We gathered at D6 on Sat for a somewhat impromptu game of Battlegroup. This is the second I’ve run so I think I’ll still call this a playtest for the time being, tho it’s starting to feel more like a regular set of rules I’ll be using.
With Bill coming over from LaCrosse, and Chuck, Sam, a little bit of Ian and we had a nice little group assembled. Chuck and Ian started on the German side and Bill and I took the allied side.
This was a platoon sized action which in Battlegroup terms means generally you’re rolling 2D6 for the number of orders you have. The Germans had roughly 3 platoons vs 3 and some attachments on the allied side.
Shortly after D-day on June 9th, near the Norrey-en-Bessin train station. The Germans were ordered to press their attack against some Canadian infantry forces to push them back. The Canadians are dug in having a 3 Rifle sections, a 50mm mortar, access to some off board 105s and a couple of 6 lbers. In addition a couple of troops of Shermans have moved into the area.
For the Germans and their force, they have 6 panthers and a couple of squads in 251/1s but nothing else. Worse as the day has started the Germans are finding they are under fire by some 17lber from very long range but they can’t quite seem to understand where the shells are coming from. Because of the confusion they only get 1D6+2 (because of 2 officers) orders per turn.
The Germans setup ready to roll forward. They didn’t have great orders rolls for the first couple of turns so going on overwatch they didn’t roll too far forward.
On the Canadian side they setup a battle line behind the stone fence as well as a squad on the train station.
One set of 2 Shermans and 1 Firefly are on table while the others are all over table in reserve.
Here come those Jerries. They’re a little under armed to take on those Panthers.
So the Canadian firefly pops out and takes out a Panther. Dropping artillery on the Panthers doesn’t have a lot of effect. The Germans are holding their infantry back while the Canadians are generally holding their fire as well. The Panthers make quick work of the Firefly. The off board 17lber isn’t accomplishing much.
The loss of a unit (the firefly) meant that the Canadians have to take a chit which is the mechanism for eating away at one side’s morale. The chits have both numbers and in some cases specials that might use. The first chit drawn, air attack!
We tried to have the plane come down and do a straffing run on the 251s. It didn’t quite work out, shots fired but not enough.
The infantry that was on the station made a quick move down the tracks to see if the Germans might ignore them. They didn’t. They lost a man and used the fall back rule. Basically if you take fire as infantry in the open, you can elect to take just one casualty (invalidate the rest) but then your opponent gets to move you up to 10″ away towards or into cover.
The Germans in turn move up with their half tracks. One takes a direct hit causing 3 casualties. The remainder jump out pinned. The other half track rolls up drops off it’s infantry as they jump into the house.
Then the Canadian reinforcements show up, 2 more Shermans and another firefly. The firefly takes out another Panther and the two Shermans try spray the house.
The Germans keep their cool however take a few casualties. Then with the Shermans in very short range, they pop out their Panzerfaust and take out the firefly and one of the Shermans with two very good shots. The reminder of their fire with their MG42 and small arms they blaze away at the Canadian infantry. Unfortunately while that stone wall gives some cover, they suffer a number of causalities, drop under 50%, fail their morale and run.
Over on the Canadian right flank, the Panthers started to move into machine gun range and close the distance on the 6 lbers. Given the range the poor 6 lbers didn’t have much of a change on the front of a Panther.
With Battlegroup, they have approx ever 10″ bands that drop off the effectiveness of AP rounds over distance. The Canadian players were looking at about 10 on 2D6 to even dent the Panthers with their 6lbers. Lots to be said for creating a set of rules which effectively recreates just how difficult dealing with the good German hardware actually was.
None the less, the Panthers ended up taking out both of the 6lbers. Just one of the guns managed to have an opportunity against the side of one of the Panthers. Alas those shots didn’t do anything.
Next the Panthers started to pick on the Shermans over in the woods and managed to take out the track on one of them. Like the 6lbers the 75 on a Sherman can’t do much against a Panther. At range they were looking for ~11s on 2D and closer that dropped to 10 on 2D6 to penetrate on a shot that hits.
So last turn of the game. We picked it up as the Canadians were pretty much down to a undefendable position. The 4 Panthers were closing in, the two fireflies lost and the Canadian infantry pretty chewed up. The off board 17lber didn’t do anything the entire game save for one hit. The Canadian artillery did manage to hit and pin some of the Germans at times.
It was a very close match however. In Battlegroup, both sides have a Battle Rating and are drawing chits for squad loss or tank loss or to unpin units. Go past that value and your force decides it has had enough to do for the day.
For both the Canadians and Germans they were both on that edge. One more chit and it’d spell doom.
It was interesting to watch the players not try and attempt to pin down the opponents using area fire. I think that’s a tactic that hopefully will be explored more in future games.
We played about 9-10 turns over the course of about 4 hours. For having to fumble through the books and charts and start things off explaining the basics, I think that’s a pretty good pace. With more people experienced in the rules I think the next game will go faster.
For me the dynamics of the game work pretty well. There are shooting, spotting etc modifiers I’d kinda like to see, OTOH the limitation of a D6 for observation as well as to hit I think keeps the modifiers back. More modifiers also means more time figuring them out so it slow things down. Would the results have been any different? I don’t think so and in which case I’m thinking I’m ok with the choices the designer of the game has made.