Knights of the Cardboard Castle

Some quick notes and observations on Memoir ’44 from a six player game that we had at CarcaSean using the Hedgerow Hell map. It uses the same Command and Colors system as Battlelore so it was relatively easy for me to pick up and learn.

• Every unit can do ranged attacks. This game is about World War 2 so that’s only to be expected. I really like the 3-2-1 rule that reduces the number of dice infantry can throw depending on how far away the target is.
• Artillery can shoot really far! Plus the number of dice it throws doesn’t get reduced by distance! Plus it doesn’t need line of sight on its target! But the best benefit is that its dice doesn’t get reduced by anything, making it perfect for reducing entrenched enemy forces. I think it would be interesting to add in the need for spotter units to call out targets for the artillery though.
• The plastic miniatures are nicer and look better than those in Battlelore. Of course the Battlelore base set includes many more miniatures but the ones in Memoir ’44 look more solid and more detailed to me.
• No morale or battleback rules which means that any soldiers coming under fire won’t be able to automatically shoot back. This feels odd to me. For some reason, I can accept the abstraction more in a fantasy game of medieval combat but in a game with modern firearms I intuitively expect that any soldiers with guns will automatically return fire without needing to wait for orders from their general.
• No Lore cards of course but some of the regular Command cards have effects that feel like Lore cards to me, including calling for air strikes. Apparently the set of Command cards we used came from the Operation Overlord expansion specifically meant to expand the game to accommodate more players but I’m not sure how much of a difference there is between these cards and the regular ones that come with the base game.
• The multiplayer rules kind of suck to me. I very much prefer that every player hold his or her own hand of cards. Sean says that it’s meant to create a different kind of experience by simulating the chain of command and limited channels of communication, but I don’t think it’s fun. It just creates frustration and boredom for the players who don’t get cards to play.
• Tanks feel odd. In real life, tanks rock due to their heavy armor, making them hard to kill. Tanks in Memoir ’44 seem fragile to me. Instead they are powerful offensive engines in this game since they always roll their 3 dice in combat regardless of distance, can move much further than infantry and can perform follow through bonus attacks.

Either way, our side playing as the Allies lost badly against Sean’s Nazis as I didn’t appreciate just how tough the terrain was. Tanks are practically useless on this map, leaving the infantry to do all the heavy lifting. Chee Wee’s idea about steadily moving the artillery forward to assault the fortified positions while using infantry to protect the artillery pieces would probably have worked best.

Still despite the unimpressive experience I had with Hedgerow Hell I think that Memoir ’44 is a good game that’s worth owning even for someone who already has Battlelore. That puts it on the “another game I’d like to eventually own” list.