Naturelich Games

During the last few months I was reading many gameblogs that were full of praise for Memoir '44 (e.g. Memoir '44, The Seafarers of Catan, and Other Scenarios, Memoir, football and Blue Moon, Musings On >> The Element of Chance in Board Game Design, The Problem with Luck). It felt like a natural decision to buy the Days of Wonder-game (desgined by Richard Borg). Both Shelak and I had played Battletech a few years back, so teaming up with Shelak him felt like a great idea which he couldn't resist either. As I pointed out, the rules are rather similar to Battletech just much, much easier. And the biggest plus: the game is *really* quick! How great is that?!

We started with the first scenario in the book: Pegasus Bridge, the scenario which sets of the D-Day campaign. The Allies launch an airborne strike led by Major John Howard and battle for the now famous bridge.
The Allied forces surprise the Germans and get many many advantages, e.g. far more units and far more command cards.

As the rules state, we played the game twice. Naturelich played the Allied forces first, while Shelak took the German troops. After a couple of turns I was able to take Orne bridge and score my first two Medals (i.e. Victory Points). I had not browsed through the command cards (which basically allow players to issue orders to their troops) and was caught by surprise as the Germans started to fortify their positions with more sandbags. Hell, this made it a lot more difficult. The dice were totally on my side as I got very very lucky: two of my infantry units were decimated to one soldier. However, I was able to retreat and bring them into a safe distance before the Germans were able to finish what they had begun. In the end I won another two Medals and scored a gloriuos victory for the Allied forces.

Time for a rematch. This time Naturelich played the Germans. Again, after a couple of turns Shelak was able to fortify his attacking positions with additional sandbags. While the Germans were able to recapture Orne Bridge (scoring several medals) the Allied forces hit them strong on their left flank, on Pegasus bridge. The sandbags made the Allied forces almost invincible. There was not much chance for the Germans to win this. Their commander made one unit sally forth which immediately got them annihilated. Another few turns later the Germans had three medals, while the Allied only had two. But the situation was grim. The German commander got very very lucky to draw a command card which allowed them to go after the one Allied unit which had been decimated to one person: move two and still battle with one more battle die. And there it was, the initial D-Day attack was stopped, right there. What a relief that this was only a boardgame!

I totally enjoyed Memoir '44 and I am thankful to find all your opinions about this game. This game might have brought me back, a little bit closer to the wargame arena. I won't give up German style boardgames now, but Memoir '44 is something I will be very happy to bring to the table in the future! I had a lot of fun playing it, and I guess so did Shelak. Maybe it is time for a revenge soon...