3, 2", pointing first at the hex between the units, then at the hex with the target, then "and 1 for the forest".
When you have your attack total you throw that many dice.
For each side that comes up with an icon representing the target unit or an icon of a grenade, the target unit takes one hit. The defender removes one of the figures from the unit.
For each side that comes up a flag, the target must retreat one space (unless they're in certain types of terrain, like the Bunkers, or behind Sandbags which protect a unit from the first flag). They move one space toward their side of the board, unless they can't in which case they lose another unit per flag they didn't retreat for.
If a unit just takes some damage, it's wounded, but continues to attack and move regularly. If all of its troops are wiped out, the unit is destroyed, and the attacker gets to take one of the troops, which he places on one of his medal spaces, marking a victory point.
Winning the Game: A scenario goes until one of the opponents attains the number of medals marked as a condition of victory in the scenario (usually 4-6). This is done by eliminating enemy units and by meeting scenario objectives, usually visiting a space on the board or permanently occupying a space on the board.
The Scenarios: The scenarios in the rulebook cover World War II in northern France from June 6, 1944 to December 22, 1944. Clearly, more scenarios could easily be designed, and word is that there will be a scenario designer at the online web site, to let players do so easily. The scenarios each provide the players with very different tactical situations, and thus allow for a huge variety of gameplay. Each one's like a puzzle that can be played again and again, and there are 16 of them already published.
Team & Overlord Play: Memoir '44 also supports a couple of variant types of gameplay.
In team play you have between two and three members on each "team", with each player controlling a different part of the battlefield. For two players, one player controls the center, and the other the two flanks; for three players, each one gets one section of the board. Cards are held in common, the players discuss their use, and then the player who the card affects the most plays it.
For Overlord play, you actually need multiple copies of the game, which you put together to form a larger battlefield. Each side has a Commander-in-Chief and two or three Field Generals. There are special rules for passing cards and the ability for every player to take action during every turn. Special Overlord rules are at the Days of Wonder website.
I was originally planning to stage a team play as part of the playtest for this review, but ultimately decided not to. The rules seem fine, but they really just describe a method of playing by consensus, and I didn't feel that it'd be intriguing enough for our gaming group over an evening's play. (Mileage for other groups, who are less demanding of winning through their own rugged individualism, may vary.)
Conversely, the Overlord rules give real and meaningful weight to each person's decisions and look like a great way to expand Memoir '44 into impressive multiplayer play. Again, I haven't tested this out, but that's because I just have one copy of the game sitting on my shelf. If I had more, I'd definitely drag an Overlord scenario out for multiplayer play.
Relationship to Other Game
Memoir '44 is a tactical game of military conquest. This falls toward the most representative side of the spectrum for wargames. On the least representative side you have strategic wargames like Risk or Attack!. In between you have operational-level wargames, like the recent Axis & Allies: D-Day.
It's also worth noting that Memoir '44 is a short, simple, and fairly casual wargame. It'll appeal to lots of people who aren't that fond of wargames, like me. It plays in a really reasonable amount of time (1 hour), the gameplay is simple to learn, and decisions are neatly constrained by the Command Cards.
Memoir '44 is actually one in a series of games called Commands & Colors, which are all by Richard Borg, and which all use this same card-driven game system. Battle Cry is the only other release currently out; it's a civil war game by Avalon Hill. There's a Rome v. Carthage game planned called Commands & Colors: Ancients, and I've also heard of playtests of an American Revolution game, a Napoleonic game, and a fantasy game. The game system is robust and would do a great job of adapting to different periods and genres through good use of scenarios and tactics cards.
The Game Design
Memoir '44 is a game that stands up to (perhaps demands) replay. And, it's a nice, casual wargame that will appeal to people not usually enamored by the genre. Here's some of the best points.
Great Tactics: The tactics in the game are very enjoyable, as round by round you try and make the best of your current situation. You continue to be able to make meaningful decisions that have real impacts of the game.
Interesting Card Management: The cards make the game something more than just a tactical contest. You also have to carefully balance your cards, as you dance back and forth between the three sections of battle, often using your current move to set units up for a move with a future card.
Scenarios Make for Great Replayability: The scenarios are the true heart of this game, as everyone provides for different gameplay, and to a certain extent a different puzzle. The scenarios also allow the opportunity for funky special rules, such as one in the book where you actually drop paratroopers from above the board, and this allows even more neat variety. To date, I've played four different scenarios, and each one allowed for very different challenges, based on the terrain and the troop setup. I suspect I'm going to play all sixteen scenarios contained in the rulebook, probably by summer's end.
A Very Different Sort of Wargame: Finally, I have to give Memoir '44 kudos for being a very different type of wargame. The gameplay is fast and simple. The cards give you lots of tactical options while still keeping things constrained enough to not be a burden. This is a wargame that will appeal to couples (my wife plays it with me) and more casual gamers who prefer most German games over traditional, longer American wargames.
Here's my one complaint:
Randomness Can Sometimes Impact Gameplay: In extreme cases, the random draw of the game can potentially ruin a game. Out of the eight games I've played to date, in one of them the Allies totally fell apart due to a terrible card draw that left most of their troops stranded in the middle section for the duration of the game. Overall, the randomness level is quite acceptable, but be aware that this will be an issue every once in a while.
I knew from my first play of Memoir '44 that it was an above average game. The system is clean and enjoyable. On the other hand, the system worked so smoothly and transparently that I couldn't quite figure out how it might earn an exceptional rating.
Now, eight games in, I have to say this game definitely keeps drawing me back. As I said, I'm fairly certain that I'm going to play both sides of all sixteen scenarios (let alone the many that I expect to appear on the Internet after the game's official D-Day release). Any game that's this well designed, and which earns an expected 32 or more gameplays has to be rated a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Memoir '44 is a game that should appeal to lots of different people. It's a nice, casual tactical wargame that appeals to people who aren't traditional wargamers. It's also very tactically sound, which means that more strategic players will enjoy it. Finally, it's got a wonderful sense of history that really appeals to me as an amateur historian.
Be aware that it probably plays best as a two-player game, unless you're going to get really serious and put this together with another set to play Overlord scenarios. Beyond that, however, Memoir '44 earns some of my highest recommendations for the genre.
