"Tell me about Battleground WW2" Topic

I was in the mood recently for a good, 90's-style WW2 ruleset. You know the kind: lots and lots of charts, rules for every occasion (smoke grenades, fighting on skis, box barrages), tons of nity-gritty treadhead details (hit location tables, different ammunitions), supplement rulebooks up the wazoo, assymetical game mechanics (no "universal" die mechanic), no points systems (not on principle, just because no one had thought of that yet) and so on.

Then I remembered that I had played such a game a few years back at a gaming convention: Battleground WW2. I remember this was an interesting game because it treated every soldier individually: a rarity in any skirmish game (I can only think of two others, Nuts! and Final Combat, that do this). So I looked online and was pleased to find several places that still carry the rules and promptly ordered a copy.

Now, while I camp out by my mailbox in anticipation, what can you tell me about this game? I vaguely remember d20's were used (roll low?) but not much else. How does the game work, and what makes it great?

I loved playing it. It is really only good for perhaps two squads per side because it is very detailed. I actually liked the details which makes a huge difference with weapons and vehicles. It doesn't lump tanks, MG's, AT guns etc into unrealistic few groupings. Bolt Action is almost comical when it comes to these issues. After a few games our group were very fluid with he rules and charts.

We never finished a game, but we were playing way too many figures. It works best for a few squads with a platoon maximum. Anything else grinds to a boring halt.

But it did get me into WW II gaming so it will always hold a special place in my memories…

Ahh yes, MG42's being more myth than reality was so iconic to 90's WW2 games! That and the Tiger tank, of course. Two squads per side sounds good—I was actually planning on using it for "one squad plus" (i.e. a ten man squad and a weapons team or a vehicle per side). Would it work ok at that level, or is that too small to really get a sense of the command & control and army maneuver aspects of the rules? Also, do squadmates have to stick together (or close to the sergeant)? Or can they go off and do their own thing (and is that penalized)?

I really enjoyed that game with, at most, a reinforced platoon per side. Games featuring infantry against tanks in close terrain were especially fun.

Aspects of the game are finicky, but I remember me and my junior-high and high-school aged friends playing it in the 90s/early 2000s without trouble, getting in several games a month and having a blast.

It was my entry into WWII gaming and I have been trying to get around to playing another game of it soon.

Were I to go back to it, I think I'd trim down a few parts, add a few others, and ignore some rules, but man I had some fun times with that game.

Great rules, a bit "crunchy" in terms of detail compared to more recent rules, but one of my all time favorites.

Here's an old TMP review:

TMP link

Here's a great fansite and resource on BGWW2 and doing weird war gaming with BGWW2:

weirdwwii.com

I still play it quite a bit. It is a great set of rules with a good feel. Yes, a platoon is about where you want to max out with a few vehicles in support.

I played a game with some experienced players where we had a company on one side attacking a town defended by a platoon. That went pretty well, but only because everyone knew the rules pretty well.

I also played a game with all armor and it did that very well.

I also played a game with all armor and it did that very well.

I kinda think the armor rules are too detailed for what usually happens in the game. I like the d20 hit charts for each aspect of the AFV or other vehicle (Front, Rear, Side, Top). But what usually happens is something like this:

"OK…Panther fires at Sherman..HIT!. Side aspect table, roll 1d20…ok, hit the side hull near the rear…compare penetration of the gun to the armor…significant over penetration, roll on the table…BOOM!"

The BOOM! is usually almost always the result when a Medium or Light tanks is hit, so all the extra die rolling seems wasted sometimes.

BGWWII was fun when it was the only game in town (as well as Jim Bland's "characterful" 28mm minis), but it fell out of fashion due to its clunkiness and was slowly eased out to pasture in favor of simpler, more fluid and streamlined rules such as DHC7B, Nuts! and newer systems that allow more miniatures to be played without getting bogged down.

Though I kinda wish I kept my copy of the game along with its supplements for old time's sake. They were all kept in 3-hole binders. For tanks there were nothing available outside of old 70's-era Bandai 1/48 aftermarket kits on Ebay and 1/43 to 1/50 diecast Solido toys with large metal linked tracks and lacking all the great detail you see in 1/56 and 1/48 kits today. Good times.

Achtung Minen- yes, the squad mates have to stick together (i.e., the "command Radius"), but the individual soldiers only need to see another squad mate to be considered within the command radius. As for soldiers going off and doing their own thing, no, not without the penalty of 1/2 a "Skill" or "Gut" Check. As the designers of BGWW2 explain in the designer's notes, no man wanted to fight WW2 alone. However, there are instances in the rules where a figure can "Go Hero" and do something exceptional when a commander, buddy, etc., is shot or suffers a "Gory Death". The figure can even go Hero when he is shot at. On the other hand, the figure can become a "Craven Coward" and beat feet off the battle field. You will enjoy the rules…

I definitely agree that the way wargames went was towards more and more simplicity. I can even see why this is a good thing: shorter rulebooks, quicker games and more accessible to new players. But I have to admit, lately I've been turning back to old games… No matter how you cut it, modern simple games just can't DO all the stuff that old games are capable of. It's the difference between a modern Prius and a '65 Mustang. Sure, there are a lot more moving parts in the Mustang, you have to constantly give it lots of care and most younger people don't even know how to drive stick anymore. But heck, when you get it greased and running smoothly, there is a POWERFUL engine under the hood. Old games are just fun and they find a good deal of that fun in the complication, charts, tables and details. Not for everyone, but I personally have been missing that old approach to games lately!

Battleground has always been high on the list of games I wanted to play, but never got a chance to.

It always seemed like the miniatures skirmish counterpart to ASL.

If you need tank charts pm with your address I will send them to you on a DVD. I have over 250 of them done.

I still play Battleground WWII a lot. It's great fun and has all the neat details lacking in newer more "streamlined" games, most of which are abstracted to a ridiculous degree but still cannot handle much more than a platoon of troops without bogging down.

Yes good fun they were. I am surprised no one mentioned going to the yahoo groups site. There are a few tank charts there and some things you can download. Not much discussion there anymore, but reading the old discussions can answer a number of questions you may have.

(as an aside, our group eventually went to Arc of Fire…very similar to Battleground in many ways but D10 based and much less detailed)

Well, I was such an avid BGWW2 player (before I switched to NUTS!) that I even created a cross over rule set called Battleground Wild Wild West -- even made up combat templates for stagecoaches and wagons! Here's a general blog post on BGWW2:

link

The Old West variant file:
PDF link

Id love to get those tank charts but cant send you a PM. Any chance of hosting them somewhere? Thanks.

@SBminis and Buck, thanks, those are very interesting details

@evbates, that would be great! I actually sent you an email, presuming you use @yahoo.com!

Battleground WW2 was great and I'm building up 20mm forces to play it again.

Okay email me here ccbates@comcast.net

Another nice thing about this rulest is that they can easily be tweaked without throwing it out of whack

I'm clumsy on the keyboard tonight.

A few things about the game:
1. You organize your forces into squads, sections, or individual tanks (if doing a tank only game with sufficient tanks, then by platoon). Each such unit is represented by a card or chit.
2. Activation is by card or chit draw. Whichever unit's chit comes up gets to take 2 actions. Typical actions for infantry are move, shoot, throw grenade, stand up, unjam weapon (going prone is free). Some people play with a variant where there are two cards or chits for each unit and that unit gets one action when a card or chit is drawn.
3. Actions are taken by each figure or model in a unit (tanks can have actions for each crew member within limits).
4. Units typically have a uniform morale with the exception of the unit leaders. The training and experience of the unit determines morale level. Morale checks are always done with a D20 and you have to roll your morale value or below to pass. Modifiers can apply, Typical grunt morale for a veteran nit is 12 with the leaders being 14 and providing a -1 modifier to the die roll for individual figures within a command radius. The Gut checks and Skill checks mentioned in previous posts use the morale value or half that value.
5. All fire combat uses D20. I'll use infantry as an example. All weapons have 4 ranges with a base chance to hit for each range (starts at 16 for point blank and decreases by 4 for each next longer range). There's a list of to hit modifiers (e.g, a green figures adds 1 to the D20 result). Each weapon also has a "rate of fire" and you roll for each shot and you need to keep track of the shot sequence because any D20 means the figure's weapon has "jammed" negating any further hits and taking a subsequent action to clean the jam. Once you score a hit, you then roll a D20 on another chart with a longer list of modifiers to determine the effect of the hit. These range from KIA to no effect (how you obtain a hit with no effect…). If the target is lightly wounded or has to take a morale check, you then make a morale roll to see if the figure panics and remains in good order.
6. Tanks use a slightly different process. You still roll a to hit number on one of 4 ranges, but a hit then results in rolling on a profile of the tank front, side rear, or top to see which part of the tank has been hit. A chart for each location next to the profile tells you the special results of a non-penetrating versus a penetrating hit at that location then you roll penetration versus armor at that location and follow the results given in yet another chart to see if the tank goes BOOM.
7. Artillery is even worse to conduct. You place a target marker, roll to hit, and, if you don't hit (very likely), you then roll deviation direction with either a D8 or D6 and then another die to figure out the distance deviated, then place the hit marker, place an effects template above the hit marker, see if any figures or models are within an effects ring (up to 5 for the large rounds) and then roll effects for each figure under the template using the infantry fire effects chart.

So hope you like rolling lots of dice. A typical veteran American infantry squad of 8-10 figures can result in rolling up to 22 dice per action (2 for each Garand as its a semi, 3 from the BAR, 3 from an SMG if the squad leader has one, and perhaps an additional 3 if the assistant squad leader has one – for a 10 man squad with 8 Garands, 1 BAR, and 1 SMG, that's 22 dice) simply to determine hits and then additional dice for the effects of scored hits.

You wind up creating dice boxes with clear lids and compartments so you can roll multiple dice at once or work out a scheme with different color dice so you can roll each figure and all its shots with one toss.

The above is why it gets tedious with more than 2-3 squads per side.

Very intersesting, thanks for the breakdown. For some reason I was under the impression that each soldier model gets their own activation card. If each squad gets only a single card, does it make sense to have a "1 squad vs 1 squad" battle? It seems like you would only have two cards in the deck, which doesn't sound like it would work that well. Could you reduce it so that there was one card per fireteam (and thus 2-3 cards per squad)? Would that negatively impact any other rule systems in the game?

You can structure the cards any way you would like. Fire teams would be appropriate. A sgt take half and a cpl the other half. But usually support weapons, command, FWD Obs, a tank etc. could get a card. I usually play a couple of squads with command and support. That gets you about 6+cards, three per side.

Like someone mentioned above, the better you get with the rules the larger the forces can be. The rules and supplements have plenty of scenarios that are all larger than a squad vs a squad. Just remember how much time you want to spend playing. We shoot for 3-4 hour games that includes pick up time etc.

In my experience it is rare to roll 22 dice in a single attack. Rarely does every figure have a target unless your forces are moving across open ground.

I use these rules exclusively for skirmish gaming feel free to email if you have any questions.

duane@syrhobbswargames.com

You can always break it down to fire team level.

Can someone give the 101 of how it compares to Face of Battle, as far as detail, "roleplay" opportunity, complexity/speed and whatnot.

That's usually our go-to for more involved low level games but this thread has me intrigued.

weasel
both are very detailed and IMO about the same complexity with all the modifiers and details about movement, terrain weapons, etc.
BGWW2 is D20 based whereas FOB is d100 based.
However, I found that BG activation is more atuned to a squad or vehicle per card/chit. When firing at a squad, casualties are randomly determined. We played it with 2-3 squads, Pltn command, and 1-2 support weapons and/or AFV per side (2 players per side). Whereas FOB was more suited (IMO) to using a single squad per side (tho you can play it with more). Speed of play--Both were not fast with constant referral to the QRS for modifiers etc and rolling dice (or maybe we werent the most able in memorizing charts-lol) Between the two, FOB would be my choice if running small unit actions with "roleplay" opportunity. (NUTS would actually be my choice now, but we are comparing FOB and BGWW2 here).

Appreciate the info Bob.

To speed things along with the man-to-man shooting, you could house rule the injuries from hits, e.g.

- lowest 25% are killed;
- next lowest 25% suffer a moderate to heavy wound;
- next lowest 25% suffer a light wound;
- final, highest 25% have to perform a morale check.

So, let's say at medium range (long range?), where the To-Hit value is 8 or less on a D20, any:

- 1s or 2s result on the To-Hit die roll result in a kill;
- 3s and 4s result in moderate to heavy wounds (can't recall if one or the other, or both are included in the rules);
- 5s and 6s are light wounds;
- and 7s or 8s are morale checks.

You can leave the above as is, or increase/decrease, if desired, for any To-Hit modifiers.

That should speed up gameplay a lot.

Eliminating, and/or streamlining wounds would do the same as well, e.g. perhaps only results of killed, wounded (dropping light wounds), and morale checks, to help speed up things too, in larger games.

(NUTS would actually be my choice now, but we are comparing FOB and BGWW2 here).

Yeah, I ended up moving over to NUTS (and writing some NUTS game books) over frustration with the card-based activation. I remember one game, Narvik 1944 I think, where the card pulls basically had a unit of my Soviets moving between terrain features, and because of the way the cards came up they basically just stood there while unit after unit of Germans maneuvered into place and hammered them.

Then I tried the NUTS! "Chain Reaction" system in a test game and that problem doesn't exist. It's all action-reaction. As figures move and come into spotting range, they do stuff based on the quality of their morale (Reputation) and other circumstances -- are they being shot at, etc. They might fire back, might duck into cover, might run away -- but they always do *something.*

Be interesting to try out the Chain Reaction system with BGWW2…too bad the game rules are "dead" even if you can still buy them. Looked into buying the rights to them with a few guys some years ago, but the Copyrights/IP are in dispute between the creators. Too bad, great system!

I quite like NUTS! as well and I can't imagine I'll stop playing it in the future. My interest in BGWW2 so far has really been "games like NUTS! are great, but I want to have something a little more crunchy and old school in my gaming lineup as well…" I love the feel of those old games and you really can't get that anywhere else (even if that crunch or idiosyncracies can also be frustrating at times!).

Speaking of Narvik 1944, what are the must-have expansions for BGWW2?

And what are some lumpy, disproportionate and characterful minis to play BGWW2 in true old-school fashion? I seem to remember my first and last game back in the day used BTD Germans and Americans, so I will probably go with those, but I'm open to other options! My only criteria is no plastic auto-CAD attack of the clones models… Each model should be hand sculpted to give it that a unique character and personality!

Hi Achtung Minen, I'd say that you at least want the following:

1. Panthers East is your OstFront expansion
2. Normandy Nightmare is your D-Day expansion.
3. Tanker's Challenge is chock full of armor combat stuff
4. Men of Honor adds some fun new heroes and characters

The rest of them are pretty good, but not as key:
1. Red Devil's in the Night = British commandos/Paras
2. Rage on the Reich is a Scout Car focused campaign as US forces penetrate Germany
3. Key to the West is the Battle of the Bulge
4. Islands of Glory is the PTO supplement
5. Artic Thunder is a Weird War 2 supplement -- Soviets against Ice Trolls, lotsa fun!

Lotsa vehicle charts and free stuff at the Yahoo Group, though the group is pretty dead:

link

As for miniatures, one the the co-authors of the game, the guy who sculpted all the minis (James Bland??) is still in business with better miniatures. Less chunky but still fun action poses at Victory Miniatures:

victoryforce.com

Most of my US and German troops are from Victory Force. Gotta love minis like a screaming BAR Gunner!!

Cheers!

I play BG solo with a platoon or less. It is a good game. And I quite like the armor rules. These are good rules.

And I second Victory Force miniatures. Most excellent.