If you love Axis & Allies currently published by Milton Bradley Company I implore you to check out the board game Memoir 44 made by a another great gaming studio Days Of Wonder.  Imagine that instead of taking over the world in a World War 2 type of scenario, you just play out some of the best battles of the war on a smaller board.  One of the things that I love about the game is that it’s for two players and only two players.  This means that when your best bud and you want to have a great time you do not have to worry about getting four other people in the same room.  Also this game will not take 4 hours to play out.

The game comes with a booklet that details out some of the scenarios that you can setup on the board.  This includes where your units are and where the hills, bunkers, water, hills, and barbed wire will go on the board.  You then play the game until you fulfill the victory conditions for the scenario, these would include things like taking two bridges, or holding a town.  This is normally done by gaining victory points through the match.

The setup of the game is not nearly involved as some of the other games of this type, and found that setup took about 15 minutes to get all of the pieces of the scenarios in place.  The pieces that come with the game are well constructed, however I found that the plastic containers that the pieces came in left something to be desired as when you put them back they didn’t really sit well.  I ended up using plastic bags for most of the pieces.

Playing the game was pretty easy to follow, you get certain cards that only let you command units on one of three sections of the board and only let your units do certain actions such as move or attack. This aspect of the game doesn’t change even with the different expansions.

One of the coolest features of this game is how many expansion that there are for it.  There are some expansions that include the Eastern Front and you can play with the Russians.  There is even an online scenario builder.  With the scenario builder you can make any scenario you wish and also share them on the Days Of Wonder site with others.  You can even print off the scenarios so transferring them to the game board is very simple. 

Memoir 44 is available on the www.daysofwonder.com and found on Amazon.com for 39 USD.  If you’re a fan of board game war games, this game should be on the short list to add to your collection.