Great overview guys. Thank you! In the 3rd Ed Conflict of Heroes, we incorporated combat cohesion suppression, where your troops, especially when under fire, often will not immediately follow through with their mission objectives. They hear or take fire and often hit the ground, or take a knee to "assess" the situation, etc. Also, Units near MGs and other crewed high fire rate weapons will often not stick their heads up to fire since those high output weapons "are doing so much better a job than I ever could. So why risk my neck?" Now, if you want to guarantee that your men will immediately follow through with your orders, you have to focus on them by keeping an open radio channel or sending an officer/NCO to make sure they keep their heads in the game. This is simulated by you spending your few Command APs (leader, logistics, and communications support reserves) to lower the probability of the Units becoming spent. Spent Units are those that will no longer take actions on their own initiative for the next few minutes (for the remainder of that Round). But these Spent Units can take further actions with your command initiative (simulating you or other NCO / officer telling these men to "quit f@#king off and getting their asses moving!". :) Again, thank you for taking the time to review Storms of Steel. France 1940 is almost done and we will be releasing it late this fall. It includes French, British, and German units, with pre-order supporters also receiving the Dutch and Belgian expansion units. Have a great week! - Uwe
Love your series Uwe but I also hate the high luck factor. I played a few games with my wife. She knows nothing about this type of game, She likes Zombicide. She won with me few times only because she was rolling nines or tens and I was missing everything. In one mission I killed only one of her Russian units and she destroys almost 80% of my German forces. In moments like this, you start to think "Is this real strategy game or just Warhammer?". I love how many options you have, 3rd edition rules, command points, card, flanking, etc, but by the end when you have no luck with your rolls, this game doesn`t represent better training of German units. Anyway, I still play, because is fun.
@@tomj.7599 The probabilities, as in life, even out over time. And as in any combat situation, how you react to the shit coming your way does influence the outcome to a large extent. So I am so happy that your wife kicked your butt, because these are big brownie points fo you! It means that she may play a war game with you again! Lucky guy. :) Have a great week Tom. - Uwe
@@wildbillsworkshop3410 Yes, we are working on the allied airborne invasions in 1944. Including the 82nd, 101st and 6th! The maps are already completed and we will post these as soon as we have completed France 1940. :)
I believe the activation dice came from the solo module for Awakening the Bear. I believe that people started to use dice, house ruling instead of the card draw, which how it was originally done, to determine if the ai had become exhausted. It turned out it worked so well that Academy games implemented the dice into Storms of Steel 3rd edtion..
Good and thorough review, though my own conclusion after playing a few times is different. I don't like the activation system at all. It's very cumbersome, and each person moving one unit at a time is just painful. It also means you never really have to commit yourself to an action and I think all feeling of maneuver is lost. I'll also add that I witnessed (playing solo) the pendulum of the activation system swing wildly to one side, seeing the last unspent unit on both sides suddenly go on a tear with great die rolls and blow through the other side. It was just silly. It's great that people enjoy this, and great that we have a wide variety of tactical games as this one was a complete miss for me.
As a combat veteran I can say that the 3rd edition activation rules and their subsequent mechanics, IMO, introduce the element of fear on the battlefield. Fear of the unknown and fear of lethal exposure due to a surprise or total collapse is omnipresent in during a combat patrol regardless of your morale or experience level. This system captures that nicely in a way previous tactical systems could not. If you don’t like the way this system feels I would submit you’re not comfortable with the possibility that despite all of your wargaming experience and knowledge your wall of counters is about to collapse due to factors beyond your control, but I can tell you that it’s the most realistic aspect of this game.
Pushing your men faster than they feel comfortable with does add to their anxiety, stress, and increases cohesion suppression. This is another factor in the 3rd Ed where we are prompting the commander to take actions with different Units each Turn instead of focusing on just one segment of the battle, which is a very human thing to do. :)
Nice discussion on the new version. I invested in the earlier edition, with Awakening the Bear (2e), Firefight Generator and Solo module. As I retire in 10 days I may just "rest on my laurels" and stick with what I've got, but this is a great system (any version).
David, you can download the 3rd Ed rules free of charge from our Living Rules folder on Dropbox: www.dropbox.com/home/!%20CoH%20Living%20Rules%20Folder
The production value of this game is through the roof, and as a beginner wargamer I really enjoy the rules! Im just really hoping they would release the eastern fron solo pack updated for 3rd...Or release it at all, right now I cant get hold of it for any reasonable price and my main goal with this game was for solo play :/
I would also love to see Western Front editions. The three you list are all solid suggestions. The reason I have not gotten this game as of yet is it was in the Eastern Front theater which doesn't capture my historical interests as much as the Western Front.
@@danielsevignydesignstudio I'm familiar fairly with it. The average person probably doesn't know what Barbarossa and the following of "Case Blue" was and much less when it happened. I'm just not as interested in it from a theater of operations standpoint. I'm sure it has more to do with being from the US and liking to see things with a national involvement from a personal interest.
Thanks for the video guys. I really like the first two editions of the game. One difference in opinion is the damage system. I think it is a prime example of how NOT to use chit pull. While I like the idea of assigning counters as damage after you pull them, the game effect of this is that it becomes less likely or impossible for another unit to become pinned or similar as long as another unit on the board already has that status/counter. Where’s the logic in that? Also instant kill shots become much more likely when a lot of units already have suffered damage. That can help to speed up the game or „intensify“ the late phase of a battle however...
MB, great points. We purposefully built in that the Instant Destroyed marker draw probability goes up when units on both sides of the battlefield are being hammered. But some do like to draw from their own hit counter pool, so that their probability does not go up if their opponent has taken a lot of hits. The Hit Counters for SoS and AtB are very similar, so each side can use a set of their own hit counters. - Something to try. :)
My immediate question is: how often does streaky die rolling to "remain unspent" result in units having many more movement points or fire attempts than they *should have* based on a more historical, turn-based MP allowance and combat fire limits? On the surface, this seems really intriguing, but I wonder what might happen if, say, this system were Vassalized and fell prey to the *cough* un-randomness of the die roller?
Honestly I found that I almost always failed those rolls. It was very rare for a unit or group to do anything "heroic" beyond what they normally could. It was much more common for them to underperform.
I prefer using the cards from the solo than the dice. There is a big difference in the statistical curve between a die roll and a card pull. That difference is that die roll is an independent result, whereas a card pull is a dependent result. The probability of any given card pull depends on the cards pulled previously, plus we have the reshuffle from time to time. Also you might avoid any black swan runs where you roll a '5' or never roll a 1 on a die for 10 die roles. Even fatigue rule minimise a bit that chance.
Thanks for the detailed review! However, you, TPA, are needed to settle an internal argument for me. For a grognard on a budget, which would you recommend I get and play first, OST Volume II or SoS 3rd Edition?
They're both great games... if possible, get both as life is way too short to deny yourself this fun over $80 IMHO. Make your own lunch, dine in and/or hold off ordering pizza a few times and save money that way ;-)
If the chances are % chances ... why a weighted d10? Isn't the d10 essentially able to be read as a "tens" dice anyway? I dont get why the special die ...
Shannon, men in combat often shut down or shunt away from the action. The average number of decision making actions most men make is one to three every few minutes ( a Round in game time). The probability of cognitive suppression is very high when bullets are flying. On average, men will keep their heads down 40-50% of the time. But when command steps in (two stripes or higher) and they are yelling to get your asses firing or moving, the probability of you staying on mission objective goes up. So most average, non-crewed, units have a 3 Action Cost to fire, which on the weighted d10 stress die is a 50% chance of failing. But by adding 1 CAP of command support (to emulate an officer or NCO being present, radio communication, or other support), your probability drops to 30%. This is significant and puts a lot of pressure on you as a player/commander on how to utilize your few Command Resources. So the d10, with two 1s, two 3s, and two 5s, takes these psychological factors, and how you can influence them, into account. But always at the price of using up your time and command structure resources. Hope this makes sense. - Uwe
I believe you can download the updated rules and charts for free so I would check their website first before anything else... counters are the same. Not sure about the dice though. Dice may be different. New rules improve the system IMHO.
The iconography on the chits is what has kept me away from this game for years. I finally bit the bullet with 3rd edition but the complaint still remains.
@Ender Wiggen I am a huge fan of ASL and it was one of the inspirations for CoH. But for CoH we tried to concentrate on quick decision making to test different tactical options. Those that have been in combat situations seldom worry about how many hand grenades the 3rd squad has left. Instead you worry about keeping your men moving and not getting your ass shot off! :) That being said, I am ALWAYS up for a game of ASL! :) Ender (your book is one of my favorites), hopefully we can meet at a real live convention in the coming year to play a game!!!
Great overview guys. Thank you!
In the 3rd Ed Conflict of Heroes, we incorporated combat cohesion suppression, where your troops, especially when under fire, often will not immediately follow through with their mission objectives. They hear or take fire and often hit the ground, or take a knee to "assess" the situation, etc. Also, Units near MGs and other crewed high fire rate weapons will often not stick their heads up to fire since those high output weapons "are doing so much better a job than I ever could. So why risk my neck?"
Now, if you want to guarantee that your men will immediately follow through with your orders, you have to focus on them by keeping an open radio channel or sending an officer/NCO to make sure they keep their heads in the game. This is simulated by you spending your few Command APs (leader, logistics, and communications support reserves) to lower the probability of the Units becoming spent.
Spent Units are those that will no longer take actions on their own initiative for the next few minutes (for the remainder of that Round). But these Spent Units can take further actions with your command initiative (simulating you or other NCO / officer telling these men to "quit f@#king off and getting their asses moving!". :)
Again, thank you for taking the time to review Storms of Steel.
France 1940 is almost done and we will be releasing it late this fall. It includes French, British, and German units, with pre-order supporters also receiving the Dutch and Belgian expansion units.
Have a great week!
- Uwe
Western Front late war/post Normandy on the horizon? I hope so.
Love your series Uwe but I also hate the high luck factor. I played a few games with my wife. She knows nothing about this type of game, She likes Zombicide. She won with me few times only because she was rolling nines or tens and I was missing everything. In one mission I killed only one of her Russian units and she destroys almost 80% of my German forces. In moments like this, you start to think "Is this real strategy game or just Warhammer?". I love how many options you have, 3rd edition rules, command points, card, flanking, etc, but by the end when you have no luck with your rolls, this game doesn`t represent better training of German units. Anyway, I still play, because is fun.
@@tomj.7599 The probabilities, as in life, even out over time. And as in any combat situation, how you react to the shit coming your way does influence the outcome to a large extent. So I am so happy that your wife kicked your butt, because these are big brownie points fo you! It means that she may play a war game with you again! Lucky guy. :)
Have a great week Tom. - Uwe
@@wildbillsworkshop3410 Yes, we are working on the allied airborne invasions in 1944. Including the 82nd, 101st and 6th! The maps are already completed and we will post these as soon as we have completed France 1940. :)
@@uweeickert8061 Great news! Thanks for the reply. I look forward to it.
Thanks for the kind words guys - that's really cool! I loved contributing to this project :D
I believe the activation dice came from the solo module for Awakening the Bear. I believe that people started to use dice, house ruling instead of the card draw, which how it was originally done, to determine if the ai had become exhausted. It turned out it worked so well that Academy games implemented the dice into Storms of Steel 3rd edtion..
I believe that's true, yes.
Good and thorough review, though my own conclusion after playing a few times is different. I don't like the activation system at all. It's very cumbersome, and each person moving one unit at a time is just painful. It also means you never really have to commit yourself to an action and I think all feeling of maneuver is lost. I'll also add that I witnessed (playing solo) the pendulum of the activation system swing wildly to one side, seeing the last unspent unit on both sides suddenly go on a tear with great die rolls and blow through the other side. It was just silly. It's great that people enjoy this, and great that we have a wide variety of tactical games as this one was a complete miss for me.
As a combat veteran I can say that the 3rd edition activation rules and their subsequent mechanics, IMO, introduce the element of fear on the battlefield. Fear of the unknown and fear of lethal exposure due to a surprise or total collapse is omnipresent in during a combat patrol regardless of your morale or experience level. This system captures that nicely in a way previous tactical systems could not. If you don’t like the way this system feels I would submit you’re not comfortable with the possibility that despite all of your wargaming experience and knowledge your wall of counters is about to collapse due to factors beyond your control, but I can tell you that it’s the most realistic aspect of this game.
Nice vídeo guys just one thing i think the game has a stress marker to use on the spent roles if you issue multiple orders for the same unit.
Pushing your men faster than they feel comfortable with does add to their anxiety, stress, and increases cohesion suppression. This is another factor in the 3rd Ed where we are prompting the commander to take actions with different Units each Turn instead of focusing on just one segment of the battle, which is a very human thing to do. :)
Nice discussion on the new version. I invested in the earlier edition, with Awakening the Bear (2e), Firefight Generator and Solo module. As I retire in 10 days I may just "rest on my laurels" and stick with what I've got, but this is a great system (any version).
David, you can download the 3rd Ed rules free of charge from our Living Rules folder on Dropbox: www.dropbox.com/home/!%20CoH%20Living%20Rules%20Folder
The production value of this game is through the roof, and as a beginner wargamer I really enjoy the rules!
Im just really hoping they would release the eastern fron solo pack updated for 3rd...Or release it at all, right now I cant get hold of it for any reasonable price and my main goal with this game was for solo play :/
Thanks for the review,Have played this extensively and really enjoy it,also have played Attack of the Bear also.Can't wait for France 40!
Id love to sit down and play it with you guys. :) Which one did you like better ATB or SoS?
Hoping Academy games release a Normandy/Bulge/Market Garden version of this soon. Love the third edition.
I would also love to see Western Front editions. The three you list are all solid suggestions. The reason I have not gotten this game as of yet is it was in the Eastern Front theater which doesn't capture my historical interests as much as the Western Front.
@@wildbillsworkshop3410 same with me. Not familiar with eastern front only that Hitler tried to do better than Napoleon. You never awake a bear...
@@danielsevignydesignstudio I'm familiar fairly with it. The average person probably doesn't know what Barbarossa and the following of "Case Blue" was and much less when it happened.
I'm just not as interested in it from a theater of operations standpoint. I'm sure it has more to do with being from the US and liking to see things with a national involvement from a personal interest.
France 1940 variant of the system is due for release fairly soon.
Can you apply third edition rules to 2nd edition Awakening the Bear, or would you have to re-buy a third edition of that as well?
No, if you have the 3rd Edition rules you could apply them to the other titles no big deal.
I believe you can. The counters stayed the same.
Josh, afaik you can download the charts and a spreadsheet for a weighted d10 at their webpage. So just do, print and play with your game.
Thanks for the video guys. I really like the first two editions of the game.
One difference in opinion is the damage system. I think it is a prime example of how
NOT to use chit pull. While I like the idea of assigning counters as damage after you pull them, the game effect of this is that it becomes less likely or impossible for another unit to become pinned or similar as long as another unit on the board already has that status/counter. Where’s the logic in that? Also instant kill shots become much more likely when a lot of units already have suffered damage. That can help to speed up the game or „intensify“ the late phase of a battle however...
MB, great points. We purposefully built in that the Instant Destroyed marker draw probability goes up when units on both sides of the battlefield are being hammered. But some do like to draw from their own hit counter pool, so that their probability does not go up if their opponent has taken a lot of hits. The Hit Counters for SoS and AtB are very similar, so each side can use a set of their own hit counters. - Something to try. :)
Great review!
My immediate question is: how often does streaky die rolling to "remain unspent" result in units having many more movement points or fire attempts than they *should have* based on a more historical, turn-based MP allowance and combat fire limits? On the surface, this seems really intriguing, but I wonder what might happen if, say, this system were Vassalized and fell prey to the *cough* un-randomness of the die roller?
Honestly I found that I almost always failed those rolls. It was very rare for a unit or group to do anything "heroic" beyond what they normally could. It was much more common for them to underperform.
@@ThePlayersAid Granted, if underperforming a "set number" of actions or movement rate is also constant, again, that's a problem.
I prefer using the cards from the solo than the dice. There is a big difference in the statistical curve between a die roll and a card pull. That difference is that die roll is an independent result, whereas a card pull is a dependent result. The probability of any given card pull depends on the cards pulled previously, plus we have the reshuffle from time to time. Also you might avoid any black swan runs where you roll a '5' or never roll a 1 on a die for 10 die roles. Even fatigue rule minimise a bit that chance.
Thanks for the vid guys!
Thanks for the detailed review! However, you, TPA, are needed to settle an internal argument for me. For a grognard on a budget, which would you recommend I get and play first, OST Volume II or SoS 3rd Edition?
Both are very good, so I would make that decision entirely on theme. West front, or east front? That's the answer.
@@ThePlayersAid Thanks for the reply. I enjoy both for different reasons. Now it's down to tanks vs. troops :)
@@foodflights1408 always tanks.
@@ThePlayersAid Tanks a lot.
They're both great games... if possible, get both as life is way too short to deny yourself this fun over $80 IMHO. Make your own lunch, dine in and/or hold off ordering pizza a few times and save money that way ;-)
Can I use the 3rd edition rules with Awakening the Bear?
Yes
@@ThePlayersAid thank you for the prompt reply. Great video! I enjoyed it.
If the chances are % chances ... why a weighted d10? Isn't the d10 essentially able to be read as a "tens" dice anyway? I dont get why the special die ...
Shannon, men in combat often shut down or shunt away from the action. The average number of decision making actions most men make is one to three every few minutes ( a Round in game time). The probability of cognitive suppression is very high when bullets are flying. On average, men will keep their heads down 40-50% of the time. But when command steps in (two stripes or higher) and they are yelling to get your asses firing or moving, the probability of you staying on mission objective goes up. So most average, non-crewed, units have a 3 Action Cost to fire, which on the weighted d10 stress die is a 50% chance of failing. But by adding 1 CAP of command support (to emulate an officer or NCO being present, radio communication, or other support), your probability drops to 30%. This is significant and puts a lot of pressure on you as a player/commander on how to utilize your few Command Resources.
So the d10, with two 1s, two 3s, and two 5s, takes these psychological factors, and how you can influence them, into account. But always at the price of using up your time and command structure resources.
Hope this makes sense.
- Uwe
thank you again
Is it worth buying the game again?
Hard to say, honestly. If you like it well enough then maybe not.
I believe you can download the updated rules and charts for free so I would check their website first before anything else... counters are the same. Not sure about the dice though. Dice may be different. New rules improve the system IMHO.
How do yall think this compares to band of brothers?
Great Game. But I still don't like the new material of the cards and that they are different in both of my new 3rd Ed (SoS and AtB)! Why Uwe?
I’m new to wargames but this game is on a similar level as Memoir 44 which I got as an gateway wargame.
The iconography on the chits is what has kept me away from this game for years.
I finally bit the bullet with 3rd edition but the complaint still remains.
Really? Reminds me of Band of Brothers counters, which I love.
@Ender Wiggen I am a huge fan of ASL and it was one of the inspirations for CoH. But for CoH we tried to concentrate on quick decision making to test different tactical options. Those that have been in combat situations seldom worry about how many hand grenades the 3rd squad has left. Instead you worry about keeping your men moving and not getting your ass shot off! :) That being said, I am ALWAYS up for a game of ASL! :) Ender (your book is one of my favorites), hopefully we can meet at a real live convention in the coming year to play a game!!!
What a stupid game...good grief
Why?