Heroes of Normandie

[ozmoParticipant]

Anybody play it? I found it when I heard about the upcoming 2nd Version of the game – Shadows over Normandie – the WWII Cthulhu game. Talk about making a game that says “Give me your money Ozmo”.

I picked this up a month or two ago and I love it. It’s a WW II minis game but your miniatures are nice, cardboard counters. It’s theme is WW II movies, so not exactly strictly historical. But the units have solid stats/abilities and a good degree of realism so you could create most any scenario you want. You can also add in heroes like oddball and Kelly from Kelly’s Heroes, or Sgt. Rock from the comics.

Units have all stats and abilities printed on the counter – it reminds me a lot of how MonsterPocalypse did it – attack, defense, movement and then icons to represent special abilities. It’s easy to get the hang of and the game plays smoothly.

Actions are limited by the numbers of stars on your recruitment tiles and you assign action orders each turn. You can only attack if your unit has an order. All movements that didn’t act can move during a later phase but no attacks are allowed at that point. It forces you to make sound decisions and it gets interesting if you didn’t anticipate your opponent’s move.

Building your squad has a neat mechanic. Each army has a recruitment tile with a base point level and a set selection of units. It then has empty squares and rectangles that you can populate with unit recruitement tiles. These have a point value and a selection of units. The empty slots are bordered with either that squads colors or generic colors (or a mix of the two). So you can only add units that would be in the division or in the army in general. Quick and easy force building that’s tied to the historical makeup of the division. The two different shapes (square, rectangle) guide you to the enhancements you can add. Squares are going to be squads – infantry or mechanized units. The rectangles are traits/equiptment and possibly some smaller vehicles (jeeps, motorcycles). You can give your force grenades and/or make them veterans for example.

There are recruitment tiles for larger point builds that bring in high command level options in as well. These might be things like additional orders, dice re-rolls, airstrikes or artillery.

Heroes are another option for force building. Heroes aren’t tied to a specific group tile (but they may have specific unit requirements)

The game also has a card deck that throws interesting twists into the mix – the ability to cancel your opponent’s action, attack boosts, ignore terrain, and a bunch of others. The cards really mix up the action and make the games very dynamic.

Combat & movement are easy. Zones of control come into play and I like the indirect fire mechanic. About my biggest pet peeve is combat is single d6. Single die games seem to hate me. Yet I have a bunch of them so I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

Anyhow, thought I’d share. This game hooked me pretty hard and it’s becoming a favorite in our group. My daughter really likes it as well (and she’s pretty good at it). I’m well on my way to acquiring all of the expansions.

[Universal HeadKeymaster]

Thanks ozmo. I’d seen this one but pretty much reckoned that Memoir ’44 did everything it did (but with miniatures). Have you played both? Do you think they’re different enough?

Clever squad building system though.

[Author]

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