First Impression: Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! – Russia 1941-42

By Jim Forsythe
January 7, 2009

Designer: Uwe Eickert
Publisher: Academy Games / Phalanx Games
Players: 2-4
Rules Language: English / German
Link:

For 28 years, I’d held on to my childhood copy of Squad Leader, Avalon Hill’s highly successful tactical squad level combat game.  But when my kids started selling stuff on eBay and donating half the proceeds to a charity as part of a home-school service project, I decided it was finally time to part ways with the favorite game from my childhood. With a nostalgic tear in my eye, I watched my daughter pack it up and ship it off, never to be seen again.

Conflict of Heroes was one of several games that helped me finally part ways with the love of my youth. It’s extremely similar to Squad Leader in many ways: modular hex boards that can be combined for larger battles, counters representing infantry squads and individual tanks, and programmed instruction. (Each scenario adds a few more rules than the previous one, so you can get playing quickly and add complexity later.) However, Conflict of Heroes feels so much more streamlined and elegant in comparison due to the fundamental underlying mechanism of the game. Like many of the advances in gaming made in the last decade, Conflict of Heroes tries to get as much of the mechanisms of the game out of the way of the gameplay itself.

The heart of the game system is action-point driven rather than the more traditional wargame paradigm of move/attack. A player can activate a unit, and that unit then gets seven points to spend. Each unit’s counter has its cost to move and fire printed on it, while terrain can drive up the base move cost. This opens up more possibilities for a unit than traditional systems. A unit could move up to the edge of some woods, take a shot, then retreat back into the woods, out of site. Or perhaps it could move to the edge of the woods, take several shots leaving itself open to multiple attacks later. A unit could concentrate several shots on one important enemy or shoot at multiple targets. It also is interesting how the different units work since a German light machine gun takes only two action points to fire, while a Russian infantry unit takes four. So while the machine gun could fire at three targets, with a point left over, the Russian can take only a single shot.

The combat itself is simple: Take the printed firepower on your unit, add it to a die roll, and compare to the defensive value of the target, plus any cover due to terrain. As you spend your seven points on actions, however, you have to be cautious since after every action, the opponent has a chance to react with an opportunity action. As you advance to the edge of the woods, maybe he will open up with machine gun fire before you have a chance to fire. Or maybe he’ll move one of his vulnerable units back into cover before you can fire.

Once you finish spending your action points, you flip the unit over to show that it is done for the turn. You can continue to take actions with other units, or pass, and let your opponent make some moves. This continues until both opponents pass – once they have taken actions with all of the units they want to – then a new turn begins.  But don’t count out those units that have already spent their actions as each player has a certain number of command points he can spend on units, even if they have already moved. These command points can also be used to add to an important die roll or supplement the seven action points that units get. Managing this precious resource is a key part of the strategy of the game, and represents where your leadership is focused.

The game builds on this key mechanism with additional features:

• When hit, units draw a random counter that can lead to numerous different results: being suppressed and unable to fire, going berserk, having firepower increased, etc. The effects are simple to manage as the modifiers are printed directly on the counters. To get rid of the effect, a unit can spend a precious five points to rally, or risk getting hit again, and eliminated.

• Units have facing; attacks from behind will be more likely to hit, so outflanking an opponent is possible.

• Cards are used to add some extra flavor, differentiate scenarios, and give a bit of feel for a fog of war.

• Group actions allow your units to team up to give extra firepower, or make a coordinated assault.

Although I still fondly remember sitting across from my brother playing Squad Leader, I am confident now that the game can be replaced by something with as much flavor, tactics, and depth, but with streamlined game play. I look forward to playing Conflict of Heroes with my son – maybe 28 years from now he’ll be selling it on eBay, thinking back nostalgically. Coming up with a streamlined, yet deep squad level tactical wargame seems to be the Holy Grail of wargaming. Serious wargamers will likely still find many flaws with Conflict of Heroes in their eternal quest for perfection, but for now I feel like a big leap forward has been made.

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