Undaunted Normandy by Osprey

 

So, we finally got around to playing this game and it is an excellent game, which is a good thing because I also own the North African version, the reinforcements set and Stalingrad set. I really should be more careful about buying expansions or new versions of a game before I have even played one game of the original. In this case it worked out!

Full proper reviews are available all over the web, but I will throw in my own two cents.

The base game is for two players, one controls the Germans, the other the Americans. The game has a scenario booklet that tells you what forces to assemble and how the battlefield will look. The game comes with 18 double sided terrain tiles that are placed on the table based on the instructions in the scenario book. The setup also tells you what troop to use, where to deploy them and what other markers should be placed on the board.

 

 

The set up also tells you what cards to use in the game. Cards are the key to this game. It is a deck building card game (DBG), but unlike other DBG one does not start off with crap in your hand. 

In this game you have a deck of cards and separate cards that form a supply area. 

• The deck you start the game with has (at least in the 1st scenario) 2 cards for every token you deploy, three command cards (not represented by tokens on the board) and a number of Fog of War cards.
• The supply area has more fog of war cards in addition to extra cards for each token on the board.  

At the start of each turn you draw 4 cards into your hand from your deck. You then use one of these cards to bid on initiative (this is the only time a fog of war card can be played, but it has a value of 1) High card wins initiative, ties mean the previous holder keeps the initiative. Then each player play cards from their hand to do a variety of actions. Once they have exhausted their hand it becomes the other players turn. Once both players have had their chance to play cards the turn ends. No cards can be carried over to the next turn.

In your turn you can carry out a number of actions based on the troop type or commander type. These are some of the actions (not usable by all troop types)

• Move (move number of tiles indicated on the tokens card)
  
• Shoot (select the corresponding token can attack an enemy token)
  
• Control (only riflemen can control an objective)
  
• Scout (must be done to a tile in order to allow your forces to move into the tile)
  
• Recon (a way to remove for of war cards from the game)
• Bolster (a commander card can add troops from supply into you deck)
• Inspire (a commander can allow you to reuse a previously played tokens card)

There are others as well. The interplay between what each unit can do and what cards you have in your hand makes the game very interesting. Each card allow a token to do one action, or a commander to take one action. For example

• To capture an objective requires that you advance a rifleman to control that objective. A rifleman can only advance through scouted tiles. At any given time you may not have the cards in hand to perform the action sequence you want. 
• You may have a plan of attack, but the cards will impact and change that plan. You wind up trying to figure out what to do each turn based on what is in your hand. Use of command abilities helps to alter your actions. Adding more cards into your hand can help as it will mean that certain cards may well enter your hand more often. Getting rid of fog of war cards makes your hand more focused. 

Combat

Combat is resolved by a D10 roll. The number of dice are based on the token type, for instance, a rifleman have a firepower of 1. Each token has a base target number and each terrain tile has a modifier. The target defense is increased based on range +1 per tile not counting the attackers tile. You need to roll higher than the target number to score a hit. When one of your tokens on the board has been shot you must remove a corresponding card from your hand. If you do not have one in your hand you remove it from your discard pile. If there is not one there then you need to search through your deck to remove a card. Tokens with no cards are removed. They might return if you still have one or more related cards in your supply area and you bolster your forces (which moves a card from supply to your deck) 

It is a very elegant system that produces a very quick, fun game. It can be quite frustratingly amusing, to set up your troops just so but miss all your shots. Also the anticipation that occurs when you draw your four cards can be dashed against the rocks of fate as you draw a hand of mostly fog of war cards. Sometime you would draw cards but not in the sequence that you needed, or not the troops that you needed to activate. We laughed a lot in the one game that we played. This is simply an excellent game, certainly one of the best deck building games that I have ever played. The mix of boardgame/deck building game is a great combination that promises plenty of variety to game play.