I have CoH: AtB and it isn’t too bad. I played scenario 6 the other night against my uncle and after about 6 hours we just finished turn 3 out of 5 turns. That scenario uses 3 maps. I prefer the scenarios with 1 or 2 maps instead since they do not take as long to play. If you do get Awakening the Bear make sure to download the Storms of Steel rules but if you get Price of Honor too then that expansion will include the most up to date rule book. The maps are mounted and nice as well as the counters. The cards add a little unpredictability to the game. There was a time when I shot at my uncle’s unit and he drew a damage marker and as a reaction he played an auto rally card. In CoH 2 hits eliminates a unit so when he played that card I had to start all over with my attack against him. The game has infantry, armored vehicles, truck, wagons, off board artillery and other nice features. The nice thing about the game is the programmed learning. You read a few pages worth of rules and then stop when it says to do so and set up and play the first scenario. After that you read a few more pages of rules and play the second scenario and so on. The system is easy to learn but a battle can go either way sometimes.
Hope this helps.
Another thing, Uwe, the game designer, is working on games for different theaters of WWII and also different wars up to the present time. Here is a link that shows all the games either already released or will be released.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeksearch.php?action=search&objecttype=boardgame&q=conflict+of+heroes&B1=Go
