Memoir '44
Alan writes:
Alan: Aha, this is how the line of sight rules work.
Gillian: What's "line of sight?"
This short snippet shows the difference between Gillian and me. I may have picked up Memoir '44 without an exact idea of how it would work, but years of video games such as X-Com or Jagged Alliance 2 or tabletop games like Warhammer meant that I at least had an idea of concepts such as Line of Sight, or Hit Points, or Damage Modifiers. But even these basic terms were alien to Gillian - yet we were able to pick up and play Memoir '44 with almost no fuss. It's a wargame, in that there's tactics and strategy and dice rolling, but a pretty simple one.
The first thing anyone will notice about Memoir '44 is that once the game is set up, it looks fantastic. Other games may go for wooden blocks or cardboard chits, but Memoir '44 knows what it is. It's a game about recreating warfare, and chances are the last time you did that, you were wielding a stick and making the noise of a gun while charging across the playground. So you get a whole load of plastic soldiers and tanks to play with.
As you'd expect from the name, the game takes place around the D-Day Normandy landings of June 1944. Each of the 16 scenarios pits the Allies against the Axis forces. The board is double-sided, one side all green, and one with a beach, so while some battles take place inland, in some you'll be recreating the assault on the beaches. The board is divided into hexes, and there's an illustration on each scenario showing where hills, trees, bunkers and barbed wire should go- all thick cardboard hexes or plastic like the soldiers. Troop deployment is part of the set up - your forces are where they start are decided by the scenario.
On your turn, what you do is dictated by your hand of Command Cards. On your turn, you play one of these cards, take the moves and attacks it allows, and then draw a card at the end of your turn. Most of these cards allow you to move units in one section of the battlefield, so you're always having to adjust your strategy to what your hand will allow. It's as much about managing your hand of cards as it is your troops.
Attacks are resolved by using dice; the more powerful he unit, the more dice you can use. Fr example, infantry use 2 dice when shooting at a unit two hexes away, while a tank unit uses three. Hits are decided by the symbols on the dice, so more fragile units have more chance of being hit. It's a neat system that gets rid of the need for lookup tables and calculations and other things that can make wargames quite daunting. Hit points are easily tracked, too - each hit removes a model, and when a unit runs out of models, it's destroyed. Each destroyed unit gives you a victory point, and depending on the scenario there may be victory points for taking a particular hex. Get the required points, usually between four and six, and you've won.
Memoir '44 is an easy game - perhaps too easy for some, as sometimes opportunities for tactics are low and luck can occasionally decide a game. It's very accessible, and is perfect for anyone with an interest in WWII, as the theme is strong and there's lots of historical detail in the rule book. With the mountain of expansions available, it does at times feel like a starter pack - though nowhere near as bad in that respect as the likes of Warhammer or Warhammer 40K.
And don't worry about the Line of Sight rules. They're simple.
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