Suffering From Success

Spoiler alert, this one's been inspired by my pre-review work for the newest Undaunted. Undaunted's debut title, Normandy, was pretty much immediately the best two-player WWII game. It crushed its competition so thoroughly, Memoir 44 doesn't exist to me anymore except to be reskinned for Battle of Hoth. For the first few years, every entry was an improvement, with North Africa’s tighter campaign and vehicles, Reinforcements’ prime expansion content, and those of you that played Stalingrad already knew what I was building to. Stalingrad’s pseudo-legacy campaign is, simply put, too good? It blew Normandy out of the water and became the unconditional best WWII game. Maybe just the best game ever? I won't shut up about it. The lasting promotions and casualties can make you feel the actual individual level losses that happen in wars in a way that makes Stalingrad one of the first things I point to when I'm making an argument that board games don't have to be hyperniche to be art. It got followed up by Battle of Britain the year after, which was quite good. I enjoyed my time with it, but it made me mildly concerned about the future of the series.