Good choices all.
Memoir '44 is one of the lighter war games I've ever seen (possible lighter games include Risk and Stratego, but that may be it). Once you know the game, you can blitz through in half an hour.
One comment I heard in Rabbit's suite was that it was a little too built around chance, in that you both have to get a card that allows you to move the unit you want, and then you have to roll dice for combat results as well.
played two games inline through the DoW page... first game was pretty close (I lost) and the second game was embarrassingly bad... my opponent just took cards every round until he had about 30 cards, then took all the northerly routes. Beat me by 72 points.
I suck.
My buddy (who works in a comic/game store) picked up a copy of MEMOIR '44 at my behest (at 30% off retail).
Played the first scenario... MAN, it took a long time to set this damn board up. I guess two people working together would make it move faster, but it was just me putting all the pieces out there.
Fumbled with the rules a little bit in our first game... the rules don't really make it clear what to do when you have no useful command cards (e.g. all "left flank" cards, when you have no troops in the left flank). Looked it up on the DOW FAQ, and found that you just need to forfeit your turn, discard and draw a new one. I couldn't believe this wasn't clearly laid out in the rules. Also, I read the "Their Finest Hour" card to mean that you "order up" new units, rather than simply ORDER EXISTING units to do things. Makes much more sense that way.
Hope I get to play again some day!
I view almost all these games purely in terms of their building up to Puerto Rico, which is my favourite by a country mile and a game I find endlessly fascinating and entertaining. PR is more complicating than the other games you're discussing here, but still a lot easier from the games I found really hard to get to grips with, like Goa or Tigris & Euphrates. But it depends who you're playing with. When my kids are old enough, Catan, TRR and Carcasonne are going to get a lot more playtime.
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