Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel!

Hey Geekshelfers!  I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk to you about the latest boardgame I've played.  It's called Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel.  For the uninitiated, this is a squad-based tactical war boardgame, from the award winning creator of "Awakening The Bear", the first of the Conflict of Heroes series created by Uwe Eickert.

The first scenario is a tutorial you can play solo and it's nail-bitingly AWESOME.  You take control of 3 German Panzer Grenadiers who have to capture a soviet-controlled building.  The odds are stacked against you but with a little luck and some good tactical decisions, you can inch your way to victory!

Beginning of the scenario: 3 German grenadiers vs. a TON of Soviets!

The game is deep but the rule book is clear and very easy to grasp. Basically, on a players turn, they can activate a unit and pay Action Points to have it either move, fire or stall.  You generally only have 7 Action Points to spend for your unit so deciding on what to do is crucial.

Take a look at the German grenadiers below, for example.  The number on the top left (3) is it's cost to fire and the number on the top right (1) is it's cost to move.  So, with 7 action points, it could either fire twice and move once OR move 7 times if you so wished.  When those 7 action points are depleted, the unit is flipped over and marked as "spent".

"Spent" units can no longer be activated with normal Action Points but this is where Command Action Points (CAPs) come in.  Depending on which scenario is played, each player will get a specified amount of Command Action points that allow you to activate spent units, modify dice rolls or rally your troops.  CAPs are limited and do not replenish until the next round so spend them wisely!

Back to the game.  As you can see below, it didn't take long for the Germans to engage in a firefight with the Soviets!

The 3rd German grenadiers take fire and are now cowering!

I LOVE how combat is resolved in this game.  Again, looking at the example below, you can see that the 1st German Grenadier has flanked the Soviet MMG.  To resolve combat, you look at the bottom left  hand corner of the attacking unit (5).  This is the unit's firepower against anything unarmored. You take this value and you'll add the roll of two dice.  Say I rolled a 9 on those two dice.  (5)+(9) would give me a firepower value of 14.

I then compare that with the defending unit's defense value on it's bottom right hand corner.  In this case (12).  If the value of the attack is equal to or more than the defending value, the unit scores a hit!  Of course, flanking and being in a building also gives bonuses to attack and defense...

Each time a unit is hit, the player who owns that unit must draw from a "hit" marker pool which imposes random penalties on the unit.  Instead of looking up the results on charts, the hit counters make it very easy to see just what has happened to the unit.  This mechanic is simple yet brilliant.   The only way to get rid of these penalties is to rally on your next turn which costs a crappy 5 (out of 7) Action Points.  Right. OUCH.

German Grenadier flanks the Soviet MMG

Finally, we can see that the Germans begin to close in on the stone buildings! A furious firefight erupts...

...and the Soviet rifle unit is eliminated!  The scenario calls for BOTH Soviet-controlled hexes to be taken by the end of the 5th round so the Germans are one step closer to victory by this point!

The 3rd Grenadier unit makes haste and lends a helping hand. It's gonna be a close one!

the end is near for the Soviets.

The Soviet SMG is taken out and after taking some lethal firepower, the 2nd Rifle unit is panicked!  As you can see, they MUST roll an 8 or higher to rally and get rid of that hit marker.

...With no Action Points remaining on the last round of the scenario, the Soviets are out of luck and the Germans win with only 1 casualty!  The objective is complete and victory is acheived!

the state of things at the end of the game!

You can see that the Soviets only had 2 Victory points against the Germans who ended up with 6.  In a two player game, each person would be using one of these sheets to keep track of their victory points, as well as Command and Action Points.

All in all, I LOVE the design of this game.  The chits and the boards are all thick and have a GORGEOUS linen finish to them.  The rules are broken up incrementally so you can learn a bit of the system and implement it in a scenario before moving on.  This makes it WAY less intimidating than having to learn something like Advanced Squad Leader (which I've always wanted to try but was really put off by it's extra heavy rulebook).

Also, the combat becomes very tactical and pulse-pounding as each side tries to achieve their victory conditions before the end of the game.  There's very little downtime since the enemy can ALWAYS react to a given action.  The challenge really comes down to knowing WHEN to activate a unit and spending your precious Command Points are crucial to staying in the fight!

A downside to the game is the price (about $65 on Amazon) but the components, and all the scenarios are well worth it.  Oh, i almost forgot to mention that the game also comes with cards which also adds to the infinite replayability of the game. This will definitely see alot of table time with me and I'm really looking forward to getting my gaming buddies into it as well!

Happy gaming, folks!

For more information on Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel!, visit Academy Games.

RPG game night with Dwarven Forge set!

Hey Geekshelfers!  The Pixar lads had another great roleplaying session last night after work.  We all chipped in recently to buy several boxes of the Dwarven Forge playset to enhance our roleplaying sessions and we finally  used it for the first time last night.  It was a BLAST!

Here are a couple of pics of the playsets all laid out shortly after being purchased! 

Photo courtesy of Jtop

 ....and another:

Phtoto courtesy of Jtop

The pieces are all very sturdy and well made, as well as having a beautiful paint job applied to it.  When you see your minis walking through the set, it really does make it that much more immersive.

As for the game, Everett's been running a Dragon Age campaign that saw our characters (an elf, a dwarf, and a human) investigating a band of cultists who have been kidnapping and killing children.

Everett sets up the lair..

Our characters rescued a family in need and after following more clues, tracked down the cultists to this final location!

the layout of the cultist hideout!

We cut down several cultists and head upstairs only to discover the ringleader of it all: the seductive Lady Brianna!

the last cultist goes down!

Lady Brianna entranced the elf but the characters were eventually able to break free of her charms and cut her down!

Lady Brianna defeated! 

Overall, the session proved to be quite fun and we'll definitely be using the Dwarven Forge sets again!

Happy Gaming!

Pixar game night 1/2/11: GammaWorld!

Hey Geekshelfers!  Hope you all had a wonderful holiday break.  2011 has started off with a (nuclear) bang here at Pixar as the Dandies break out the latest D&D re-release of "Gammaworld".  

We were going to play Descent but we had one too many players.   Luckily, Everett had an adventure ready so we promptly rolled up some characters and got the adventure going!

Everett helps everyone roll up their characters!

The basic premise was that our characters were junk collectors for Al's Premium Salvage Emporium.   

The first game of the year:  D&D Gammaworld!

The Dandies roll out the new LED D20!

It always helps with creativity when you draw your characters and the situations they encounter during the game:

Dr. Ploeb and Grimm

For a better look at the cast of characters, follow Austin's LINK HERE.

...a beautiful friendship

Anyway, the beginning of the game saw the group casually hanging out at Sally's local bar when a robot ranting about "The Iron King" appeared and caused some havoc with a rocket! 

Austin, Ross, and Yvie

Al sends the team to investigate and after travelling for some time, they discover an area guarded by nomadic Porkers and Badders!

Our intrepid scrap collectors journey into danger!

After killing two Porkers, the group was led into the hideout where they encountered a menacing Lion-Bat creature!  Who knows what other foul monsters await?!

Lion-Bat.  Only in GammaWorld, folks!

Towards the end of the night, Emma joined in and proceeded to roll up a character which turned out to be a pyrotechnic mutant!

Story artist extraordinaire Emma Coats joins in...

....Emma rolled up a pyrotechnic mutant!  How fitting:)

All in all, Gammaworld was a great start to our weekly gaming night and a wonderful way to kick off the New Year!

Stay tuned for further adventures!

Pixar game night 12/13/10 : Cosmic Encounter Again!

Hey Geekshelf-ers!  Welcome back to the latest write-up of our weekly Pixar game night!  Last week's game of Cosmic Encounter was a total riot (read about that HERE) so we all decided to bring it out again for our last game before Christmas break!

The cosmos float above Paul:)

Ok, so before we start, let's look at who was playing which aliens:  Yours truly had "Grudge", Erick played "Mirror", Matt played "Anti-Matter".....

The players:  Me, Erick, Matt

Matt and Erick before the game begins!

The other players:  Austin played "Mercenary", Everett:  "Human", Paul was "Magician"!

The players:  Austin, Everett, and Paul

For those familiar with the game, you can see that it was a great mix of powers  that created a truly great game dynamic!

So as the game got underway, the powers were slowly revealed...Grudge was one of the most annoying aliens in the game since it caused players that didnt help me out to lose 4 ships:)  Yeah, I was a big crybaby during the game...

The celestial calm before the storm!

The game quickly turned nasty though when Erick revealed his power as The Mirror.  He can basically turn an encounter card (seen below) and flip it to an insane amount.  That 08 attack card?  It's now an 80.  Yeah.  FUCK...

FUCKING MIRROR!

As you can see, because of this, a TON of ships ended up in the warp!

Luckily, Austin busted out the Mobius Tubes and freed the rest of the ships from the warp...

Austin frees the ships from the warp....

This was the situation towards the end of the night...  Matt and Everett try to share a win by invading Austin's colony but we successfully hold them off and survive to fight another day!

Attack on Austin's planet is foiled!

Another few turns and this is what the situation looked like...  Just look at that...A true nail-biter! 

YIKES!  Which color will be picked from the destiny deck?!!

"So what happened!?"you ask?

Well, Erick's color was drawn from the destiny deck and everyone decided to gang up against him and share a victory!  We sent in an overwhelming amount of ships and even his Mirror ability was'nt able to help!

It was another nail-biter to the end and an amazing end-of-the-year wrap up to our weekly game night!

Special thanks to Everett Downing for taking these photos!

Carson City

Hey bloggers! So last night, Joy and I had a lovely romantic evening of playing Carson City. Oh who am I kidding. As soon as I set up the game and explained all the rules to her, she quickly took to it and proceeded to kick my ass five ways to sunday.

Simply put, Carson City is about buying up the best property, locking out the other players from doing so and earning WADS of cash to buy victory points. I should have known that all these mechanics are hard wired into women's brains. It's in their genetics. They dont even have to do too much thinking to make the optimal moves.

Now I consider myself a relatively smart fella. But playing with my wife just simply reduced me to a walking mess of bumbling idiocy. It's like one of those recurring nightmares when you dream you're in front of a bunch of people naked. The utter shame and humiliation was truly laughable.

As you can see below, Joy played green and had racked up a sizable amount of mines, banks, saloons and drugstores. My biggest money makers were a few ranches and a mine but in the end, she ended up with tons of cash with which to buy victory points.

Even the Lucky Monkey token didn't help my cause:) Anyway, as for the game itself, it truly is fun even if you lose. I have to play it more to really make a better judgement but it really seems like there are many ways to score victory points which are great. And getting cash from your buildings feels very satisfying at the end of the round.

Even when you are getting your ass kicked:)

for more information on Carson City please visit www.boardgamegeek.com