Battle Group

 

Last week I had my second game using the Battlegroup rules. I have been wanting to play purely tank actions and I have found that the 2 rulesets I have previously tried out just not that interesting. I find What a Tanker a bit foolish and the Achtung Panzer way too granular. I discussed this with Jean-Philippe who has been playing Battlegroup for quite some time and he kindly agreed to demonstrate the game to me.

I have a pretty good selection of 20mm Soviet and German tanks and of course the great tank battles in WWII took place in the Ukraine. We decided to set our game there. I put together a table.

German Start in upper left, Soviet start in lower right

I took the Soviets and Jean-Philippe took the Germans. We decided to play the Recce Screen scenario from the book. The OB was as follows:

Germans

PzIV Command 

PzIV x 3

StuGIII G

Sd.Kfz 250/9

Soviets

T34 Command

T34 x 6

T70

It was a very close game, with me eking out a very marginal victory. The game was a lot of fun and I would definitely play again and I see BattleGroup as my primary WWII Tank game. Many thanks to Jean-Philippe.

BattleGroup

 

Last Thursday a bunch of us got together our Club Games Night to play an alternate WWII game. Luis and his friend Jean-Philipe put on the game which featured a combined arms game between the Germans and the Soviets. Myself and David played the Germans while Korrigan and Pat played the Soviets. I do not know much about this ruleset having just played it once before. What I remember from that game is I liked how the tank rules played. Here are some photos which will be followed by a few comments about the game.

The table, the Germans started in the foreground

Jean-Philippe on the right with the Korrigan and Pat next to him. We had spectators for this game with cub member Rob on the far left.

David who played the Germans with me on the right and on the far left Michele, another spectating club member. 

The T-34 which were deadly going after a Panther

A lot of tanks were destroyed

We all had a lot of fun, Luis and Jean-Philipe put on a great game. They are an interesting set of rules as they are I think basically for company sized actions rather than platoon sized actions unlike Chain of Command. One can easily play platoon sized games with them but when you look at the scenarios in the book they seem more focused on larger games. They really handle combined arms games well. They are basically IGOUGO, and do not have the turns of fate that can happen in CoC because of double phases and CoC dice. Certainly CoC is more granular and thus realistic but both rulesets are simulations rather than games. I do have the rulebook as well as some source books and I will be keeping them. Certainly CoC will remain my first choice for platoon level WWII games but I would have no problem having another game of BattleGroup.

BattleGroup: Eastern Front

This week has been quite busy with a game each evening. 

On Monday evening, Luis gave me an introduction to Battlegroup, the ruleset from the Plastic Soldier Company. I had not played the ruleset before but certainly my CoC forces would work without problem for squad level games (1-2 platoons + supports). Over the years I have bought 3-4 of their books for reference without really looking at the rules. The BattleGroup Kursk book actually contains the ruleset so I had a chance to have a look through before the game.

As should be clear from reading this blog, I am a CoC player. I actually sat down the other night and did some counting and calculated that I play 10 TFL games on a fairly active basis. But I also play 3 Studio Tomahawk games, so there is no reason not to try out new games, and I have to say that I have been curious about this game. I suspected that it is pretty popular and when I checked on their FB page ( I hate FB but as a gamer you really have no choice now), I found that they have 5.7k members, while CoC FB has 5.4k members. Pretty similar.

Luis had set up a 4x4' ruined urban table, so slightly off Kursk but quite good for an introduction. I have been trying to figure out how to play urban combat with CoC, and have yet to sort it. Luis's table was very nice and I really could not wait to get my figures on the table. It was decided that I would play the Soviets while Luis would play the Germans.

OB (not entirely accurate)

Soviets

HQ

2 rifle platoons

Recon infantry squad

Sniper

Recon BA-10

T-34 Company

Germans

HQ

1 grenadier platoon

MMG team

Recon infantry squad

Recon Sd.Kfz 222

STUG III

Pz IV

It is an interesting game with a good Activation system. Generated differently than "O" Group but somewhat similar in that you really have to make some difficult choices each turn;  as what you can do is limited. There were all the usual activations that one sees in WWII rulesets, I did find it a little unusual that a unit can shoot twice when activated but you have to do an observation test each time you fire so getting shots off is not guaranteed. I am not going to go into the ruleset further aside from saying that it does have a morale function and like CoC once your morale runs out the game is over.

I should say that I had beginner's luck and was able to win the game within 2-3 hours. Luis's dicing though was quite abysmal and as we know it is always good to let a new player win the game! I did take a couple of photos 

I really enjoyed the game, and certainly would play it again. It does not have the same challenges as CoC but for a fun historical, relatively easy to pick up WWII ruleset, I can highly recommend it.