Memoir ’44 Eastern Front expansion review
As much as we enjoyed adding Memoir ’44 Pacific Theater to the base board game, what would a love of Memoir ’44 be without picking another expansion?
This time we headed back to the battles on the European continent and picked up a copy of Memoir ’44 Eastern Front.
As stated in the rulebook, “The Eastern Front expansion is devoted to the ferocious battles that pit the Axis and Soviet forces against each other.”
What’s the draw of the Eastern Front expansion?
Like the Pacific Theater expansion, the Eastern Front also provides an additional set of figurines for a new army – the Soviet infantry, artillery, and armor (all with their unique look) as well as new terrain tiles with their specific effects. The Eastern Front also includes 8 battle scenarios. However the last scenario requires terrain tiles from the Terrain Pack expansion (which we don’t have…yet) and the 7th scenario is an Overlord scenario which requires 2 base games to play.
The catch with those last 2 scenarios essentially means that there are just 6 new scenarios to play out of the box. But even with that limit, we’re so glad we bought a copy of Memoir ’44 Eastern Front.
New Rules
The biggest twist to Memoir ’44 with this game expansion is the addition of the Russian Political Commissar rules. As the rulebook states, “Stalin’s paranoia of any potential rivals resulted in the purge of some of the best and brightest officers. Those who remained were timid leaders or groveling ‘yes-men’ to their political commissars.”
In game terms this translates to a very unique game element – advance orders through the Russian Command rules.
The person playing the Soviet side will have a Commissar Chip. The player selects the card he/she will play on his/her NEXT turn and places it under the chip. So when it’s his turn, he selects one card from his hand to be placed under the chip and takes the card already under the chip and plays that command card this turn. In essence, that player must choose a command card to play on a following turn before even knowing the results of his current command. (A few command tactic cards can be played directly from your hand, but just a few.)
Playing with the Russian Command rules makes for some very tricky playing and a lot of hoping that your opponent doesn’t pull out too many surprises. But it’s also a lot of fun trying to set the right commands in motion.
Blitz rules are also added in the Eastern Front. They basically add a twist so scenarios in the early period of WWII give additional advantage to the Axis forces as they advance. And more additions include Minefields, Snipers, Combat Engineers, Cavalry, and Finnish Ski Troops – all with their special effects.
The new elements add a lot of good flavor to the game and help make each scenario unique by trying to mimic similar situations to the actual events while still maintaining the simplified approach to battling.
Winter Terrain
Because a lot of the battles on the Eastern Front in the earlier years of the war were fought in winter months, the terrain tiles have a white/winter style to them. Some of the new terrain tiles are Trenches, City Ruins, Winter Forests, Russian Villages, Ravines, and Marshes. They give a nice feel to the season of the battles.
However, Days of Wonder also created a Desert/Winter board for use with the game that is all Desert on one side (good for the Mediterranean Theater expansion) and Winter/White on the other. Because we haven’t bought that board yet, we can only imagine that playing on that Winter board would be great for use with the Eastern Front expansion.
Final Thoughts
Our assessment of Memoir ’44 Eastern Front is similar to our thoughts on the Pacific Theater expansion – a great addition to the game. And we’ve played each about the same amount of times. Each have their own unique flavors and we wish each had more scenarios. The good news is that many people have created additional scenarios of WWII battles which are posted on the Days of Wonder Memoir ’44 website for download. Another great way to extend your game play.
D-day
We’re posting this review on June 6, 2013 – the 69th anniversary of D-Day. And like we did last year, we’re having a Memoir ’44 game night tonight to commemorate. This year we’re planning on having more people over so we’ll play the Overlord version of the game – where you can play with up to 8 players by combining 2 base game sets of Memoir ’44, with 2 boards side by side, and play with two teams facing off against each other.
Should be a lot of fun and we’ll post photos afterward.
