Happy Christmas

It's almost the end of Boxing Day here. Hope you all had a great Christmas and that Santa (or equivalents) added to your collections in some way.

Me? I was very mature and decided that i didn't need any more figures or books cluttering up the house, especially since I'd spent a lot of time earlier in the year getting rid of things when we moved. However family eventually insisted that I had to ask for something, so I decided to complete (as far as I am concerned) my Memoir '44 setup by getting the Mediterranean and Pacific Theatre expansions.

I got some time yesterday evening to have a quick play with the Mediterranean set, using the British figures in it. I had a go at the first two scenarios - Hellfire Pass and Sidi Rezegh.

As the first scenario in the book, Hellfire pass has quite a big setup, and uses several of the special rules in the game. The German and Italian troops are well dug- in on ergs (like hills, but they slow movement), and are protected by wire and minefields. The attacking Commonwealth troops have no artillery support, but do at least have Matilda tanks, giving them four-figure armour units.

The Allies made a strong attack in the centre and on their right. The attack in the centre was stopped by artillery fire and by a German armoured counterattack. On their right, however, the Allies did OK, taking the German positions and pushing beyond them.

The game went to the wire, with both sides one medal from victory. But German artillery attacks in the centre gave them a narrow victory; on their next turn the Allies could have potentially existed troops from the Axis baseline to give them a win.

Sidi Rezegh is a tank battle, which uses the extra Desert War follow-up rules, making for a fast-moving and deadly fight.

In both games I played the Germans were able to press the British close to their baseline, making retreats harder and destroying units quickly.

The Germans won both games. But I can see how this one is could be very much influenced by the cards; in the first game the Germans got the armoured Assault card, which is very powerful in this set-up. If the British had got it instead, things would have been a lot different.

I was pleased to see that Days of Wonder have the Memoir '44 Scenario Archive back up and running, so I will be looking through it for fun battles with which to try out my new toys.

We did play a couple of games on Christmas Day. Catherine added to her collection of cat-themed games with Fat Cats (a trick-taking card game of little skill) and Cat Crimes (which is a set of logic puzzles with nice components to help you visualise the situations. Neither were great games, but they do have cats in them.