The Components

Eastern Front comes in a small (flimsy) box with a large quantity of components. These include:

• 44 terrain tiles
• 10 round badges & mines
• 4 rectangular obstacles
• 14 special unit badges
• 72 army units
• 1 comissar chip
• 1 rulebook

Terrain Tiles: These are new terrains to be used on the Eastern Front. They include trenches, city ruins, russian villages, winter forest, ravines, marshes, frozen rivers, and factory complex. These are all printed on white tiles, to help imply a frozen terrain. They're otherwise standard linen-textured cardboard, as in the original set. These new tiles have a different feel to them, I believe because they were printed in China instead of Germany, but they look fine next to the original tiles.

Notably missing from this set were cards to make it easy to remember what the new terrain does.

Other Cardboard Bits: The game also includes 28 other cardboard bits, including Russian victory medals, minefields, battle stars, a few new obstacles (bunkers & dragon's teeth) and several new unit badges (snipers, combat engineers, cavalry, Russian elite, and Finnish ski troops). They're all printed on linen-textured cardboard and are a good match for the original game. In addition, the graphics tend to be colorful and appealing.

Army Units: About half of the set is taken up by a ton of new army units: 24 red tanks, 42 red soldiers, and 6 red guns, making up the armor, infantry, and artillery units for the Russians. These are all brand new models depicting the Russian forces. The armor are actually T-34 tanks and the artillery is actually ZIS-3 Anti-tank guns. The models are all nicely done, and up to the standards of the original game.

Comissar Chip: A high quality Poker chip showing the Russian Political Comissar on one side and a red star on the other. It helps the Russians give orders.

Rulebook: The game actually contains two rulebooks, one in English and one in French. The English rulebook is 24 pages long, printed full color, and beautifully designed and laid out as has become common with Days of Wonders' games. It includes rules for all the new terrain & other pieces, but more importantly also includes 8 new scenarios (#38 through #45 using the M'44 numbering). One of the scenarios is an Overlord scenario, while another uses pieces from the first Memoir '44 expansion, the "Terrain Pack". The remaining 6 can be played exclusively with the pieces from this expansion (and the core game).

Box & Trays: The packaging for Eastern Front is a little disappointing. The box is made out of pretty flimsy cardstock that I can't imagine holding up if I carried the expansion box around. A plastic tray holds all of the cardboard bits. It's pretty sturdy and would be OK except for the fact that you have to flip it upside down to get anything out, which has annoyed me just about everytime I've played. It's also not quite tall enough to store all the hexes. The army units, meanwhile, are shipped in a set of three interlocking plastic shells. I've already thrown out one of these to make the game pieces easier to store. I should probably toss out the other two, and just use plastic baggies instead, but that feels inelegant.

These supplement, with the original Memoir '44 game is technically all you need to play the wars of the Eastern Front. However, if you want to full experience, you'll also want to buy the Winter/Desert Map board (the third M'44 expansion). It just replaces the normal green map with a white wintery one, but it offers a nice aesthetic (and isn't very expensive).

Overall, Memoir '44: Eastern Front doesn't offer quite as good of a value as the original game, but that's inevitably the case with expansions to game system. However, it does offer the same quality, utility, and beauty that was in the original game. My only real complaint was in the packaging, and thus I've let Eastern Front eke in a full "5" out of "5" for Style: it's another beautiful and beautifully produced game by Days of Wonder.

The Game Play

The main purpose of this expansion is to imagine a new front for the battles of World War II: The Eastern Front. This is done via new troops, new terrain, new command rules, and ultimately new scenarios. The troops in Memoir '44 act pretty much the same as the troops in the main game, but there's a lot of variety in the other elements.

New Terrain: Some of the terrains in Eastern Front are solely evocative of the wintery terrain. For example, the Russian Villages and the Winter Forests act exactly like their greener brethren. Likewise the Factory Complex is another town variant. However there are a few new terrains too:

• Trenches: Stop all movement and block artillery. Keep armor from battling, and protect units defensively.
• City Ruins: Act like a Town or Village with a sandbag.
• Ravine: Block armor and artillery. Act as a sandbag.
• Marshes: Stop movement in, slow movement out (like a hedgerow), and block artillery. Keep armor from battling the turn they enter or exit.
• Frozen River: Can be freely crossed, but you can lose up to 2 units if the ice breaks.

New Obstacles: A few new obstacles include the winter field bunkers, which act like normal bunkers available to both sides, and the dragon's teeth, which block anything but infantry (and stop infantry).

Minefields: These two sided tokens start out the game hidden. They can show a "0", "1", "2", or "4" on the flip side and do that many dice of damage to any enemy unit entering a hex. Friendly & enemy units alike must stop when entering a mined hex.

New Badges: There are considerably more rules for special units in the Eastern Front. These include:

• Sniper: Moves like special forces, may battle after entering a no-battle hex and retreat extra like the French Resistance. Also has a special 1-1-1-1-1 attack that also hits with stars. Only has one figure, but is only killed by a grenade.
• Combat Engineers: Ignores protective terrain used by enemies, removes wire faster, and may remove mines.
• Cavalry: May move 3 hexes and battle, but just does 2-1 damage.
• Finnish Ski Troops: May move 3 hexes and battle, and like the French Resistance may battle after entering no-battle terrain and retreat extra. However only attacks at 3-2.

The Commisar Rule: The Russians have a special deficit that is used in most scenarios. They don't get to directly play command cards. Instead they must place a command card under the political commisar a full turn before it's played, then reveal it on the next turn (while playing a new card). There are only two exceptions to this: recons and counter attacks may be played straight from your hand (leaving the current commisar card for use on a future turn).

New Scenarios: The new scenarios in the Eastern Front cover much of the war, from 1939 (the Russo-Finnish War) to 1944 (Breakout to Lisyanka).

They also, as you would expect, take advantage of many of these other new rules. This is done gradually: the first frozen river appears in #38; the first trenches and engineers in #40, the first mines and snipers in #41, etc.

Beyond that the scenarios in Eastern Front feel in many ways like "Advanced Memoir '44". They tend to have more intricate layouts, more special rules (without being too intimidating), and require more points for victory than most of the original scenarios. In scenarios #38 and #39, for example, most of the infantry figures get used and in #39 the Axis gets to put out nearly every one of its tank units. Each of scenarios #38-43 require at least 6 medals to win, and #41 (Stalingrad) requires an amazing 10 medals for victory.

Relationships to Other Games

Eastern Front is the second expansion for Memoir '44. You need the base game to play; the Arctic/Desert Map, which is expansion #3, will make your gaming prettier, though it's not required. Expansion #1, the Terrain Pack, is totally separate from this new expansion, though there is one scenario which uses parts and rules from both expansions.

On the whole Eastern Front is the more approachable of the two Memoir '44 supplements. With its 8 new scenarios, and everything in the expansion working toward the detailing of those new scenarios, it works pretty much like the base game, providing new battles to fight when you're done with the original 16, or just ready for a change of pace.

The Game Design

Overall Eastern Front is a very well constructed expansion to Memoir '44. It's exactly what most players of the game want to see. Much of the expansion (the new army pieces and the new white terrain) is solely evocative, but does a good job of depicting the frozen Russian lands.

The new terrains, obstacles, and troops are generally interesting expansions of what's already a nice game system. I loved whipping around scenario #38 with the Finnish Ski Troops, for example. I suspect the new rules for engineers and snipers (which I haven't played with yet) will likewise provide some interesting variety to the game without changing it at a truly fundamental level.

The coolest rule change of the game is that of the commisar. Reflecting increasing difficulty in command with the commisar chip is pure brilliance. It requires a great double-think for both the Russians and their opponents that opens up a whole new dimension to the game.

Finally, the scenarios are entirely standout too. As I mentioned already they're like "Advanced Memoir '44". They require some of the greatest thought of any of the scenarios I've played in Memoir '44 (thus far, #1-10 from the original game, and #38-39 from this new supplement), and I suspect are also some of the most replayable.

On the whole, Eastern Front is a superb expansion to Memoir '44 that shows exactly how adaptable the core game system is, and also presents it in a very approachable manner for players. It earns a full "5" out of "5" for Substance, and I hope we'll be seeing more supplements like this for this terrific war game.

Conclusion

A great expansion to Memoir '44 that brings the battle to the Eastern Front, offering up new army units, new terrains, new rules, and everything else that you need to fight the game in the frozen Russian lands. I think this supplement is what every Memoir '44 fan has been hoping for since the game was originally released. Highly recommended & a lot of fun.

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