Conflict of Heroes – first outing

Last night saw the first play of Conflict of Heroes – Awakening the Bear!

Bob & I played quite a leisurely game – chatting through the rules as we went and discussing various aspects of the game.

We played the first scenario – Partisans – and started to play the second – The Gap – when we ran out of time for the evening.

Bob is a veteran Squad Leader and Combat Commander player – the idea was to play the game to see how the mechanics worked, and how well it compared to these other systems.

This was my first experience of this sort of game – let’s just say it was a learning process!

The game ready for play - even with a single board we managed to take up quite a bit of room!

The starting position for Scenario 1 - the Russians lie in wait...

The first thing to note is the artwork of the boards and the chits – the boards are simply beautiful, and very high quality. The chits are nice and big – all the information is clear and does not look cluttered, even with the unit artwork.

The only downside was the turn/victory sheet – having counters of the same colour as the background did cause some issues (especially as Bob is colour blind)

The end of scenario 1 - it's not looking good for the Russians...

The verdict? This looks to be a really good game. I think it will take a few plays for me to get my head around all the game concepts (group movement caused some issues) but I’m certainly looking forward to playing again. The first scenario poses some challenge, but you can immediately see as soon as you start the second what a difference the cards make to the game – so I think we will be concentrating on those scenarios in future.

Will it convert to a miniatures game? Most certainly!

Pot / Kettle

I have been quite vocal about my dislike of ‘hex & chit’ board wargames in the past. As primarily a miniatures gamer, this was something that I simply couldn’t get my head around at all. Who would want to play a tactical level World War II game with card chits on a board when you could play it with minis?
Now, to a certain extent, this is still my standpoint. However, I’ve been playing more and more boardgames over the past year or so, and less and less miniatures games. Why? Well, there has been no particular agenda about it, but it has to be said that boardgames are much less hassle. If you want to play a game, you just open the box and it’s all there. And especially with some good board wargames/miniature games around (C&C Ancients, Battlelore, Waterloo etc) sometimes it’s just been the path of least resistance.

The latest step down this path has been the purchase of my first true ‘hex & chit’ wargame. I’ve resisted the urge to buy any of the Combat Commander sereis, but my resolve finally broke with Conflict of Heroes. This game has had a lot of very good feedback since it was launched and I decided that if I was going to give one of these style games ‘a go’, then this would be a good place to start.

So, I have bought the first in the series of games – Awakening the Bear – which deals with the Eastern Front 1941-42. I don’t have any miniatures that cover this period (with the exception of the Memoir ‘44 expansion) and so I thought this was a sufficient excuse to have a look at this game. I also bought the expansion map board.

Initial impressions of the game are very good. The first thing of note is that the box is heavy. It’s crammed full of stuff – 5 beautiful full colour mounted boards, excellent thick cardstock playing pieces – each about 25mm square – plus a pack of cards and a couple of dice.

This, complete with a large, full colour eurogame-style rulebook really gives a fantastic first impression – it looks easy to understand with lots of examples of gameplay.

I punched the counters last night and I’ve had a quick look through the rules – hopefully I can give you a full review of this game in a future podcast.

As an additional note, Storms of Steel -  the second game in the series which looks at the Eastern Front 1943 – 45 – is due out at the end of September. I’m keeping my eyes open for this one too…

1/48th Fallschirmjager – Enemy Lines vs North Star (Scarab)

Paul Caspall was asking how the Enemy Lines figures that I mentioned yesterday match up with their North Star equivalents.

Marco at Enemy Lines is going to send me a sample, but here are side-by-side pictures of the figure sets - North Star is first, followed by Enemy Lines.

As you can see, there are a few apparent differences in proportion (Enemy Lines still have that ‘Heroic 28mm’ look to them, I think) so it will be interesting to see what these are like side-by-side ‘in the metal’

Just when you thought 1/48th WW2 was dead…

As you (should) know by now, one of my great loves is World War 2 skirmish gaming.

This sort of game is great with larger scale figures, and I am a big fan of the range of 1/48th scale figures which Richard Ansell sculpted for North Star (along with the companion Project X range) – and I own a platoon or so of each range (apart from the Russians)

I’ve been keen to see this range expand – expecially to include Fallschirmjager (which were sadly overlooked in the initial releases) – and it’s also been hard to get hold of any of the figures recently…especially since I’ve been looking to purchase the 1945 German Infantry range.

So, I was very pleased to see that this range looks to have been given a new lease of life by Scarab Miniatures, who have recently purchased the entire range. I’m hoping to have a chat with them at The Other Partizan to see what they have got planned..

However, even better news was that having exchanged email with a podcast listener (Hello Don!) about 1/48th Scale minis, he told me of another UK company that produced 1/48th Scale figures which I was not previously aware of – Enemy Lines Miniatures.  Now this is a relatively new company, and they are producing 1/48th scale figures aimed primarily at the Italian Campaign in WW2, but their first releases include some rather nice Fallschirmjager:

I’m looking forward to seeing these ‘in the metal’ and comparing them to the 2 packs of Fallschirmjager that North Star actually produced. Hopefully these will all be compatible and if will mean I can collect a full platoon for gaming in Normandy…

Force on Force released!

Excellent news!

Force on Force – the much anticipated new rules from Ambush Alley have been released.

This rule set takes the original Ambush Alley rule set, which was designed for combat between modern combat units and insurgents, and amends it to allow two military forces to fight each other.

It does this in two different time periods – Modern Day and World War II.

As well as infantry and armoured combat, the rules also cover such things as off table artillery and air support.

The rules include several army lists and scenarios:

For Modern Day, there are TO&E for Australians, British (Regulars & Royal Marines), US (Marines, Light Infantry and Rangers) and USSR (Cold War Soviet Motorised Rifle Brigade)

For World War II, there are TO&E for German Panzer Grenadiers, British Army and US Army.

Scenarios include Normandy 1944 (British vs Germans), Ardennes 1944 (US vs Germans) and Berlin (Russia vs Germans), plus Basra 2003 (British vs Iraqi), Baghdad 2003 (US vs Iraqi), Afghanistan 2007 (British vs Taliban) and a fictitious Cold War scenario set in West Germany 1986 (US vs Soviet)

Having had a quick flick through the rules, these look to be a well presented set of rules. However, first observations do raise a couple of questions.

1. Why are the modern forces not matched up? If you are providing modern British and US troops, why not Modern Russians for what-if cold war? Failing that, if you have Cold War Russians, you should have a matching Cold War US Army list.

2. WW2 – where are the Russians? You should really have included the TO&E of the Russians in these rules.

Lots to have a look at, and I will review these rules in an upcoming podcast, but I hope by then that some of the questions may be answered…

New Games for Christmas

Well, I don’t know about you, but Santa was quite kind to me over Christmas, and I received a couple of new games.

First up was the World War 2 variant of Richard Borg’s Commands & Colors series of boardgames – Memoir ‘44.

This game has taken Scimitar Wargames Group by storm over the last few months with many new converts to the game.

Why? Well, to be honest, I’m not sure. It’s a well produced game – the cards, boards and terrain are excellent, whilst the miniatures are simply adequate. The rules are simple, but with an underlying complexity included in the Command and Control rules which is enough to keep gamers coming back.

I asked for it as it seems to be an ideal ‘Ladz & Dadz’ game – so I’m hoping to get Josh involved with this on a regular basis.

The other game was another Boardgame with miniatures – and this too has a War setting, though this time the action is based firmly in fiction rather than fact. That game is Tannhauser.

I’ve heard a lot about this game, and to be honest the feedback from other people is somewhat mixed, but I really fancied trying it for myself.

The game looks interesting, and the production values are up to the usual standard that we now expect from Fantasy Flight Games – although the pre-painted miniatures are nothing to get too excited over.

In short, this seems to be another interesting game to get into – more complex that Memoir, but then again, it’s Weird War skirmish – a genre I have a particular soft spot for at the moment – I think I need to find that Horrorclix B.P.R.D set now to play Hellboy in this game.

Both games have several expansions – so I think if they are a success, I will have a lot to keep me busy in the coming months.

A question of scale

You may remember a couple of days ago, I talked about receiving Over The Channel, a campaign for fighting the Battle of Britain for the Check Your 6! rules, and I was undecided about what scale of aircraft I was going to use…

…well, after reading the book, it ended up being an easy decision.

The book contains a total of 18 scenarios. If you want to fight all of them, you need the following aircraft:

Royal Air Force:

• 9 x Spitfire I
• 9 x Hurricane I
• 6 x Fairey Battle
• 3 x Bolton-Paul Defiant
• 4 x Blenheim IF
• 6 x Blenheim IV
• 3 x Spitfire II

Luftwaffe:

• 10 x Ju 88
• 13 x Do17
• 12 x Ju 87
• 8 x He 111
• 8 x Me Bf 110C
• 8 x Me 109E
• 12 x BR.20M
• 8 x Cr. 42

…thats a grand total of 119 aircraft, including 65 bombers.

Much as I like 1/300th scale aircraft, considering that fighters cost £1 each, and bombers can be anything from £2-£3 each, from a purely economic point of view, there is only one decision to make – 1/600th scale.

Even then, you are still looking at a bill in excess of £50 for all the aircraft. Another project to complete in stages, I think…

New rules arrived

The postman was kind to me this morning and delivered 2 new sets of rules for my continued gaming delight…

The first is the 2nd Edition of Polemos Napoleonic. As you already know if you read this blog or listen to the podcast, I’m a big fan of these rules, and have been looking forward to the 2nd Edition ever since it was announced.

What are the differences over 1st Edition? Not a tremedous amount, although they have been tidied up and many clarifications made – but I’ll post my views on them in a future show.

The second set of rules I received were the Check Your 6! set of World War II aerial combat rules, along with the Over The Channel supplement from Scott Fisher of Skirmish Campaigns fame.

I’ve been eyeing these rules for some time now, and have been undecided as to whether to get them or not.

What finally made the decision for me was seeing the Pearl Harbour game at the Derby World Wargames Championships at the start of October. The game was using Tumbling Dice 1/600th scale aircraft and looked really good.

Also, since the game uses similar mechanisms to the World War I game Blue Max (which I play online from time to time) I was pretty much sold.

But of course, being a Brit, the Flying Tigers scenarios from the original rulebook hold only passing interest for me, so I just had to purchase the Battle of Britain scenario book Over The Channel to go with the original rules.

I’m really looking to playing this game – it just means that I now have to buy some more aircraft and a blue hex mat.

On the aricraft front, I’m sort of torn between 1/300th and 1/600th scale. I like the 1/600th Tumbling dice range of aircraft, but I also like the 1/300th planes because I prefer the size – it may simply come down to a matter of economics – it depends how many aircraft I will need to buy in order to play all the scenarios in the BoB book.

The hex mat could end up being more of an issue – I’ve looked around the web, and everyone seems out of stock at the moment…not good.