I haven’t tried any fan-made scenarios yet. Misspellings in the scenario introductions scare me off pretty quickly. :) The only scenario I tried from the website is Breaking the Line, which is a nice scenario to teach someone the game with, but it heavily favors the American attackers - so let the newbie attack. On the other hand, the first scenario in the official book is At The Breaking Point, and the opposite is true. I taught a friend with that scenario and let him play the defender because it’s so slanted toward the Americans. That ended up being a close game, but I still lost.
I haven’t even played all the base scenarios yet. The best one so far was Silence the Guns. The Americans have a heavy unit advantage, including 2 Shermans. They’ve got to capture a pillbox across the board, and have some interesting tactics to choose, because of the No Surrender operations card given to the German defenders. Without that card, the Americans would easily rout the Germans using suppression fire, but that card forces the Americans to pin and then assault. And unlike the first scenario where the Germans don’t have nearly enough attack strength to take out the American defenders, I think the attackers in this scenario do have the tools.
“Breaking the line” is the first scenario we tried and it is a good one for learning the game, we played it twice switching sides after the first game and I was able to win both games, but as the Germans I barely won, if the Americans had one more round I would have lost.
I haven’t won as the Germans in “At the Breaking Point” yet but I’m not giving up till I do ;-) I wish the Germans had better strategy decks for this scenario (Morale 1 & Command 1) decks just are too weak compared to the (Americans Reinforcement 1 & Ground Support 1) decks.
We haven’t played “Silence the Guns” yet but it sounds like fun!
My nine year old son has played Memoir '44 a bunch and is ok at the strategy of it and has no problem at all with the rules. How much more complex is Tide of Iron?
We saw it tonight at Six Feet Under Games http://www.sixfeetundergames.com in nearby New Holland. Looked really cool and I hadn’t noticed this thread before so it kind of caught me by surprise.
I wouldn’t mind getting it later this year if I think he can play it reasonably well.
Since ToI looked too complex, I got A&A Battle of the Bulge instead and I must say I’m very impressed.
In addition to the elegant method of handling supply, there is also a fascinating asymmetry to the game. The Axis starts out with a material advantage (Allies can’t even attack during the first turn) but intense time pressure: they must achieve victory by the eighth turn, and the Allies will always slowly regain their footing. Allies have more supplies and more reinforcements, and halfway through the game they will gain an advantage in airpower. So the Axis must disrupt Allied logistics enough to prevent their rally - hopefully capturing enough Allied supplies to avoid overextension, thus effectively using their opponent’s strength against them. In contrast, the Allies must devise a rearguard strategy that can hold off the Axis long enough to be able to finally press their counterattack.
Awesome dynamics overall, which are surprisingly emergent rather than enforced by the ruleset. It’s already replaced Memoir '44 as my favorite 2-person WW2 light wargame.
Tide of Iron is probably too much for a nine year old to handle, even if he does play Memoir. The rules are online at www.fantasyflightgames.com so you can see for yourself.
I think he would be ok with the rules if he’s experienced with Memoir 44, the big difference in the two games is ToI is it is much more zoomed into the battle, so tactical options for the players are vast compared to Memoir 44. So things like terrain advantages, normal attack vs. suppressive attacks, op-fire with units or leave fresh, spend command tokens on strategy cards or spend it on gaining the initiative in the next round, all play a significant role in a players strategy. I think if he doesn’t get frustrated with the strategy options given to him, he’ll be ok.
EDIT: I forgot the mention that I’ve been playing ToI with my six year old with just basic rules and after every few games I add in another rule so he gradually learns the game. He’s really enjoying it so far.
I’m skeptical (not about your kid, but about ToI in general for young kids). My seven-year-old likes playing Memoir 44, but Battlelore (which is Memoir 44 with extra complexity) was pushing it a bit. Those ToI rules look substantially more complex than Battlelore…
Yeah thats why I modified the game rules for my six year old. I Left things out like strategy cards/command tokens, assaults, combined fire attacks and instead focused on unit to unit battles.
I was astonished how fast my son picked up on some things, I remember the first game we played with vehicles and I explained how the damage tokens worked and what each side represented (if you don’t know, the tokens have a picture of a tank, one side yellow and one side red) and told him when the token is on the yellow side the vehicle is lightly damaged (1 or 2 hits) and heavily damaged (3 hits) on the red side and 4 or more hits means the vehicle is destroyed.
So later on in our game I had a tank that was lightly damaged and he attacked it and rolled 3 hits on it, he immediately told me that my tank is destroyed, I said “how do you know that”, he replied “well the first and second hits changes the token to the red side, and the last hit blew it up”
I was speechless as well as tankless! It will be awhile before were playing with all the rules but it’s fun teaching him and watching him learn!
Looking forward to playing this for the second time today. My first game took 4 1/2 hours from getting everything out of the box, explaining the rules, playing the game and putting it all back in the box. I expect that to come down to 3 hours at most today!
–It really speeds up the game setup times if you separate all the pieces before hand and find a container (Plano cases work great) to store and organize the miniatures and game bits in!
– Download/printout Universal Head’s “Rules Reference sheets” and make sure you download/printout the FAQ and Errata file as well. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/22825 (under files)
Well, we got it down to about 3 1/4 hours, but I got absolutely stomped as the US in the 2nd scenario, one which folks on the BGG forums suggest that the US should win with ease. I am such a n00b.
Days of the Fox
Is the first expansion for ToI and was released earlier this year to mostly favorable reviews. I just ordered it today so I dont have any personal experience with it yet.
Tide of Iron: Designer Series vol 1
This is a yet to be released Hardcover Scenario book, which should!?!? show up on the market later this year and has an impressive list of contributers (to me anyway) and contains 20 scenarios.
From FFG site:
Compiled by conflict historian Dana Lombardy (Streets of Stralingrad)…
Michael Bennighof … Panzer Grenadier
Richard Berg … Great Battles of History
Ulrich Blennemann … Tank Commander, Tunisia '43
Vance von Borries … Barbarossa, Kasserine Pass
Frank Chadwick … 8th Army, 1940
Jack Greene … Destroyer Captain, Norway 1940
Don Greenwood … Advanced Squad Leader
John Hill … Squad Leader, Tank Leader
Chad Jensen … Combat Commander
Dana Lombardy … Streets of Stalingrad, Days of the Fox
Jason Matthews … Twilight Struggle
Joseph Miranda … Battle for Baghdad, Balkans 1941
John Prados … Third Reich, Salerno
Jack Radey … Korsun Pocket, Aachen
Ted Raicer … Great War in Europe, Barbarossa to Berlin
Mark Simonitch … Ardennes '44
Rick Young … Europe Engulfed
I’m very excited to see FFG continue to expand ToI, I hope the new book and the Normandy expansion are well received, I would love to see a Eastern and Pacific front as well!
The scenario book sounds excellent, just what the game needs. And it’ll be interesting to see if Normandy actually is a campaign, i.e. linked scenarios, maybe some units carry over with bonuses…
Has anyone tried Conflict of Heroes yet? I’m looking for a squad level WW2 board game and trying to decide between CoH, Combat Commander: Europe and Tide of Iron at the moment.
All three are great games it just depends on what your looking for in a board game. I personally prefer (must be the kid in me) games with minis like Axis & Allies, Battlelore and Tide of Iron if thats not a big deal to you then CoH might be the best choice.
All the games had their rules available online, and after reading through them, I think the action resolution system in Conflict of Heroes pretty much trumps everything else. Now if I can only find a place to order it from.
Some of the New AFVs listed in the Normandy expansion are, American M-10, and the German StuGIII, Jagdpanzer IV, King Tiger, and Panther (which was also included in DotF) :-)
Couldn’t decide if this needed it’s own thread or not, but Fantasy Flight just announced that Tide of Iron (and Wings of War) will be ported to Xbox Live and PSN next year. Big Rooster is handling the coding, and I hope this is a sign that more of their games will hit the consoles.
