So, yesterday my copy of the latest toy for Memoir 44 came in the mail, the Breakthrough boards. These present an alternate "larger" format for M44. Whereas Overlord games (two boards meeting up the short way) were long and narrow, Breakthrough games are about the same width (ish) but far deeper, 13 x 17. The product comes with fifteen scenarios; more are appearing on the website. I set up the Prokhorovka scenario and went to solitairing it out.
If I have someone over to play M44, I will insist on playing a Breakthrough scenario. It feels almost operatic, with far more room to maneuver than with the shallow maps. It doesn't really work for multiplayer the way Overlord does, which is kind of a shame, although some people are trying to fit two Breakthrough maps together, which I hereby declare to be madness. Anyway, the experience feels much more like a miniatures game--with lots of maneuver, lots of units, a squareish field--than a game with miniatures.
Here's the thing, though. I can insist on playing it all I want because I love M44 and have two of everything that's worth having two of. The scenarios are designed for people like me. You usually need four or five expansions of one form or another to play any given Breakthrough scenario. If all you have is M44 and the box of Russians, you're out of luck. And sure, theoretically there could be fan-created scenarios that only use the base set and one or two common expansions, but nobody's doing that, since the people who are making the scenarios are freaks like me who want to play with all the toys in the toybox. This totally game-changing, revolutionary expansion is almost useless to the majority of M44 players, I strongly suspect.
Now, I understand why Days of Wonder wants to reward their customers like me than the (many) other customers who only have the base game, or the base game and an expansion or two. I suppose there's even the hope that Breakthrough would get some people off the fence and buy that one expansion they need for Pegasus Bridge.
It's just a shame, that's all. I don't know scenario design from a hole in the ground and have no real time to learn, so here's hoping that some of the die-hard designers will have pity on the unwashed...
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