"Battlegroup....wow" Topic

Just did my very first game of Battlegroup. My mind…is blown…I'm so glad I freed myself from the FoW cult!

The game translates easy to 15mm, and your not really too bound to the codex like FoW…the options and make ups for armies can be varied and it's very very hard to break the codex.

I also loved the tidbit in Fall of the Reich. Pier's words speak true, most WW2 games play the same…T-34's fighting Panzer IV's…feel the same as fighting Shermans in Normandy.

Battlegroup has flavor, it has reality thrown into the mix…and I can't wait to go deeper.

I also have to paint up medics! I'm soooooooooooo stoked!

I was surprised how well this game translates for FoW based figures. Most refugee's from FoW like myself will find the transition easy and exciting, I'm intending to write an easy guide to help others make the transition!

Well done guys, you've got me hooked…I have hope in wargaming again!

Seize him!
None shall escape Battlefront's FOWer, er, power.

Piers is great!

Aww shucks…

You Guys!

Glad you like it matey though I had a feeling you would.

G205. I got fed up with FOW a long time ago and haven't really played with all my 15nn since. I eagerly await your easy guide. I have bought the rules, but not opened them yet. Perhaps now is the time to take a peak.

Dale are the minia individually based or can you use them on FOW bases?

"Battlegroup"? Do you mean Battlegroup Panzer Grenadier?

Nope, he means Battlegroup, and they have three books out so far; Kursk, Overlord, and Fall of the Reich. It's one of the best sets of WW II rules out there right now.

Here's the ironfistpublishing.com

Darn. I thought it would say 'Link'. Que sera, sera.

are the minia individually based or can you use them on FOW bases?

You can use the FoW bases, check out this video, it explains it well and demonstrates with FoW basing:

link

Looks like fun but I don't hear or see how it is so different from many other WW2 rules. I would play it.

Thanks jacksarge will do when I have 40 min to spare1
How are things up North?

Someone who's played these rules want to lay out how they work and why they are different?

Visited the various links and found no details at all.

Dan

Whilst I don't know the book cover to cover, I can summerize.

You can't micromanage the game. It is very very tactical, ammo plays a factor in this, and artillery isn't nearly as dominating. It is what you would expect from world war 2, localized skirmishes with higher support like artillery hanging back in the rear. You have to think of it almost in terms of a chess game, you can't mindlessly blast away at things.

Also you German tread heads with your Jagdtigers/Elephants or even Pak 43's will grow to love this game…those vehicles aren't made totally worthless by an 81mm mortar with a smoke shell!

In short, the flames of war bases can be a blessing or a curse. When the game says "squads of 10 men" it means that. You get ten men, so if you have 4 guys to a base that is 4 of those 10 men right there. When you take a casualty we've put a little red or white small 40k dice behind it.

White = death
Red = ammo

Alternatively you could simply base one figure per small base, might play around with that (and on the up and up I can use it for a chess set!)

I also really like the recovery vehicle rules…the idea behind actually using it to repair vehicles instead of leading the charge out in front (like flames of war) is a big improvement. I'll actually use my Bergepanther as intended! To sneak tanks off the field and put a battlechit back into the pile!

When you lose a squad you take a battle chit, these have 1/2/3 and so on, as well as…low ammo, low fuel, airstrike, confusion which on a certain roll could be in fact used against your enemy! The game is random, it's fast paced, and it really breaks the mold for me when it comes to actual game play.

We had a good group of guys watching one game, and from what I can tell this game will spread like a fire amongst the disillusioned FoW crowd. No cheap tricks, blows below the belt, and codex creep…when I played this game I felt like it was an actual reflection of world war 2.

10/10, 5 stars, $$$$$$ it's fantastic!

link

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Damn you Piers! You keep pulling me deeper and deeper and deeper into the fold…

Hence forth! The Bergepanther shall be known as… Piers's Pimpvagon!

Hmm may have to take a second look as I am rebasing a number of FOW infantry for use in CoC

Shouldn't that be Pimpvagon with a capital V? Well that's some review and praise, I've not had time to delve into any game but this and CoC are it for me, does anyone know how th Facebook signed copy went?

Thanks for posting G205, that's some enthusiastic response, just off the back of that post I'd say there are some new players right there.

Dan Cyr, there's several reviews on the web, each one nearly as enthusiastic as G205's above!

Gottmituns205,

Welcome aboard – you won't regret it!

I sure you'll be aware of most but I did a list of 15mm manufacturers of medics, ambulances, radio trucks etc for Brits, Germans, Russians and USA on The Guild site – here

link

Please feel free to add any I missed. I'll get around to putting some photos on the site eventually!

Some AARs… even if you dont and like the rules, its still lots of eye candy!

link

Praise for Battlegroup and damnation of FoW. I think you're being too bitter over the latter. May both games thrive.

I have yet to play, I am still reading the rules.
I really like it so far, the timed artillery barrages are great and pretty much a great reflection of how soviet artillery operated.
You get plenty of support options that you can put on the table with limited numbers.
You get realistic mix of troops and organic support.

Oh and the fact that the NKVD/Comissars arent being treated in an idiotic cartoonish manner.

I am delighted to see FOW players giving it a go and liking it. So its not just attracting the old skool like me then :)

You are Piers younger brother and I claim my £5.00 GBP!!!

It is a great system evolving from Kampfegruppe Normandy. We have had some good battles both in 20 and 6mm,

Tally Ho!

My younger brothers are all too kewl to be wargamers…

Played one game of Overlord and really enjoyed the rules. Would happily play again.

"Hmm may have to take a second look as I am rebasing a number of FOW infantry for use in CoC"

BG for Company and CoC for skirmish…IMHO and in my not so limited gaming experience are the best rules out there right now.

Great to see the OP enjoying gaming again but I never like to see another rule set being thrashed…each to his own…

Piers is great!

See whats happening…Be warned! Ye who enter the Guild never leaves!

Well not without wanting to change their entire collection of 15mm to 20mm…it's nothing short of cultist brain washing…I've just finished painting my 20mm US Airborne…escape NOW while you still can…

Watched ModelDads interview – very interesting.
Is there some differentiation in moral/training in the troops?

Yup, you have inexperienced, regulars, veteran and elite grades of troop which effect how they do things, such as assault or past tests.

Also the higher the rating the more BR they add to a force.

Thanks Piers – does their rating effect spotting shooting or hiding/saves also?

Will a typical scenario support 28mm on a 4x6 table?

TT-- no, all shooting and spotting rolls are the same. Vet and Elite units are pinned less easily, can ignore one pin result, and Elite units can re-roll one failed Morale test.

Oh thats a bit disappointing – I had got use to the idea that green troops died faster than vet ones – seemed a realistic rule to have

Well they do… they are easier to pin down with fire and more likely to fail morale from casualties.

Certain elite units get other bonuses such as +1 to hit, such as the Panzer Ace, but we see such a huge modifier to a d6 as representing truly outstanding individuals.

The troop gradings thus effect morale and troop quality tests, but a group of inexperienced infantry will suffer more from losses than a veteran unit will whose morale will hold out longer… if the dice allow. ;)

Spotting is modified by the troops role. Recce troops get a scouting bonus that modifies spotting rolls.

Truscott Trotter, I think me and you are familiar with FoW, it dint sound to me right either. But once I went through the rules, it makes sense. Pins and morale tests are taken more often and you have a limited number of orders to issue and you need orders to remove pins. Effectivley the inexperienced troops get "knocked" out with easy compared to veterans.
Also it is considerably more bloody and difficult for inexperienced troops to close assault vs veterans.

Inexperience troops show their colors when they start taking moral tests, case closed!

Hitler Youth Boys are lethal…jesus…

Once you break free of the FoW mind set you see this game for what it is, fun. Fun with tactics in mind. I did my second game and never did I feel the need to beat my foe into submission. It was like we were playing a simulation of world war 2. The rules made sense, and we had no "right…that..is…odd"

You can either rebase your FoW figures with one guy on a small base, 3 guys (mortar or HMG) on a medium and gun teams stay roughly the same. Or you can follow the "hey this squad needs 5 guys, my bases have 4…so we will remember when it takes casualties with a colored dice."

Black = ammo
White = life
Red = death

simple system, you guys can work that out however you want if you're a purist, rebase it doesn't take long. If not you can just write it down and remember it's a simple task.

Also not having "command distance" for tanks is refreshing…I really do enjoy that.

Artillery is VERY random. A 6 is a direct hit on the point you wanted to range in on. 1 is a miss, and a 2-5 can have variations…it's hilarious as you may think "hrm I wanna hit that group of yanks" and BAM! Your artillery lands in the middle of your boys…so you must spend an order and call it off!

The Chit system is just brilliant…you gamble and take risks on unpinning units. You have to be able to think 3 turns a head with this game and it really makes your mind word. Do you unpin and risk him getting shot up and pinned next turn…and take a chit and bring yourself closer to breaking? How important is that unit?

So so so many choices…and it really brings you into the chair of a battlefield commander.

No tricks, no gimmicks, no Romulans!

Oh and another note on artillery…if your para boys want some of those 155's from some armored division to help they have to spend an order and gamble to call them…none of that chain linking batteries to beat someone to dust nonsense!

Once you get the basics down, the game flies…and individual deaths of wins here or there just makes it even more fun. I've never had this much fun with a war game.

No , a solid 5 outta 5 guys!

edit: my previous post has other dice for certain things, we figured black is more an industrial color…so it was moved to ammo.

Although, tempted to do a single base by base army using battlefront figures. I need new bases for a chess set anyhow!

Frustrated FoW player seeks suitable re-purposing of 15mm models… is this the game for me? ;-)

Actually this does look rather interesting, I am just not so keen on the idea of having to rebase all my infantry…
Thoughts?

No need to rebase your Inf, in addition to 20mm I also play in 6mm and use Inf based on multiple bases. I paint the underside white with a gloss varnish and use lumicolours to mark casualties,

Tally Ho!

That's a fine idea Nick . Saves messing about with dice and counters .

I would keep the ammo counters on a separate sheet though so your opponent doesn't know.

Superb game.

I've been playing BGK and in my mind it does a brilliant job of capturing what happened on the Eastern Front.

As for inexperienced troops getting hit easier, in real life a lot of it is luck especially in high intensity conventional warfare where the fighting is on a massive scale.

You could have a soldier that's had 10 years of hard core combat experience and they get taken out by a stray bullet or artillery shell.

Oh and there was a far bigger chance that stray bullet or artillery shell was a friendly one too due to poorer communications, coordination and lack of advanced targeting and guidance compared to today.

BG does friendly fire too so it's all covered.

Just played my first game and enjoyed it, but have some concerns over the troop ratings and command.

1) Germans and Russians seem to get the same number of officers and there is no difference reflecting command ability.

2) German squads are broken down into two teams which must be ordered separately and are easier to kill because they are smaller. Each team also generates less firepower than a Russian squad, so per order you get less firepower for the Germans and yet they cost more points.

3) The difference between inexperienced and regular troops is very minimal. Regulars are +1 to assault and if an exact 3 is thrown on a D6 moral test they are not pinned where inexperienced are.

4) Troops quality plays no part in saving, hiding, spotting, getting pinned by area fire or unpinning. These last two are a big deal!

5) Veteran troops are extremely rare – German Snipers are the only Veteran option in an infantry division. All tanks including Tigers are Regulars.

As I said I enjoyed the game, but I'm not tempted to throw away my other rule sets until I square away these issues.

GunRunner,

Piers will probably be here shortly. but try here:

link

Tally Ho!

Thanks Nick, will check that out.

GR:

Most of those questions have been discussed in the Q&A on the Guild (Nick linked above).

Generally the Russians have fewer officers and Russian senior officer cannot spot for artillery as can a German senior officer. Also, it generally takes more orders to move and fire Russian units (they tend to be larger). Special orders such as Stal! have pros and cons.

The "two-team" German squad provides more flexible tactics and consider the modifier for observing a 3-man (or fewer) team reduces the chance to observe them.

I'll leave it to Piers to explain the unit ratings methodology and other fine points, but consider that in a D6-based system that small modifiers tend to have more impact. I think that once you get more experience you will appreciate the system more.

"Just played my first game and enjoyed it, but have some concerns over the troop ratings and command.

1) Germans and Russians seem to get the same number of officers and there is no difference reflecting command ability.

2) German squads are broken down into two teams which must be ordered separately and are easier to kill because they are smaller. Each team also generates less firepower than a Russian squad, so per order you get less firepower for the Germans and yet they cost more points.

3) The difference between inexperienced and regular troops is very minimal. Regulars are +1 to assault and if an exact 3 is thrown on a D6 moral test they are not pinned where inexperienced are.

4) Troops quality plays no part in saving, hiding, spotting, getting pinned by area fire or unpinning. These last two are a big deal!

5) Veteran troops are extremely rare – German Snipers are the only Veteran option in an infantry division. All tanks including Tigers are Regulars.

As I said I enjoyed the game, but I'm not tempted to throw away my other rule sets until I square away these issues."

Gunrunner:

We had the exact same problems with Battlegroup. The German split squad esp. drove us crazy. We (and apparently many others) have reported this problem to the author but they are for the time being a bit stuborn on this point.

The solution is to use the "Bren Gun" rule which makes splitting the squad optional. We give the German player the option to spilt generally players only make this mistake in their first game…

That said I want to emphasis how much we like the overall mechnics. The PIP system of command control is great and penetration matrix is a big improvement over Flames et al.

The system seems to generate too many orders though and the technical data doesn't fully exploit the potential of the matrix resolution system and so remains a bit clunky.

Still its great to play a game with tremendous potential even if the authors havn't quite realize what they have. This is much better than dead end Flames of War.

TomT

Germans do get more Officer. They have them in tank units and others such as recce commands etc.

Most people find the split German squad to allow far more tactical flexibility when they play the game more, especially the difficulty in spotting the three man MG teams and the fact that a single German squad, split in two can perform cover and move tactics.

It takes time to learn to play Germans, but when you have mastered it they are an exceptionally powerful force.

That minimal experience bonus, is actually pretty big in a d6 based game system… The not pinned on 3+ for veterans is a massive bonus.

We have expended a great deal of time trying to learn how to play the German split squads with no success. The key is to concentrate all fire on the small MG team – easy to kill and takes out most of German squads firepower (and makes them draw a dread "death chit".) Dead men cannot perform cover and move tactics or any other tactic

The last man standing rule (which kills the last member of a team) is devastating to small 3 man mini-teams (for example a 10 man squad takes 9 kills to get to the last man – a three man team takes only 2 kills so that 33% die to this rule while only 10% die in the 10 man squad).

This one rule has kept the game, at least locally, from achieving any where near the popularity it should.

The officer bonus does not seem to be a great importance given the number of PIPs generated by the built in die rolls. In any case it doesn't compensate for doubling the number of PIPs needed to move or fire a German squad.

Make it optional.

TomT