Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel

Josh and I have gotten out Conflict of Heroes, dusted it off and started playing it. One of the nice things about it is that it's rules-light -- nineteen pages covers fire, movement, line of sight, tanks, aircraft, mines, snipers, everything. And it's quick. Each of the first two scenarios has taken maybe five minutes to set up, and about 90 minutes to play to completion. I expect the play time to go up as we get into more complex scenarios, but not much.

Scenario 1 has three German squads moving into a village held by a Russian platoon consisting of three rifle squads, an SMG squad and a machine gun crew. The Russians have poor fields of fire, and the Germans can  defeat them in detail and capture the terrain object pretty easily, if they are fast and careful. This was a learning scenario.

Scenario 2 posits that the Russians have captured German documents; they're trying to get a courier to a local HQ while the Germans try to retrieve them. Four German squads enter at the board edge to tackle a  Russian force consisting of two Maxim crews and three rifle squads, plus the SMG squad acting as courier. Josh brought all his forces in at one end of the map, which I thought was a bit risky; he didn't even try to stop the courier getting to the HQ, he just bet on being able to clear the entire village. Which he proceeded to do. He came in through the woods and focused fire on the Russians there until they broke; the superior German firepower was a help, as was my inability to roll a 5 or better to rally my squads. Then he moved in on the center of the village. One squad was too eager, and came to close range with active machine gun and paid the price; however, that was his only casualty. He retrieved the captured documents and wiped out every single Russian unit within five turns.

Good infantry tactics are rewarded. Stay in cover. Don't bunch up. Suppress the enemy then assault to finish him off.

Looking forward to the next scenario.