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Tuesday, February 23, 2010 10:56 am

Game Review - Conflict of Heroes:Awakening the Bear
Posted by: Foo_Guevara

My opinion of war games changed in June of 2008 at Origins in Columbus when I was drawn to a large crowd at the Academy Games booth. On display was a soon to be released game called Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear. You just didn't see this kind of crowd at the other war games booths like Multiman Publishing, or Avalanche Press. Until this time, war games were things that I would buy and look at on my shelf while wishing I had friends who could see how fun pushing stacks of tiny pieces of cardboard around a paper map could be.

The game designer, Uwe Eickert and his son Gunther were giving demos, and showing off this beautiful game. Let me stress beautiful. The game consists of gorgeous mounted map boards which can be arranged in many different configurations, as well as 1" square, thick tiles representing units. I won't call them chits, these things are weighty eurogame quality tiles.

I had the opportunity to play a demo with the designer, and within 20 minutes we had successfully fought a small firefight with a few squads per side. We didn't have to consult a single combat result table (CRT) for you grognards.

Everything you need to know about a unit is printed on the tile. Cost to move, cost to fire, range of fire, front defense, flank defense, as well as ammunition type are easy to read and consistent for all units, whether infantry or armor.

The game play was unique for me. This is no "I'm going to take my turn, come back in an hour" kind of affair. Each player has a pool of Action Points(AP) that applies to an activated unit, and a pool of Command Action Points(CAP) that apply to all units under your command. You begin your turn by activating one of your units, or a group of adjacent units. You then take an action. An action can be either move, shoot, or something like constructing a defense. Each action has a point cost associated with it (all printed on the tile). After you have taken a single action, your opponent has a chance to respond to that action by taking an opportunity action with one of his units. His opportunity action can either cause his unit to become spent, or if he decides to spend CAP(a precious resource to be sure), that unit still remains available to him for activation on his turn. This type of action/reaction continues until your activated unit is out of AP. It is then your opponents turn to activate one of his unspent units and your chance to react to his actions. Play continues in this manner until both sides have spent all of their units. Then the new turn begins, CAP is replenished and the process starts over again.

Combat is simple to resolve. Roll two dice, add the result to your firepower(printed on the tile) add in any modifers (close combat, combined fire, etc) and compare that to the defense value on your opponents tile, adding in modifiers for cover. If it's equal or greater, the unit has been affected, and draws a damage tile at random. The damage tiles will either modify the unit in negative ways or outright kill them. If you hit a target that already has a damage tile associated with it, the unit is killed. If your modified firepower exceeds the target's defense by 4 or more, it's automatically killed as well.

The rule book is a model of what all war games rule books should be. The well researched firefights that come with the game are intended to ease you into the rules, with each one adding more aspects of the game. The first firefight has you doing basic sqaud tactics, and by the time you've played through the final one you've picked up the rules for off-board artillery strikes, hidden troop movement, and defensive structures.

CoH:AtB is the first in a series of games, some standalone, like the newly released Conflict of Heroes:Storms of Steel which covers the Kursk campaign. I can't think of a more approachable and enjoyable war game.

Images lifted from boardgamegeek.com

Most Recent Comments (Add Your Own or View All)

Tuesday, February 23 2010 - 3:09 PM
Malice	Pretty slick...looks great. I loved playing these games when I was younger...Pushing stacks aroud lol. I even had and air combat game that was freaking awesome. Ah memories...I cannot even get anyone to play RISK anymore lol.
Sunday, February 28 2010 - 12:08 PM
Panaman	Looks like one complicated drinking game

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