"Battllegroup, an overview" Topic

I've also written up some of my initial thoughts and observations on the excellent Battlegroup rules.

link

Thanks for the write up and review. I have had my eyes on this particular rules set for some time just have yet to make the plunge.

Me too, it was one of those rule sets I keep seeing but didn't know much about. Very glad I did though as it has a great flow to it

A good overview of the rules. I like them very much---had a game last weekend set in summer 1944, with the Russian horde advancing against a small German force that was slowly reinforced. Went down to the wire, with the Germans always on the edge of losing their last BR.

And another thorough recap of the mechanics can be found here:

link

I've played it now half a dozen times. Our local group are still on the fence with it. It has some very definite oddities. The ammo resupply is interesting and requires you to have a good staging area out of enemy LOS – otherwise ammo trucks draw a lot of fire. A platoon of Panzers is pretty useless with no ammo.

As we play big, multiplayer games (typically 4 or 5 per side, 6x16 table), we have had a very hard time getting the number of order dice right. Either there are too few and very little happens, or there are too many and beyond an occasional snake eyes, don't seem to matter much.

Good review, Extra Crispy. I agree that getting the number of orders right in a multi-player game is hard to do. Have you tried giving each player the number of officer they have for their force, and the Senior Officer has the game size dice to use or lend out?

That's what we do. One or two per player and the overall gets an extra die to give out. Still tough. 3 tanks is easy. But I had an infantry command with 9 elements. Tough with one die. With two too easy.

From Extra Crispy's review

Squad level games should be playable in 2 hours.

Hmm. And a platoon level game would take how long?

I wish they had provided for multi-player games.

Best solution is to give each commander their own Command Dice and let each roll his/her own command pips.

As you can't even shoot or "overwatch" without command pips they are critical. Leads to some units being completely ignored.

TomT

Vtsaogames I had a 350 point platoon level game yesterday and we were done in around 2 hours, with people watching and asking questions too. It's a fairly quick system to play.

Thank you Andy.