An evening at war (Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear!, Wings of War)

This evening started with a healthy debate on the pros and cons of the current plans for a coalition governments in Canada during this economic crisis. I think we came to the conclusion that's it's a good thing. Also, that it's a bad thing. Glad we got that all cleared up.

With only four players this week, I took advantage of my pick and chose to try out Conflict of Heroes on the group. I've played a number of scenarios already, and already knew that I liked it as a two player wargame, but I wasn't sure how the 4 player scenarios would work out or if Shemp and Luch would like it.

We played the online scenario "Smolensk Breakout". It's a beginner's scenario for 2-4 players where the germans are hold up in a series of buildings trying to defend from the surrounding russians until their own reinforcements arrive. It's entirely infantry based, but there are cards in the mix. On first inspection, it seemed perfect for the occasion.

Mechanically, I'd say Shemp and Luch caught on very quickly. Shemp tamed up with Kozure as the attacking russians, and Luch and I played the defending germans. Once the concept of action points, command action points and opportunity actions are understood this game is a walk in the park rules-wise. For a wargame, that's an admirable achievement.

In the end, though, the experience wasn't as much fun as I'd hoped. There was a couple of factors which led to this:

1) We were playing too slowly. The game is easy enough to play quickly, and so with a bit more experience with the system we should get there. If the scenario played out to 5 rounds in an hour, as the scenario suggests, the experience would have been much improved.
2) I was on the defending side, and I played too aggressively. By taking unnecessary risk, I lost some important units. As the game progressed, the lost units contributed to a somewhat boring losing proposition for the germans. There was little tension or sense of struggle for either side... the germans were going to lose, it was just a matter of how badly.
3) We messed up with the reinforcement schedule, placing all the russians on the board in the first round. This, of course, added to the lopsided scenario.

By the end of the third round, we called it a win for the russians. All of my units were eliminated, and Luch had maybe two left. It wasn't pretty.

I don't want to fault the scenario or the game. As I said, I think Luch and Shemp would be willing to give it another go. With a bit of experience under our belt, I still think it could be a really fun 4 player experience. We had a couple of questions regarding the 4 player game rules, but nothing too serious.

(as an aside: Having played a 5 scenarios at this point, I'm starting to feel the limitations of the system a little more than I had in the beginning. The loss of leaders, the integration of squads and their weapons into a single counter, etc all add up to a simpler experience than a slightly more complex game such as the Ln'L system. There was a moment in Wednesday's game where Shemp destroyed a machine gun squad, and I realized there was no way for him to use it. It was a little disappointing to notice that such small things mattered to me more than I initially expected).

We finished up with another round of Wings of War. As the Red Baron (again) I flew literal circles around Kozure's Spad. However, my shooting left something to be desire, and Shemp eventually joined the fray to finish me off. I could't defend myself and was the first player eliminated. Somehow, Luch recovered from my loss and managed to take down Shemp and Kozure. Victory for the forces of GOOD!!!" It was lots of fun.