Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear Solo

I've previously written on what I regard as some of the problems with the Conflict of Heroes series. Those haven't stoppped me from buying Awakening the Bear 2e and the Solo expansion, and I've just finished the first solo scenario. There's one change in the Solo version which I really like: you no longer activate one unit at a time and keep using it until it's out of Activation Points. Instead, you select any Fresh unit, take an action, and check whether the unit is Spent. If it isn't, you can take another action with it--or you can leave it alone for a few impulses while you use another unit, and then come back to the original one when you're ready. Higher AP cost actions (such as Rally, 5AP) are more likely to cause the unit to become Spent than low cost (Move in the open, 1AP) actions. However, you don't track Activation Point totals any more; as long as you're lucky with your Spent checks, that unit stays Fresh and can take action after action after action. Of course, you can also order a squad to scurry across the street into the building on the other side, only to have them become Spent after the first 1AP movement and get stuck in the middle of the street.

I did manage to win the first scenario, capturing the objective and polishing off two German squads while only losing one of my own. It was close, though, as the halftrack chased my SMG squad for a while, then got adjacent to one of my Rifle squads and put a hit on it. Fortunately the scenario timer ran out almost immediately afterward, and the Germans didn't get a chance to finish off my wounded squad. Final score, 2VP for the Russians.

Problems with Conflict of Heroes

Josh and I had a game of Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel, using the State Farm 158 scenario that I played with Marco in January.  Josh took the Germans, and didn't lose any to the pre-battle attrition rolls; my Russians lost a couple of hilltop units.
I tried the same ploy I did last time, of sending an SMG over the hilltop into the German mortars, using a Free Action card to make it out of the balka and up onto the hill; however, Josh had a flamethrower card, so things didn't work out well for me. I also made the mistake of moving into close combat; the unit I was attacking had spent all its action points, but Josh pulled out a Free Action card of his own in order to have his unit take a shot, and his panzergrenadiers trounced my rifle squad. As I recall, he needed an 11 to hit their flank, and he had 2d6 +5 for his firepower and +4 for close combat.  Not hard to roll 11 or above when you have a +9 modifier. After that, I merely moved adjacent and fired from there, rather than get into close combat. And his artillery obliterated mine. I did get one turn of fire off, but between his direct fire and his 105mm mission, only one 81mm mortar survived to turn 2.
But despite all this, the Russians won. Partly this was because I got 2VP for each of his units, and he only got 1 for mine. Partly it was because he moved adjacent to the balka instead of using smoke and recon-by-fire; I could send a few squads to adjacent positions and overwhelm one of his units. Partly it was just because I had more units than he did, and could afford to stall until he'd used all his actions, after which I could attack and he couldn't respond.

There are a few things that bug me about this series.

• No leaders. Leadership functions are abstracted into command points, and those command points don't have any specific location. You can apply those command points to a mortar in the rear, and an infantry squad on the far right, and an SMG squad on the far left, with none of those being in communication or having Line of Sight to each other.
• Telepathic units. If your mortar squad is threatened in the rear, your troops on the right can turn, move, and take the threat under fire, with no communication and no time delay. They don't have a specific mission, or lane, or target they have to stick with, just instant response to whatever the commander's whim is.
• No differentiation of unit quality. One a unit is Unnerved, for instance, it doesn't matter whether it's veteran troops or raw conscripts, they still have the same roll to rally. In some scenarios, a unit may not be affected by a particular damage result at all, which partly mitigates this problem; however, it would be straightforward to say "this veteran unit is +1 to rally, these militia are -2". There are also no differences in training and doctrine--for example, when ambushed, a conscript might stand bewildered, a trained soldier might dive for cover, and an elite might assault through the ambush. CoH doesn't distinguish.
• Wound markers instantly make a unit a priority target, since a second wound will eliminate it. There may be times when you turn your attention to another, unwounded target because it's more of a threat, but in general, you want to finish off a wounded unit. That's how you reduce the enemy CAPs and you gain victory points.
• If you have more units than the enemy, you may be able to stall until the enemy has no action points left, then you move when he can't respond. You can always send one unit at a time to recon; there's no time pressure. That one's easy to fix, though. You get, say, five activations and have to get all your moves done with that, using group activations as needed. 

Wounded Tiger

I did a solo game of the "Wounded Tiger" scenario in Conflict of Heroes. A veteran Tiger is immobilized in the middle of a field; the Soviets have sent four T34s and four T70s to finish it off, and the Germans have sent a rescue force consisting of a tank recovery vehicle escorted by a PzIV and a pair of PzIIIs.

In Game 1, both sides drew "Command Action" as their card. The T34s moved as a group, closing on the Tiger with the intent of ducking north behind the barn for cover, then moving behind the Tiger's flank. The Tiger's 88mm gun--and the dice manning it--proved deadly, though, and all four T34s brewed up before they got a shot off. The first one drew a "Kill" damage result; the other three took hits that were far enough over their Armor value to be instant kills. The T70s hadn't activated but had no chance of winning on their own, so I declared that a decisive German victory.

In Game 2, the Tiger still hit, but not hard enough to instant kill, and the Soviets drew Light Damage chits. The T34s headed around the barn, with three surviving to gain a flanking ability within their optimum range. Meanwhile the PzIV rushed through the village to aid the Tiger, while the Pz IIIs headed east to catch the T70s and the Opel puttered along the road and stopped once it was safely hidden in the village.
On Turn 2, the Germans won initiative, and the Tiger--feeling rather nervous--polished off one of the T34s and damaged a second. The two T34s took shots at the Tiger's flank, but one missed outright and the other was forced to reroll one of his hit dice (via the Tiger's Combat Hardened card) and his hit turned into a miss. Two of the T70s charged the PzIV, one dying on the way in. The second one realized he couldnt't expect to hurt the panzer (needed a 12 on 2d6 to hit), so he raced for the village in hopes of at least killing the Opel. This meant he had to expose his flank to the PzIV, so he plowed through a stone house in hopes that it would shelter him. He avoided being immobilized by the terrain; he didn't avoid the 75mm AP round from the PzIV, and that was the end of him.
On Turn 3, the Germans invested CAPs into Initiative and then rolled a 12 for it. The Tiger went first and missed; the last T34 took a shot, which the German neutralized with the Combat Hardened card; the Tiger took a second shot and polished off the T34. That left the Red forces with two T70s which couldn't beat the PzIIIs, much less the heavier tanks. Win for the Germans.

I don't think the scenario is as wildly unbalanced as the first playthrough made it look, but the Russians have a tough situation. The T34s start at range 15 and have to get to 10 not to have a penalty for long range fire. Their guns are Firepower 9 against the Tiger's 21 front armor, so they need to roll 2d6 and get a 12 to hit, even without the penalty.  So a straightforward charge by the T34s will look like this:
Segment 1, the T34s move 2 hexes to range 13; the Tiger fires with 1 CAP for accuracy, hitting on a 6+, and a 10+ is an instant kill.
Segment 2: the T34s advance again, to range 11; the Tiger fires again, using another CAP.
Segment 3: the T34s advance to within range, but they've used 3 Action Points to get here; the Tiger uses his remaining one Action Point plus two Command Points to shoot, adding one more CAP for accuracy. Again, he hits on 6+.
Segment 4: The (surviving) T34s can finally shoot. They need to use one CAP just to have enough action points to fire; using two more for accuracy means they are firing with FP 11 vs the Tiger's 21 armor.
Unless the Soviets do something clever (dive into the balka, exit the east end, and move north fast enough to get the barn between them and the Tiger?), this scenario looks to boil down to "how lucky is the Tiger on its hit rolls and damage draws" rather than "is the commander clever".

Conflict of Heroes: Pursuit from State Farm 158

Yesterday Marco and I played two rounds of Scenario 5 from Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel. This was something of a learning experience, getting used to rules for elevation, line of sight, and special terrain. The map has a large balka (ravine) down the middle, with two hills (3 and 6) to the west and two (4 and 5) east. A panzergrenadier platoon sets up behind the western ridge; for the Russians, infantry elements of the 67th Guards start in the balka ,and mortars and machineguns lurk on the hills to the east.  German objective is to destroy the Red Army units, clear the balka and take Hills 4 and 5. We used the Two Player option without the additional armor units.

Starting forces: Germans have 6 PzGren squads, two 8cm mortars and a HMG. Russians have 6 rifle squads and two submachinegun squads hidden in the ravine; each hilltop has a 5cm mortar, a Maxim machine gun, and one or two 8cm mortars. Germans roll 1d6 for each unit and lose it on a 1, simulating casualties from the previous battle; Russians roll 1d6 for each mortar and machinegun (but not infantry), losing them on a 1-2.

Game 1:
No losses from the pre-game attrition rolls; this puts the Germans at a significant disadvantage.
The Red Army rifle platoons started at the north end of the balka; the two SMG squads started at the south end, in hopes of coming over or around hill 6 onto the two German mortars.
Early fire from the Russian hilltops destroyed the German HMG and suppressed one of the mortars; the crew got it back into action and both mortars dropped smoke across the front of Hill 3. The panzergrens advanced across the hill, but found no prey in the gulley below them. One squad swung out to the balka north of the hill; it discovered two Russian rifle squads at point blank range, and couldn't get back to cover fast enough to survive. By this point, the German units had used up all their activations and command points, and couldn't respond to Soviet actions; taking advantage of this, a Red Army assault squad scrambled over Hill 6 and waded into the two mortar teams, destroying them in close combat. This brought us to the end of Turn 1, and the Germans resigned.

Game 2:
In pre-game rolls, the Russians lost three of their seven hilltop units, which pared down their artillery considerably; however, two of the survivors were their 8cm mortars hidden safely on the reverse slopes. Their infantry set up spaced all along the balka.
The German HMG destroyed one of the units on Hill 5; counterfire suppressed the HMG and an advancing PzGren but couldn't manage to destroy them. A second infantry squad slipped through the gap in the hills during a lull in the firing, and discovered a couple of Soviet squads in the balka; they destroyed one before falling to the second. That second squad, however, had given away its position; the Germans advanced over the hilltop and poured fire down into the trapped Reds, who were unable to shoot effectively up the steep slope. With the southern half of the balka cleared, two German squads rushed Hill 5 to assault the mortar and take control of the heights; a third squad worked their way up the slopes of Hill 4, as 105mm rounds polished off the Russian mortar there. The remaining two German squads cautiously advanced up the balka, more to put pressure on the surviving Russians than to actually engage them.
At the end of Turn 3, the Russians had lost 4 infantry squads and three of their hilltop teams, and were about to lose their last mortar. The Germans controlled Hill 5 and had a unit on Hill 4, and had only lost a couple of units. The Russian resigned.

Controlling the tempo is crucial. Specifically:

• Using group activations can help you attack faster than the enemy can reply, or can help you get out of the way of an enemy attack; but you have to be careful or you'll be left at the end of a turn with all your activations expended and your enemy free to maneuver as he likes. The Soviets have an incentive to pass, to run out the clock, so as the Germans, you have to be careful to get the most out of your units without leaving them vulnerable.
• The Germans have "only" six turns to clear take the board; however, six turns is actually a fairly long time (note that the first game ended at the end of Turn 1, the second game at the end of Turn 3). You can prepare an attack instead of going all in on turn 1. However, you also can't be too leisurely. The Russians score points every turn from round 3-6 for control of their two hilltops; if you don't get over there and take them, point-wise it's the same as losing half your force. 
• It's extremely tempting to spend your Command points early in a turn. And then you don't have any at the end of the turn, when you desperately need them.

Lessons for this scenario in particular: 

• Use your artillery to good effect, and protect it as best you can.
• As the Russians, don't set up in the balka at the foot of Hill3, unless you like being a fish in a barrel.
• The Russians have incentive to pass....but if the Germans have plenty of victims in the beaten zone of their 105mm fire mission, they also have incentive to pass, so their rounds can land before the enemy gets out of the way. The Russians need to think hard about dispersing early. 

Storms of Steel: Wounded Tiger

Josh and I had a Conflict of Heroes game today, using the "Wounded Tiger" scenario. The Germans, with two Panzer III L's,  a Panzer IVh and a tank recovery vehicle, are trying to retrieve an immobilized Tiger; the Red Army has sent four T34c and four T70 tanks to stop them.  The Germans enter the board in the southwest, coming through a village which gives them cover; the Tiger is parked north of the village, outside a small wood; the Soviets enter from the east, between two gullies which hamper their maneuverability.

As the Soviets, I sent four tanks left to deal with the German reinforcements, and four right to tackle the Tiger; Josh sent one of his Pzkw IIIs to guard the Tiger while the other two tanks dealt with my left and the recovery vehicle hid in the village.
I discovered that while the Tiger's 88mm gun has an 18 hex range, the T34s only have a 10 hex range, and the T70s have 6 hexes. Further, the T70's little 45mm gun has almost no chance to damage the Tiger, and the T34's gun isn't much better unless it can get a flank shot. I tried charging in to point blank range, losing both T34s before they could get a shot off; the two T70s got in close behind the Tiger, but their shots resulted in "Light damage / no effect" and a "Panic" chit which had no effect on veteran crew. If only I'd had better luck on the damage draw....The Tiger and its attending Pzkw III finished the T70s. On my left, I did manage to knock out one German but the other one took a position with its flanks protected by buildings, and I couldn't get through its frontal armor. I sent a T70 behind it, crashing through a stone building to take pot shots at the Panzer's rear from point blank range; unfortunately that "point blank" thing works both ways, and the Germans knocked out that T70 and one of the T34s.

Final score, the Germans lost one tank of four, giving 2VP to the Russians; the Russians lost six of eight, for 1VP each, for a German 6:2 win.

Next go round I'll take the whole swarm of Russians against the Tiger and see if I can roll enough dice to get some good hits.

Storms of Steel: Firefight 3 "Wind or Sniper?"

In this Conflict of Heroes scenario, a Russian force must assault a German-occupied village. The Russians have two hidden sniper teams and eight infantry squads; the Germans have two hidden rifle squads, plus a squad and two heavy machineguns in the village. In this one, the Soviets start off with an advantage in command points, but they need them.

Josh started by taking sniper shots at one of the HMGs, doing one hit and forcing me to spend most of its action points rallying. A few Red units came in from the northwest corner, losing one to machine gun fire; most of the rest came from the southwest, with one running into a hidden German unit in the field. I'd been trying to get that squad into the building on the west side of the map but had unwisely activated it too soon in the turn, so when the Russians ran into it, it couldn't do anything. On turn two, that unit was quickly killed by close range fire, although the HMGs quickly polished off a couple of Russian squads in return. The ability of the HMGs to fire three (or four, with a CAP) times per turn made them deadly. The Russian northern prong got down to point blank range before succumbing to the HMGs; the southern prong made it to close range on the next turn, but was whittled down to two squads. At that point, the Russians had one detected sniper, one hidden sniper, and two squads; the Germans still had both HMGs and two squads functional, so the Russians resigned.

It's not immediately clear how to win this as the Russians. They have to cross at least seven hexes of open terrain to get from the cover of the building at the west edge, to the woods at the south of the village. They aren't hidden when they enter, and with only five turns to clear the village, they don't have time for hidden movement. It seems a human wave is the only option, but the German machineguns make that expensive.

We'll trade sides and see if I do any better.

Edit:

Hoo, boy, did I do better.

As the Russian player. I put one sniper in the building on the west edge of the board, and the other off the north edge of the village, with a LOS to both machineguns. I brought in two squads as bait, to draw fire from the HMGs and get them to use up their actions; this cost me a squad, but meh, Russians. And it meant the HMGs couldn't respond if they discovered my snipers. When the HMGs were spent, I activated my snipers. Using Command APs prolifically, two shots at +2 killed the first HMG, and a single shot at +2 managed an instant kill on the second one, and Josh resigned. I still had six squads I hadn't even gotten onto the map.

So it seems that this scenario is sensitive to how well the snipers do. Partly that rests on careful use of CAPs, and partly it's just rolling well when you need to.

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.

Conflict of Heroes: Clear and Secure

I had my first look at Conflict of Heroes a couple of months ago, and finally got a chance to play it. Some games you put off playing because the set up is a nuisance, but Firefight 1 is easy. One small board, a summary sheet, a bookkeeping sheet, two control markers, three German counters, five Soviet counters. This is a solitaire scenario. Set up time, ten minutes or less; playing time, about an hour and a half for my first game.

It's Russia in May of 1943. The player-controlled German panzergrenadier platoon (three squads) has crept up from the south through a cornfield, and are now within striking distance of a village occupied by a Soviet unit. The Russians have a Maxim gun at the west end of town, a rifle squad and SMG squad in the big building on the north side of the village, a rifle squad just south of the main building and a final rifle squad in the woods at the southeast corner of the built up area. The German mission is to destroy the enemy and occupy the large stone building on the north side of the village within five turns.

Turn 1: Two Germans fire on the Russians in the woods, doing no damage; the return fire suppresses one of the squads. The third German squad charges the Russian unit, and destroys it in close combat.

Turn 2: The victorious German squad fires on the closest Russian squad, and destroys it with a lucky hit. The suppressed squad rallies and advances. The westernmost squad charges the Maxim crew, enduring machinegun fire on the way; they make it to point blank range unscathed but fail to knock out the Maxim.

Turn 3: The Russians win initiative and blaze away at the western squad, which is in the open at one hex range. They draw a Kill result and the German squad is destroyed. The remaining two German squads fire at both Russian units in the stone building; one is Pinned (can't move) and the other is Stunned (can't take any action except Rally).

Turn 4: Both Russians in the stone building fail to rally. Ranged fire puts a second hit on one, destroying it; a Panzergren moves into the stone building and attacks the other from point blank range, destroying it as well. The Maxim crew feels very lonely but moves to a position with line of sight to the stone building. They get a good hit, and the German squad is Suppressed (reduced firepower).

Turn 5: The heroic Maxim crew moves in close, but the Panzergrenadiers rally before the Russians can put a second hit on them and finish them off. The Maxim crew does Pin the Germans, but the Germans can still shoot, and do; the Russians take one hit. The second German squad fires across the street and manages a second hit; the Maxim is destroyed.

End result: the Soviets gathered 1 victory point for the western German squad; the Germans got 1 for each kill and 2 more for controlling both objective hexes, for a total of 7. Note however that in accordance with the Solitaire rules, most of the Russian never moved, just stayed in place and shot; the Germans would have had to work a lot harder in a two player game.

Conflict of Heroes

Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel--Kursk 1943 is produced by Academy Games. I haven't even punched the counters, but I like this game already--it was designed with solo play in mind.

The box is solid, the rule book is glossy and well laid out; the four maps are mounted and have a satiny texture. There's a scenario book with fifteen firefights. There are tracking sheets, so each player can track his Action Points, Command Points and Victory Points; there are well-designed one-page (front and back) summary sheets. The counters are big 1" squares, which is good because there's a lot of information on the counter; each counter represents one squad, vehicle or gun. Seven pages of rules will get you playing the first two scenarios; the remaining nine pages add tanks, half tracks, trucks, artillery, ground attack planes, mines, bunkers, anti tank ditches and other obstacles, snipers, smoke, and special effects cards.

The key concept is action points. When you activate a unit or group of units, you get 7 Action Points, which you spend on Actions: move (usually costs 1 or 2 points per hex), fire (2 to 4 points per attack), or rally (5 points). Leadership is represented by Command Points, which can be used as extra Action Points or to influence die rolls (directing fire, rallying a squad); however, those Command Points are in short supply and must be used wisely.

The attacker has different firepower values depending on whether he's firing at a soft or armored target; the target has different defense values depending on whether the incoming fire is coming through front or flank (which includes rear). If attacker's Firepower + 2d6 (and Command Point DRMs, if any) is equal to or greater than target's Defense Value and Terrain modifiers, the target takes a hit. The target unit might be destroyed by a hit, but it might also be stunned, pinned, suppressed, or merely unnerved; the defender draws an effect chit and puts it under the unit, so the attacker doesn't necessarily know how effective his fire was. Is the enemy panicked and suppressed, or just waiting for us to get closer?

The "thank you" letter that came in the box lists several awards won by the first game in this series: an Origins, two Charles Roberts, a James Dunnigan and an International Gamers. I'm thinking that this might be the game that ASL should have been.

The first scenario is small: five Russian squads are in a village, and three German squads need to clear it. Perhaps tomorrow...