My game collection grew with two new war-themed games today when I got the long-expected Memoir ’44 and actually even longer-expected Victory & Honor.

I guess there’s little I can say about Memoir ’44 at this point that hasn’t been said before, so I’ll just say it’s a neat game, the components are very pretty indeed and all the stuff on the web site for registered users shows Days of Wonder is serious with the support for their games. I’m looking forward to actually playing the game — but I’m not looking forward to setting it up, this one looks worse than Puerto Rico…

Victory & Honor doesn’t look neat. The box captures the 19th century atmosphere too well — sepia-coloured photography, back full of dense text. This one doesn’t catch your eye in the store, that’s for sure. The cards have black-and-white photographs from the Civil War era and the general cards feature authentic 19th century facial hair — yuck! Cards have indexes in only one corner, that’s a negative… Rulebook looks heavy, I browsed through it and I didn’t quite catch the game yet.

The way it looks isn’t captivating, but the game itself seems rather interesting. However, I’m a bit afraid it won’t get much play, unless I find it really captivating. It’s a bit like Tichu — it’s a heavy-duty trick-taking game that requires exactly four players. It might be tricky, but at this point the game seems to be rather interesting. I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to actually try it, hopefully soon.