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Gordon Stewart and Mark Kolenski have
at it. |
J. R. Tracy and Bill Ashbaugh wage
war side by side. |
Better late than never ...
This year Conflict of Heroes (CoH) made its first appearance
at the World Boardgaming Championships, as Academy Games unveiled
the latest CoH expansion, Storms of Steel (SoS). Unfortunately,
Uwe's arrival was delayed with the result that the tournament
did not get off as scheduled, but so enthusiastic was its following
that an ad hoc crew took over and demonstrated the game until
Uwe's arrival for a delayed start. SoS introduces some new mechanics
to the popular CoH system. Though these changes were available
on line prior to WBC, Uwe Eickert, tournament GM and CoH/SoS
designer, walked the 16 participants through the new rules and
their implications for gameplay. Academy Games also provided
the SoS components necessary for play. The tournament consisted
of three rounds, each featuring a new SoS Firefight. Competitors
played a given Firefight once, then switched sides, recording
wins and losses as well as total casualties suffered and inflicted.
This allowed the GM to rank performances and seed matchups round
by round.
The first Firefight was The Courier's Satchel, with a Soviet
SMG force attempting to deliver a packet of documents to a headquarters
in the center of a small hamlet. The Germans had to fight their
way through town, try to intercept the courier, capture the documents,
and then attempt to exit the map for bonus victory points. This
proved to be a subtle chess match with a fairly even split of
German and Russian wins.
Round 2 introduced Wind or Sniper? This firefight utilized
a village overlay to create a small town in the middle of fields
of wheat. It also introduced the new SoS Sniper unit. Here
a small German garrison is under attack by a sizeable Soviet
force, supported by a pair of snipers concealed in the surrounding
grain. It is a very tense situation as the German player desperately
tries to identify the location of the snipers while the main
Russian attack presses home. Successful Soviet players were
able to pick off the German machine guns, weakening the defense
enough for the assault to carry the day. Uwe matched previous
winning players in this round, with Steve Pleva facing David
Middleton, while J. R. Tracy played Bill Ashbaugh. Steve and
J. R. both won each end of their firefight, setting up a final
round matchup to determine the tournament champion.
The last round featured Wounded Tiger, an interesting setup,
where an immobilized Tiger must hold off a Soviet armored force
long enough for a prime mover to arrive to tow it off of the
map. The prime mover has a panzer escort, which in turn threatens
the flank of the Soviet attack. This action saw a lot of German
wins, so victory came down to just how well the Soviets could
do in a losing cause. In the Pleva/Tracy matchup, J. R. failed
to eliminate Steve's Tiger, needing a seven or better on two
six-siders, but coming up short. Switching sides, J. R. killed
all the Russian tanks but not before Steve knocked out J. R.'s
Tiger. Though each won as the German, Steve's Tiger kill was
enough to win the heads-up match, and capture the overall tournament
victory.
Despite its aborted start, the game was well received and
we look forward to doing it again from scratch next year according
to schedule.
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Low piece density, quick playing times,
and ... |
... stunning graphics turned heads
in the game's WBC debut. |
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