I’m an old hex-head from years back. My buddy Paul C. and I played Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) when we were young and we loved it. ASL was such a complete simulation it transported you to the place and the time and the terror of the era. Two decades later I have vivid memories of the Tractor Works in Stalingrad. I thought ASL was perhaps the perfect game, if one could master the rules.

But, frankly, I never did master the rules, because the rules are outrageous and try and account for every possible circumstance. Those wonderful & memorable scenarios we used to play took all day, starting early in the morning, ending after midnight, because we always had to look up the rules and we were both so damn timid. Paul did go on to master the rules and then spoke of playing ASL fast, which he said made the game much better, adding to the legend that is ASL.

Prior to the Foot-Foot retreat, Paul taught me Conflict of Heroes and I don’t think I will ever play ASL again, nor do I still consider it the perfect game, regardless of one’s knowledge of the rules. Conflict of Heroes has all the feel of ASL, but is just a much better game. It’s like someone mastered ASL and then said, “how can I make this a better experience for the players?”

For one, make the rules shorter and simpler! Mastering the rules to any game should not be the equivalent of getting an Associate’s Degree. CoH has a simple rule set. You can play the first scenario after learning six pages of rules, the third after learning 10 pages of rules.

For another, make the game more fluid. ASL has turns: one player moves/shoots his guys, then other guy does. Yeah, an opponent can respond in the middle of a turn in some circumstances, but it isn’t fluid. CoH turns start with one player having initiative, which means someone activates a unit first and takes an action (i.e. moving, shooting) and the opponent can respond at anytime while that unit is the active unit. After the active unit is done, then the opponent activates a unit and takes actions (or the player passes). This mechanism makes for much more fluid play that feels so much more realistic than ASL.

For another, let broken units do something! Instead of just breaking, KIA or reducing as they do in ASL, CoH has a mechanism where a broken unit pulls a chit that breaks it in a variety of ways (e.g. pinned, cowering, stunned, berserk, and others) that still allow the unit to do something, just not as well as a good order unit can. In short, breaking affects different units differently, a much better effect than the uniformity of ASL.

Love the use of Action points and command action points. Action points are essentially the allotment of activities that units can do. Moving, firing, pivoting, rallying, all require action points, so if you have enough action points you can move and fire, which is always hard to do in ASL. Command action points are even better. Each player is given an allotment of command action points at the beginning of a turn and they are spent at the players discretion to augment the action points used by a player or modify the die rolls, simulating a commander leading a firegroup.

Love the use of Action cards, which allow the players do something special, like an additional action, or modify a die roll, or take an extra movement. A player can develop a whole strategy around the use of action cards, but isn’t completely screwed if he doesn’t have any good ones (like in Combat Commander, where a player could be stuck wanting to something really basic, like move, but not have the right cards to do so).

We played three games, two before the retreat and one during it. The first one I won (Scenario 2) playing the Germans, which was a learning scenario. The second and third games were played with Scenario 3, which is one where the Soviets are guarding a unit, which represents an injured general and his entourage. The Germans want to capture that unit. The Soviets start with all their units hidden.

I played the Germans first, and ended up running out of time before I got to the goal. I simply played too cautiously, focusing on taking out enemy units and advancing carefully, which is a recipe for running out of time before the German’s can gain serious victory points. Paul took the Germans the next time and developed a strategy around the action cards he drew. In short, he ran his troops over open ground toward the goal, forcing me to reveal all my troops by shooting and killing most of his troops (I also had some really good rolls of the dice :-)). He focused all his command action points on a single squad that raced down the side of the board and then used an awesome combination of action cards to capture the unit that was the goal, it was an awesome strategy that worked and left my mouth agape. But he still lost him the scenario 7-6 because he lost so many guys along the way and didn’t take the secondary goal in the scenario. The game mechanism is able to simulate leaderless cannon-fodder, and super-squads that are finely led, without the use of special tokens or units.

In short, don’t play ASL. Don’t play Combat Commander. Play Conflict of Heroes, it’s the Euro of tactical hex games (and I mean that in the best possible way).

More here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/24800