Memoir 44

 I picked up this board game a few weeks ago and am very impressed. Being a creator of a board game, I have high expectations that need to be met. And this game met and exceeding them all.

Having thought about making our board game (Weapons Of Mass Destruction) with double-sided boards to keep game play from getting stale, I was overly impressed to open the box and see a 2-sided board which offered a variety of terrain. The pieces remained fairly simple with there being tanks, soldiers and artillery, but also included some sandbags, barbed wire and hedgehogs to affect movement of the other pieces. The manual was well laid out and is easy to refer to, which really means nothing until you try to play a game that has a crappy manual. The game comes with 18 different scenarios to play out that replicate actual battles during the war and therefore have advantages and disadvantages to playing either side. There are terrain hexes that are placed on the board that keep each game different from the rest. With all these varieties of board, pieces and terrain, it offers that ability to create your own scenarios, but this proves to be more difficult than first anticipated as there is a delicate balance to the game that must be kept.

Being used to playing games that go on for many hours (if not days!), it was a relief to finish a game in under an hour that left both players feeling satisfied and not wanting to cause physical harm to the other. The game is a two-player game but allows for team play (which I have not yet explored and cannot fairly comment on). I took awhile to flush out all the rules from other games, but the part of the game that took awhile to get over was the fact that the card that you play each turn dictates what pieces you can move and battle with (as opposed to freely moving any and all of your pieces which results in turns taking way too long). So if you have a lot of troops, but don’t get the cards that allow for their movement, you can get screwed pretty easily which allows for every game being very different. The battling is different than games that I have played in the past where the dice have pictures of the units on it, and when rolled indicates that one of those units is hit. The gameplay is relatively simple, but strategy still plays a major roll which somehow results in a great game to play. And if you do become bored with this set, there are many expansion sets with new scenarios, pieces and cards to rekindle your interest.

Anyone wanna play a game?

by DJ Mikey Bones on Feb.07, 2011