I’ve been curious about Undaunted: Normandy for a while. We don’t play too many war-themed games, or even very many area control games for that matter, but something about it piqued my interest. After checking the game out from Portland Game Library for a month, we managed to get it on the table twice and formulate an overall impression. Read our review below the game details to see if this game might be a good match for you.
| Player Count | 2 | Age Range | 14 and up |
| Time to Play | ~45-60 minutes (official) ~45-120 minutes (IRL) | Setup Time | ~10 minutes |
| Mechanics | Area Control, Movement, Dice Rolling, Deck Building, Simulation | Vibe | Tense |
| Designer/ Developer | Trevor Benjamin, David Thompson | Publisher | Osprey Games |
| Illustrator | Roland MacDonald | Graphic Designer | Unknown |
| Table Space Needed | ~32” x 32” | # of Cats Fit in Box Lid | 1 Small Cat |
| Component/ Production Quality | Medium | Rule Book Quality | Medium |
| Box Quality | Medium | Storage Design | Medium |
| Theme Quality | High | Graphic Design Quality | Medium |
| Interactivity Level | High | Hostility Factor | High |
| Complexity/ Strategy | Medium | Replayability | High |
| Originality | 7 | BGM Rating/ Recommendation | 7/ Recommended |
Game Objective
Defeat the opponent by achieving the objective as defined for a given scenario in the game’s scenario book.
Win Condition
Objectives vary from scenario to scenario, but most objectives involve victory by either controlling objective points on the board specified by the individual scenario, or pinning the opponent by destroying all their riflemen.
Playing and Fun Factor
Undaunted: Normandy is an area control game in which movement and attacks are governed by actions on cards that represent individual military members.
Let me start by noting that this game relies heavily on dice-rolling for attacks, which while common in area control games, is not my favorite mechanism. Yes, lots of dice rolling means the dice rolls should “even out,” and both players are subject to the probabilities. But what matters more than the even spread of favorable to unfavorable dice rolling outcomes is the result of very specific dice rolling battles of particular importance to the eventual outcome of the game. If the most important dice rolls turn out very poorly for you, you’re still going to feel like all your strategizing was for nothing. Or at least that’s how I feel in such circumstances. That might be thematically consistent with battle and war, but not so much with “fun.” Fun for me requires a sense of agency, building, strategizing, and feeling that your choices were the main factor in your success or failure. That being said, I know some people love “dice chuckers” and could chuck those dice till the cows come home, so some will read this and say, “awesome, sign me up!”
For our first playthrough, we began with Scenario One. Much to our dismay, the Germans won, but at a point when we were so bored with turn after turn of neverending dice rolls that we were like, “ok fine, whatever.” This was just the first scenario, and it took over two long hours of attrition (not counting learning the rules) to put an end to it. By the end, I was two turns from a definite win with five cards left in my deck and nothing to draft, but my opponent beat me to it with three cards left with nothing to draft and just one rifleman.
How did this slow erosion develop, you might ask? Well, neither of us wanted to yield our positions because it would leave our objective points on the board vulnerable. We each decided we had a better chance of success through relentless attack. Thus, the night devolved into the monotony of turn after turn of dice-induced casualties.
Maybe this experience with Scenario One was a fluke, but the movement stagnation issue and sisyphean dice rolling seems built into the design. I wonder if the game could have benefited from a rule forcing movement to create more dynamism and tough choices on the part of both players?
For our second playthrough, we skipped to Scenario Five so we could see how playing with the Machine Gunners, Snipers, and Mortar would affect gameplay. Scenario Five was considerably more asymmetric than Scenario One, which added some extra interest for me. My objective as the US Forces was to scout and control two objective points on the board which had no cover for defense. My guys were sitting ducks throughout the scenario, especially with the Germans utilizing their mortar from the far end of the board. My machine gunners kept getting blown out of my deck by my opponent so I never actually was able to utilize them. By dumb luck the US managed to take the objective points and defeat the Germans, in the nick of time since my opponent, playing the Germans, was about to blow up my Company B rifleman the very next turn before he could take control of the Objective. Awww, poor widdle Nazis! This scenario was much quicker than Scenario One, and only took about 30 minutes not including setup.
Both times we played, the outcome was very closely contested, which created a lot of tension. I guess you could say that was fun, or at the very least, engaging. I don’t dig tension per se, but this is the kind of thing that an adrenaline junkie would just love. The tension demonstrates that the game design is well balanced.
Theme
Undaunted: Normandy is heavily thematic. The scenarios are based on real battles from WWII. Not everything about it is historically accurate and the authors say as much. One interesting choice was the exclusion of the swastika as the Germans’ military symbol. I suppose this is because swastikas tend to elicit revulsion such that it creates unwillingness among players to play as the German side, though it maybe softens the Germans’ image more than they deserve. I mean, they were the freakin’ Nazis, after all. It does still feel odious to play as the Germans, but I do think it would feel even worse to play as the Germans if there were swastikas on your tokens and cards so from a psychological standpoint I can see the reasoning behind utilizing alternative symbols.
Interestingly, each soldier and leader has a name, and each individual is given his own unique portrait. I have heard this described as tacky (“why would you give them names, to humanize them right before blowing them up?”) but I think it helps with immersion into the game and I enjoyed that element. It’s a board game, so the casualties of war are quite an abstraction.
The “Fog of War” cards – cards with no playable actions that get added to the playing deck when scouting territories that take up space in your hand – were a compelling addition. Only Scouts could gain them, and only Scouts could eliminate them. It became very important to keep some Scouts in the deck even after most territories had been scouted, so that they could neuter the Fog of War cards and render the army effective once again.
Game Art, Visual Design, and Production Value
I personally really liked the watercolors of the individual soldiers on the cards. Several of them have distinctive facial expressions. They remind me of well-done courtroom drawings: the kind that are compelling enough that they’re shown repeatedly on news coverage because in just a couple of stills, they evoke feelings and tell stories. The board tiles were well designed and versatile. They’re double-sided, so there are many options for creating terrain necessary to simulate a particular battle.
The iconography, symbols, and nomenclature used are fairly understandable. While learning the game I did use the reference in the back of the rule book several times but that’s exactly what it’s for and it was very effective at keeping the game moving along.
Component quality is average. Cards are average thickness, tokens are cardboard, box is sturdy. Our box did not have an insert because it was a rental, but the insert as I have seen it elsewhere appears to be well-designed, with large notches to allow pickup of the decks, though maybe a little snug if you like to sleeve your cards.
The rulebook was reasonably user-friendly. I appreciated the inclusion of a “quick reference” on the last page of the rulebook so it was easy to reach. On the other hand, a couple of odd choices made certain information hard to find. For example, notes on “suppression” were found in at least three different places in the rulebook. All three notes were necessary for understanding how soldiers could become both suppressed and unsuppressed. It would have been simpler to define suppression in one place, and I could not see any reason why the rule book developers chose not to. The scenario book was good too, with the minor complaint that the cards specified for each scenario were not defined in their initiative value order, which would have made it easier to find and pull them from the full deck.
Conclusion
I remember playing war-themed games like Risk and Dogfight as a kid. Those games were also characterized by the luck of the dice. They were fun back then. But since, more sophisticated strategy games (IMO) have largely supplanted this more luck-based style of game so I was surprised that the widely acclaimed Undaunted: Normandy was so similar to its predecessors in this unfortunate regard. Memoir: 44 utilizes dice, but strategic cardplay and movement feature more prominently, at least in the couple of scenarios we’ve played with friends. Root employs dice for attacks as well, and it can be incredibly frustrating for that very reason, but again there seems to be more player agency via movement and creative card play. (It doesn’t hurt that Root is playfully absurd and has interesting asymmetric abilities.)
There is really a lot of variety in Undaunted: Normandy, and plenty of replayability that derives from asymmetry, the role of luck, and just wanting to try different strategies. I can see WWII nerds really enjoying it, playing scenario after scenario and playing through again as the other side. Though it’s not a game I particularly enjoy, I can definitely see how others would.
If you want to bring a little levity to the game, put on for your background music “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” by the Andrews Sisters.
