Conflict of Heroes – AAR Firefight 5 – The Bunker

Intro

Kris and I played another rousing game of Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear last night at Fair Game. This time around it was Firefight 5 – The Bunker. We were also glad to have Patrick and his son Liam around, from our old Memoir ’44 troupe, who were interested in learning CoH. We were glad to help them and and expose them to this great game.

While we played FF5, Patrick and Liam were learning on FF2

Set-Up

For this firefight, the Soviets are set up across two maps, trying to hold a village towards the front of the German advance while also protecting a bunker on a hill towards the back of the layout. The Soviets have a nice collection of powerful tanks (T-26) and a single AT gun (45mm). However, they have a lot of ground to protect. The Germans are outfitted with some ok armor, a few units of not so great scouts, and some speedy tucks carrying infantry.

I decided to skip the hidden unit option for simplicity sake. Had I been planning this out more fully, I think I would have hidden a tank or two and maybe some infantry. However, I don’t think it impacted the outcome. As the Soviets, I placed two infantry, my MMG, and a single T-26 within the village. My second T-26 and AT gun were placed high on the first set of hills on map 3. My final infantry unit was placed in the bunker.

Early Turns

Kris initially advanced  with his first armor unit (a PZIIIe I think) and moved toward the center of the village. Not knowing what to expect, I activated my bunker unit to stall. Once I saw what he was doing, I exhausted the bunker unit and activated my in-village T-26. While the PzIIIe moved toward a control marker, I swung around some woods hoping to score a flank shot with the T-26.

The PzIIIe was a bit too fast and was able to score some close range hits on the infantry occupying the closest control marker in a wood structure. However, this did give me enough time to get in range with my T-26. I eliminated the PzIIIe with a couple of expensive (5AP) shots. It was a pretty exciting race!

In short order, Kris had infiltrated the town with his speedy trucks and remaining armor. It quickly became a quagmire though. At one point all of Kris’ units had hits on them. We both had immobilized armor and I was so short on CAPs that effectively ordering my units was very difficult.

Quagmire in the Village

Late Turns

Eventually, Kris cleared my units off the control markers, but I was still scoring off the remotely located control marker on the back map (3-C10) and a fair amount from inflicting casualties on the Germans.

The only "destroyed" marker of the game . . . and on a truck!

One of Kris’ armor units rallied and broke away from the village heading toward the bunker with a flanking move along the southern edge of the map. As he approached hill 53, I was able to get one hit on him from my AT gun perched on the front hill. He continued his advance, but another hit from the AT gun effectively ended the game.

AT gun perched up high

Closing

This was a great firefight to play. Kris and I were laughing, cheering, groaning, and getting into it all along. I have to admit this is probably my third game against Kris where I’ve had extraordinary rolling against him. At some points we just had to laugh about it.

The final score was recorded as 24-6 but I think we made some scoring errors on how VPs that were awarded. This may have impacted the scores a couple of points either way. Having said that, during our post-game discussion Kris and I came away feeling the Germans were at a very distinct disadvantage from a scoring perspective. That is the only downside we felt, but I don’t think we’d write the firefight off after only one play.

The bottom line for me is, once again, Conflict of Heroes shows itself to be one of the most enjoyable game to play that I own.I can’t believe were having this much fun and are only 1/3 of the way through the Awakening the Bear firefights.

It comes highly recommended from these parts (Chicago suburbs)! Play it now!