"Blitzkrieg Commander 4 and 'Artillery Drift'" Topic

I've written a short review of BKC 4 (with pics of my solo game at Christmas), as well as a longer rant about what I term 'Artillery Drift'.

You can find it here:

link

A very good review and nice looking game. We've played three games of BKC IV so far and all of the games have worked out pretty well so far. I get what you're saying about the artillery drift, but in practice it rarely goes off target by too much and most of what you wanted to hit still ends up in the blast radius.

My biggest qualm with the rules, from versions 1 through 4, is allowing everyone who has a shot at a target to roll, creating the situation where several units pile on a target, which is a bit unrealistic. I've thought about limiting it to a D6 number as the other platoons would be providing flank security, engaged with other enemies, etc., so it feels weird to see 9 T-34s all fire at one Panther platoon! Still, I'm not trading in these rules and that small problem isn't enough to move on to other things.

We tend to find that piling on to kill isn't usually the way forward because the 'overkill' dice are badly wasted. Using your first round (or two) of fire spread out to suppress as much as possible is often much more productive as he can't act with stuff in his go, though I do get where the strong temptation to permanently remove stuff comes from.

We only play early war here (late 41, early 42), where most tanks (especially) don't easily save, have that many hits to begin with, and with only 2 AT fire 2 dice can't exactly go to town either. I guess that might make a difference. I've played late war only twice so its hard to know for sure.

I have an official British 1941 combat training pamphlet for tank commanders and gunners on my book shelf and you are right. From memory: They were trained to engage their opposite number 'in the line' (working left to right), only doubling fire at the end of a line if the enemy were out numbered – though in practice how that went is up for grabs, I guess. So you are right, it is wrong to gang up on one target, and perhaps this kind of rule could be introduced as "Standing Gunnery Order Number 1".

What is encouraging about BKC is their simplicity and ability to handle lots and lots of stuff. The game I solo played over Christmas – probably taking about 4 hours to play to a conclusion (break point) – involved 118 combat units + command and transport. Not many rules sets can do that.

My memory is floored: Flank tanks engaged flank tanks, spare tanks could concentrate on enemy 'centre tanks'.

It's also dated 1940.

I'm going to photograph it and put it on my blog. I'll post a link on TMP when I do. Later today?

Have posted pamphlet 34:

ROYAL ARMOURED CORPS
Weapon Training

MILITARY TRAINING PAMPHLET
No.34

PART 4: FIRE TACTICS FOR TANK
COMMANDERS AND TROOP LEADERS

1940

link

Is there by chance a US based distributor to purchase a hard copy of BKC4?

Thanks for the review and that's a great looking table. Interesting thoughts on the artillery deviation as well, I'll point our author to the blog to have a read.

@Warmaster Horus:
The rules are available directly from us in the UK: link or through Wargame Vault as a pdf: link

Dark Horse Hobbies are starting to sell for us in the States but they've not built up much stock yet: link

@leon Thanks!

I find it very easy to order directly from U.K. Vendors and the mail service is very fast, usually between 5-10 business days. Works for me.

I have gotten rid of "drift" from all my artillery rules as you say. Now, the dice roll determines if the barrage lands now or next turn. Essentially a "miss" means you need more time to get on target.

Nice review. The only set of WW2 rules I've seen which handle artillery properly are Battlefront:WW2. In those rules you actually have all the historical artillery missions and no drift. But you can sometimes get 'danger close' where the barrage lands a bit short which can be an unwelcome surprise if your troops are following the barrage a bit too closely. Blitzkrieg Commander is a nice set of rules, although I only ever played versions 1 and 2. Did they fix the oddity where 6 Stuarts firing at a Panther are as likely to take it out as 1 Firefly?

Just bought the pdf on the strength of the review. Thanks.

Olicana, well said on 'artillery drift'. This has always been my biggest issue with the BKC series. In BKC1 days I tried to get Pete Jones to address it but he was impervious to criticism. He also defended the 500M by 500M area because it corresponded to a standard British 'stonk'. At which point I gave up.

Your solution to drift sounds a lot like the route adopted in Field of Battle WW2 – that works on opposed die rolls for everything, depending on the observer's die roll either the firing player or the targetted player places the template (which must cover the aiming point)…