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Memoir '44: Terrain Pack is the first expansion to Richard Borg's Memoir '44 game. It needs the original Memoir '44 game to play, but none of the other expansions are required (although the desert map, expansion #3, makes one of the scenarios look nicer).
The Components
 Terrain Pack comes in a small (flimsy) box with a large quantity of components. These include:
- 88 terrain tiles
- 20 round markers
- 8 rectangular obstacles
- 28 special unit badges
- 1 rulebook
Terrain Tiles: 66 of these tiles are new terrains: a variety of desert terrain, high ground, marshes, road, railroads, and some variant lakes and rivers. Another 22 are "landmarks": special tiles such as dams, airfields, churches, RADAR stations, etc. They're all good matches for the original tiles, though they're printed in a different country and the linen-texturing process is slightly different. There is so much variety of tiles that it's actually sometimes hard to find the ones you're looking for, a problem I hadn't really noticed in either the original game or the other expansion because they each have smaller tile sets.
Notably missing from this set were cards to make it easy to remember what the new terrain does. (There is now a good aid sheet at this fan site, though I'd still prefer to have cards, as a single sheet listing everything gets a bit busy.)
Other Cardboard Bits: The Terrain Pack comes with a mass of other bits, all printed full-color on high-quality, linen-textured cardboard.
The round markers include minefields, big gun targeting markers, British and Italian victory medals, and the new battle stars, used to mark units or spaces with special rules.
The rectangular obstacles include a train, fords, and a collection of bridges and crossings.
The special unit badges are a colorful selection of 18 different special units. Most notable to me was the US 101st Airborne medal. (That was the unit from Band of Brothers.) There's also a bunch of Engineer medallions and troop medallions for Australia, Yugoslavia, Spain, and lots more.
Rulebook: As with the other expansions, this one has two rulebooks, one in English, one in French. It's 24 pages long, and well laid out: both beautiful and useful. There's 12 pages of special rules for all that new terrain plus descriptions of all the new badges. However, there's only 4 scenarios included (#34 through #37), all four of which require just the base game and this Terrain Pack to run.
Box & Trays: The only disappointing elements of this expansion are the box and tray. The box is flimsy, while the tray is very hard to use; there's no fingerholds, and so you have to dump everything to get anything out, which frustrates me literally every time I play. Also, though the tray has nice hexagonal spaces for tiles, the badges and round markers free float a bit more. After I mentioned my similar concerns with Expansion Pack #2 I heard back that Days of Wonder that they're aware of the issue of packaging, and plan to correct it in future expansions (#4+, presumably).
Overall, the components for the Terrain Pack are up to the usual high qualities of Days of Wonder, packaging problems excepted. It's not as good of a value to me as the other M44 supplements, just because I don't find all the cardboard bits as sexy as a new set of plastic figures, but it'll still be a very good purchase for any M44 fan. As such I give it a "4" out of "5" for Style.
The Game Play
The Terrain Pack's main purpose is to introduce a huge amount of variety to the Memoir '44 game.
New Terrain: There's a ton of new terrain in this Terrain Pack.
Desert Terrain. Four of the new terrain types (Oasis, Palm Forests, Desert Villages, and Wadis) are desert-colored tiles that are meant to fill out a desert scenario--such as the battles of Rommel in Northern Africa. Palm Forests and Desert Towns and Villages act just like their regular kin. Oases stop movement, and give some protection against attacks, but don't prevent your attacking the turn you move in, so they're sort of like a friendlier version of forests. Wadis are a special terrain that form a sort of tunnel, making it hard to attack in and out and channelling movement in certain directions.
This new terrain looks best if used on the Desert Map, which is expansion #3 for Memoir '44, but that's not necessary.
Restrictive Terrain. Other new terrain are High Ground, Marshes, and Mountains. These all restrict movement and attack much more than normal terrains.
Roads. Roads are the opposite. Anything staying on a road gets +1 move a turn.
Railroads. Railwood tracks offer some minor annoyances to armor and artillery, but more importantly allow train movement.
More Water. There are some new water pieces: impassable lakes and river forks. They work much the same as the rivers in the original game, but give some visual difference.
Landmarks. Finally there are a bunch of rarer terrains which are called "landmarks". These are dams, airfields, barracks, cemeteries, lighthouses, supply depots, etc. These tend to either have no movement/battle/LoS effects or else act mch like towns & villages. However, they add a lot of visual difference to the boards & also are spots intended for special rules & objectives in a scenario.
New Obstacles: New rectangular obstacles in this set include fords (which allow rivers to be slowly crossed), a train (which can hold troops and move along a railway), several bridges, field bunkers, and road blocks.
New Markers: New circular markers in the game include minefields, crosshairs (used with the big guns, described below), and battle stars.
Minefields. These two sided tokens start out the game hidden. They can show a "0", "1", "2", "3", 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.
Battle Stars. Finally a new idea is introduced, the "battle star". These are green & silver stars used to mark when units or spaces have special rules. The rulebook also contains a large set of special rules drawn from various scenarios & includes special rules for some of the new terrain. The whole idea here is to show off the adaptability of the game system and give players ideas for what they can include in their own scenarios. The battle stars are also a very nice on-board reminder so that you don't forget things.
New Badges: A large number of unit badges are included in the Terrain Pack. Many are just unit specific icons for a variety of special units, so you can definitively say that a specifical unit is Australian, airborne, etc. However there are also badges for two units with new rules: big guns and combat engineers.
- Big Gun: Artillery. Fires at 3-3-2-2-1-1-1 and zeroes in on a target when you hit it. You mark this with a crosshair marker, then get a +1 die to hit that unit until it moves.
- Combat Engineers: Infantry. Ignores protective terrain used by enemies, removes wire faster, and may remove mines.
New Scenarios: There are only 4 scenarios in the Terrain Pack, which will disappoint many players. Even more disappointing is the fact that many of the items included in this pack are never used. There's never a moving train, for example, nor do engineers show up. Most of the landmarks don't appear in any scenarios, and the desert terrain only gets used once (and barely there).
The scenarios included cover a pretty wide area, and show what this Terrain Pack can be used for. They include one desert scenario, which is a tank-on-tank battle in pretty wide open terrain; one Market Garden scenario, which introduces fortresses and a big gun; one blow-up-a-dam scenario which uses heavily restricted terrain with troops caught between mountains, lake and rivers; and a final German scenario which makes good use of roads as well as minefields and more lakes.
The Memoir '44 system is very expandable, and this supplement was clearly about giving players the tools to create their own scenarios. As time goes on there will definitely be more official scenarios available which use the elements herein as well. There's already a Terarin Pack scenario in the Eastern Front supplement, which does have a moving train, as well as another Market Garden scenario on the web which makes the first use of flooded fields. A final scenario on the web returns to the desert for another tank battle. However, none of these latter scenarios are available in this pack directly.
Relationships to Other Games
Terrain Pack is the first expansion for Memoir '44. You need the base game to play, but nothing else. If you get expansion #3, the Winter/Desert Map your desert battles will look a little better. In addition expansion #2, Eastern Front, contains one scenario which you can use with the new terrain from this set.
Terrain Pack is clearly intended for the builders of Memoir '44 who want to design their own battles. As such, it's the less approachable and less important of the two new supplements for the average player, but will be more appealing to people already laying out World War II battles of their own.
The Game Design
Overall, as a player I found the Terrain Pack somewhat disappointing. There's loads of cool stuff in here, but it's scattered, it doesn't provide a cohesive story, and much of it doesn't even get used. I played through all four scenarios actually contained in this supplement, as well as one of the two additional ones available online, and I felt like I'd barely touched upon what was contained here, which I suppose does suggest there's still a lot of untouched potential in this supplement.
However the scenarios that do exist show how much these new elements can change the original game. Knightsbridge (#34) laid out a a huge, open, tanks-only battle unlike anything else in the game while Valkenseaard (#48, on the web) and Schwammenuel Dam (#36) both portrayed much tighter and more constrained battles than anything else we've seen. Schwammenauel Dam (#36) portrayed a game with a timer on it forcing action (as the Axis try and blow up that dam) while Across the River Roer (#37) showed how roads can be used for stunning turnarounds. I didn't like the balance of all the scenarios (#34 was a pushover both times through and the timer on #36 seemed too random), but I did look how remarkably different they were from what I'd seen before.
I have some problems advocating this first expansion to the average Memoir '44 player. Until considerable more web scenarios appear you're not going to get to use some portion of this supplement, and you won't get to use any of the new elements more than once, perhaps twice. If you're a Memoir '44 fan you'll definitely still want to get it eventually, but it'll probably be the last choice from the currently available expansions.
I have no problems advocating this expansion to the "kitters" who are actively creating new scenarios using the online editor or who are playing the player-created scenarios there. Though there are only two official Terrain Pack scenarios online there are nearly two dozen which have been created by fans, just in the short time since this Pack's release.
As a player I give the Terrain Pack a high "3" out of "5" for Substance: slightly above average. I suspect kitters would give it a "4".
Conclusion
Memoir '44: Terrain Pack, the first expansion for Days of Wonders' World War II game is very much a do-it-yourself kit. Huge amount of new terrain and obstacles are introduced, but many aren't actually used in the four scenarios included in the game (or even in the two official Terrain Pack scenarios that have since been put online). For now the Terrain Pack just gives players a taste of what's to come as these new ideas are used more.
However, for players constructing their own Memoir '44 battles, this will be a huge cornucopia of new possibilities, allowing the expansion of their Memoir '44 games to North Africa, Market Garden, and elsewhere.
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