On Thursday April 10, Days of Wonder shared a sneak peak of an upcoming game on its Facebook page, showing four cards backed with the logos of the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire on an icy game board divided into hexes. Fans were immediately excited: could this be a new Star Wars game using the hugely successful Memoir ‘44 rules system, set during the battle of Hoth?
If it is, this could immediately be one of the best Star Wars board games ever. Memoir ‘44 is one of the best strategy board games out there, both easy to approach yet incredibly deep. In fact the core rules are so simple, we can explain them in two paragraphs!
Players command little plastic armies of Axis or Allied forces, battling over a hex-map that represents the battlefields of Europe. Each round, players get a hand of command cards, and will take it in turns playing cards to activate a certain number and type of troops from different areas of the battlefield.
Your dwindling supply of command cards represents the fog of war. Even if your forces are well set up for a flanking assault with a division of tanks, you can only seize the opportunity if you have the right command card to activate the units. There’s a lot more to the game, but we’ll refer you to this classic (old) Shut Up and Sit Down video – look how young Quinns is!
What are the odds that we’ll get a Star Wars version of that, and not something totally new? Days of Wonder has a unique publishing strategy, seeking to release very few new games each year, but doing everything it can to ensure they are timeless classics – it wants crowd pleasers, blockbusters, and titles that land on guides to the best board games. A game with Memoir ‘44 rules, plus AT-ATs, A-Wings, and turbo-lasers would absolutely fit the bill.
Days of Wonder is also owned by Asmodee, and this mashup would perfectly into that firm’s growth strategy. At a presentation to investors in November, Asmodee stated that it would take successful board game brands and promote them to be even bigger.
One way it’s doing this in other studios it owns is to take popular game engines, like Pandemic or Seven Wonders Duel, and giving them new skins, as in Pandemic World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth.
This would not be the first time the rules in Memoir ‘44 have been reskinned. In fact, Memoir ‘44 is itself a reskin of the historical wargame Commands and Colors. C&C is a long running series with many variants, spin-offs in different time periods, and in the early 2000s Fantasy Flight Games even made a fantasy version called Battlelore.
One big question mark hangs over this game, and indeed the whole industry: the current tariffs on Chinese imports to America. Board game industry leaders say they will be devastating. Switching to manufacturing games in the USA is not an option in the short term: check out our interview with an industry veteran who has just built a new factory in America and discover how much it costs and how long it takes to get ready to start making things.
Excited for a new Star Wars strategy game? Think it’s not going to be a spin-off from Memoir ‘44 but be something completely different? Come and join us in the official Wargamer Discord!
Source: Wargamer
