Review #1 - Memoir '44

When I was a kid my dad and I used to play a game with those green army men every boy must have had growing up. We would line up our armies at the opposite ends of the room and then roll or throw different sized balls to knock them down - a ping pong ball represented infantry fire, a tennis ball was for tanks and a small basketball for the very big explosions, with the winner obviously being the one who knocks down every unit in the other person's army. Of course, Memoir '44 is nothing at all like the game I just told you about and yet, looking at the set up board I can't help but feel a little nostalgic.

Memoir '44 chooses to go for a slightly more sophisticated gameplay than 'crush your opponent's troops with a basketball' and is instead a game of strategy and luck (I'll get back to this later), where you are moving your units in an attempt to either wipe out the enemy troops or conquer objectives. The game board is divided into three sections and you move the units in each of these by playing an action card with a corresponding section pictured on it. All combat is resolved by rolling dice and the number of casualties in a unit is determined by how many pictures of that unit (or grenades) you roll. Kill the last soldier in a unit and you gain a medal, gain 4-6 medals and you win the game - it's all very simple and takes no more than 10 minutes to explain and start playing.

One of the strongest points of Memoir '44, at least in my opinion, is how well it makes the theme come through. Of course that's partially down to some great components but, without a doubt, the biggest contribution to this is made by the fantastic scenario book. The game comes with 16 scenarios, each of them not only explaining how to lay out the board but also providing a snippet of history by giving you the name, date, background and the historical outcome of the battle you're about to play. As a history buff, I really enjoyed learning something every time I sat down to play a new scenario, but, even if you don't care too much about history, I think having that extra bit of background information will still help a lot with your immersion in the game and give you a reason for sending all of those green men to certain death.

However, if you are looking for a deeply strategic, chess like match of wits on a World War II battlefield, where you have to count 5 move ahead and constantly predict your opponents next move, Memoir '44 may not be the game for you. Between the card draws and dice rolls your success in the game will very often come down to sheer luck, with all the best laid plans coming to ruin simply because you had no card to order your units in a section or because the dice you rolled did not land you even a single kill. Here's the thing though, as frustrating as it might be to loose a sure win scenario because the dice hate you, I think all of these random elements were necessary for the type of game Memoir '44 strives to be, as, by prioritising thematic and historic accuracy, the scenario book sometimes purposely sets the board up with one of the players starting in an extremely disadvantageous position and then the random elements serve to give that players at least a slim chance of winning. I've also found that most of the games most memorable moments actually come out of these random factors - you tense up when your troops are surrounded on sides with certain death awaiting next turn only to find out that the other players has no card to order the units in that area, you cry out in anguish when your tanks annihilate 3 out 4 soldiers in the enemy unit only to have the survivor go full Rambo and destroy all 3 tanks with one lucky roll. It may not give you the same satisfaction that you would get by perfectly executing a plan you've been developing for most of the game, but Memoir '44 is still chock full moments you will remember a long time after the game has been packed back in the box.

Another thing to keep in mind before going into Memoir '44 is that it can take a very long time to set up. Because each scenario aims for historical accuracy, the board itself is quite plain, with one side for country side and another for beach landing battles, but you also get a ton of hexes representing forests, towns, rivers, hills, etc., as well as as plastic pieces for sandbags, hedgehogs and barbed wire, all of which have to be laid out to represent the environment the battle took place it. Once you add having to set up all of your units and scenario specific tiles, like bridges or bunkers, the whole thing can easily take you 15 minutes or more before it's ready to be played. One caveat to this though, is the fact that the rule book recommends you play each scenario at least twice, swapping sides to make for scenario imbalances and, in my own experience, we have never played this game just once, usually settling in for anywhere between 2 and 4 plays of one scenario. And I think that makes the long set up more acceptable because you are no longer spending 15 minutes to set up a 30 minute game, instead you are setting up a game that will last you for an hour or two and I find that much more acceptable.

All in all, I really like Memoir '44. It may not be a big, complicated war epic some people would want, but it is a fantastic, highly thematic game that successfully recreates the childhood joy of playing with army men. Of course it has a few drawbacks, but, at least for me, they are not enough to compromise the experience and in fact, ever since I got it, Memoir '44 is the game that's been hitting the table most often (even if my fiance completely trashes me almost every time).