A bombastic series that brings historical skirmish wargaming to your tabletop, Heroes of Normandie and its sister titles give you the tactical action of bigger games at a fraction of the cost and storage space. If you’re looking for a fast, fun, and approachable skirmish game, this series ought to be on your list.
What Is Heroes of Normandie?
If you drop skirmish wargaming on a style line, you might have miniatures games like Bolt Action, with rulers, built-and-painted minis, on one end and your purest hex-and-counter duelers like Squad Leader on the other. The Heroes series drops itself in the middle, eschewing miniatures and hexes alike to land in a fun-first zone of fast-flying action with minimal fuss.
Taking the first game, Heroes of Normandie, out of the box will throw a bevy of chunky unit counters, map tiles, and cards across your table. You’ll use these to build scenarios and duke it out with your pal of choice an hour or so at a time. With rules that land somewhat lighter than your average hex or miniatures wargame, kinetic one-unit-goes-per-turn play, a single dice combat resolution system, and token-based activation (with a little bit of bluffing on the side), the Heroes series makes it easy to make big moments or execute devious strategies.
Those strategies begin with list building, as you’ll spend points to build your custom force for the mission. Machine gunners, mortars, and more all have their costs and you’ll need to tailor the loadout to the objective (or just go for all out slaughter to claim victory). Your opponent will be doing the same, a dance that gets better and better with repeated play.
Once you have your force selected, you’ll look how to deploy them on a map made up of square, 7×7 terrain tiles, each dotted with obstructing hedges, tricky rivers, towns, and more. You’ll take it all in, decide how to deploy your forces, and, depending on the scenario, sprawl your warriors onto the map first or second.
Turns roll out in an I-go-You-go system of alternating activations, spiced up with the order tokens. These determine the order your units activate, both speeding up play and adding some planning spice, especially as one of your tokens is a blank bluff, making your opponent wonder if a given unit is actually moving or not.
Those units come as illustrated counters with more flair (and more size) than your usual hex-and-counter cardboard. Most come as a single square, though vehicles occupy more space and count as obstacles when obliterated. Despite the sleek combat resolution, Heroes has depth too: suppression, cover, sniping, and adding gear or stats to individual troopers (for an associated points cost) is all here.
And actual Heroes (as befitting the title) can pounce on the battlefield with unique abilities, providing game-shifting flavor. You’ll move, attack, claim objectives, and laugh as your best laid plans come to brutal fruition or hilarious failure.
Then, you’ll wipe the slate clean.
Like most of the Undaunted games, Heroes dodges campaigns for single-scenario adventures. This keeps you in the game while letting you explore all sorts of different battles, and its relative brevity makes it easy to run a battle back while switching sides. It’s a historical skirmish you can pull out on any given night, no preamble required.
So Many Heroes, So Little Time
Like many skirmish games, Heroes of Normandie can be confusing to jump into. You might want to get right into tactical hedgerow combat, but where to start?
The easiest point, particularly if the Normandy (Normandie is the French label) setting appeals, is the Big Red One edition. It’s a recently revised core set with updated rules, artwork, and some includes that were previously in expansions (like flamethrowers, because you gotta have those). Stuffed with gameplay,
this is enough to see you into Devil Pig Games’ universe at a price half or less than most miniatures games.
Otherwise, the core game is a great entry point, with plenty of escalating scenarios to get you deep into the system. From there, picking expansions that interest you is an easy way to grow your options without overwhelming you from the get-go.
That said, if your opponent prefers witches and (obviously) Cthulhu to German soldiers, Shadows over Normandie adds a magical twist to the combat. Someone coming over from games like Warhammer or that wants a little more sorcery in their skirmish is going to find plenty to like here.
Both of these versions are fully cross-compatible, and there’s a supply depot’s worth of secondary expansions available (think of them like unit add-ons in games like Legion or Malifaux). This is a game that’ll grow with you as much as any miniatures war game, giving you all the depth without the painting, assembly, or storage needs of those bigger titles.
For hunters of rarer game, Heroes of Stalingrad appeared in 2019 and, as the name suggests, pulled the action to the Eastern Front. This box comes with a campaign as well as somewhat refined rules (these can also be found in the Big Red One edition for Normandie), but can be hard to find, so use that Want List (and read on for more details on why).
On the Warhammer front, though, Devil Pig Games also published Heroes of Black Reach, a worlds-away spin from World War Two into Warhammer 40,000. Orks and Space Marines (a classic pairing) duke it out across the hive world of, well, Black Reach. If you love the atmosphere of 40k but aren’t a fan of the rules or commitment, this variant gets you close with some fresh tweaks. Additional expansions, promos, and nifty storage boxes round out this fork, giving you plenty of gameplay best enjoyed with a consistent partner.
A Skirmish Wargame Stepping Stone
Board games often function like a ladder, with lower, lighter rungs serving to build rule and tactical foundations allowing more ‘complex’ titles to land without melting brains or driving players away. Heroes of Normandie and its brethren land square in that middle range, a step up from more introductory 
skirmishers like Unmatched or Summoner Wars (at least in early play – I see your fists shaking, players twenty factions deep with counters for everything). You’ll become acquainted with wargaming staples like list building, cover and terrain, attacking objectives, and so on, all without added requirements like mini assembly or codexes.
Once you’ve taken Heroes for a spin, venturing into more flexible, deeper games offers a wealth of options. Sure, you could grab the latest Warhammer 40,000 starter set, but going sans minis and diving into classics like Advanced Squad Leader and Combat Commander (the latter a shade easier than the former) keeps the historical theming while opening up a vast world of scenarios to explore.
To go in an even wilder direction, the Mythic Battles series, which has covered Greek and Norse mythology and soon to release an Egyptian edition, is an out and out blast, featuring gods, soldiers, and monsters in speedy, card-and-dice driven clashes. If you find Heroes of Normandie a great level for you, then these games would make a great pick, as many of your foundational skills will transfer to a system that’ll nonetheless feel fresh.
Plus dragons. Can’t get enough of those.
On Devil Pig Games
When researching this article, I learned that Devil Pig Games, the publisher of Heroes of Normandie (and Black Reach) went out of business a couple of years ago. These games, which have been in and out of print since their inception in 2014, are in limbo, which is a reality of a hobby that deals in physical media.
It’s also tragic, as folks who might stumble onto these games are going to have a harder time finding copies to play.
Noble Knight and similar retailers occupy a special place in these situations, as both buyers of used games and global resellers of the same. You can find Heroes of Normandie in our online store, and add expansions, promos, and more to your Want List with a good chance of seeing the item come in someday soon. That’s simply not in the cards elsewhere.
We can, though, appreciate that Heroes of Normandie and its sister titles are complete games, with scenarios aplenty to explore. It does make that Want List even more important, though, as availability isn’t so easy to predict.
Heroes of Normandie offers a solution to the wistful thoughts of massive miniature armies, and then comes through with its own unique spin. Fast, eminently entertaining, but with plenty of room for devious strategies, team compositions, and household metas, this game and its sister titles offer a historical skirmish wargaming experience that’ll fit any collection.
Check out our previous article here!
