Last week I recieved my long awaited copy of Battle Group Kursk (BGK) so I thought I'd share with you my impressions after a week of reading.
Most of your are aware I'm sure of Warhammer Historicals Kampfgruppe Normandy that are no longer avalible since that firm wound that operation up.
BGK have been written by the same author, Warwick Kinrade, and are a direct decendant of those rules, although they are definatley not the same rules. Lots has been re-written and improved upon.
The book itself is an extremely high qaulity product with a very thick harback cover, strong binding and thick glossy coloured page's. 237 page's long, the main rules themselves occupy the front of the book and amount to some 54 pages. They are well written, easy to understand and there are lots of helpful examples included. The next section is an historical overview of the battle itself togerther with the actual orders of battle for both sides.
Next up are the army lists. There are two lists for both sides and these cover Panzer and Panzergrenedier battle groups and Infanrty Division battle groups for the Germans, Tank Corps and Motor Rifle and Rifle Division battle groups for the Soviets. The lists are well laid out and are engineered to incourage "historical" forces, no wall to celling Tiger armies here!
And certainly no automatic rifle/Machine gun spam either. If you like to "power game" these won't suit you at all.
Next is a scenario section with 7 different pre-set games for people to try with maps and suggested forces.
Now we have a lavishly illustrated painting and modeling section with somthing for everybody from beginers right up to us "been wargaming for 25 years and there aint nowt you can teach me about painting types
"
We then have a linked campaign game consisting of 7 historical scenarios, the first three of which can be linked togerther to form a "mega" game.
And finally there is the appendix which is choc full of QRS's, army roster sheets and some counters that you need to play the game (PDF's of which should be avalible soon). You will also find all the stats you need for every bit of equipment you can think of for that period and a bit more besides.
Oh and right at the front is an index that actually makes sense :
:
Now KGN weighed in at £60? if my memory serves......... BGK is £30 and is in my opinion a far better product.
Now the game itself
(I will not be writing the bloody whole rule book out here verbatum)
The game works on a D6 system and a set of counters that are provided. the clever thing about this game is that it can be run at 4 different levels:
Squad
Platoon
Company
Battalion
Depending the level, decides the number of points you get to play with and how many dice you get to roll in your command phase, each pip rolled allows you to issue one order to a squad of infantry or a vehicle and there are several different orders that can be issued including sneaky and underhanded things that wait until your opponants turn <_<
When you pick your army the number of officers you buy also have a bearing on this roll as you add the number of ruppets to your roll. So if Im playing a company level game I will roll 3D6 and add the number of officers I have to it.
During your shopping spree for stuff you will also notice that each unit purchased gives you a number of Battle rating points, this is very important. When you add all these up you get your forces Battle Rating and this is where the counters come in. These are placed in a cup at the start of the game and on each is printed a number between 1-5, also there are a smaller number of radom event counters.
Every time you lose a unit or other specific events happen you have to take a counter from the cup, these will add up over the turns and when they exceed your Battle rating you've lost! There are other ways of loosing too.............
Where this becomes really good fun is that to unpin your units you must make a choice how many D6's you need to do this and the more you use the more it will cost you because for every dice you use you have to take a certain number of counters out of the cup.
Which leads me too the sharp end, shooting people.
Two ways to do this, spray and pray (area fire) or good old fashioned aiming at something (aimed fire). Area fire is easier but you will tend to pin things rather then kill them. Aimed fire is harder but you kill what you shoot at and hit (hopefully). There is a small chance of killing with area fire but pinning people is not to be sneezed at, why? I hear you cry......
Pinned units have to stop doing unpleasant things to you
Pinned units are therefore easier to kill (they don't like it up em)
If you score a kill on a pinned unit it might run away
and finally your oppo is going to have to unpin it and drain his battle rating to do so and that will effect his whole army.
There are lots of little touches to this game as well, the way that sigs, logistics and off table support have been worked in is good. Your units can and proberbly will run out of ammo at some stage, better not look down on that supply colunm as boring, you'll be needing that. Need those big guns to hit that target? Your Forward Observer is going to be happy you brought that signals truck...................
It seems to me that these will work (with minor range tweaking) for any scale of figure, most seem to be using 20mm but I'm going to be using my exsisting 15mm flames of war collection and I understand it has been playtested in 6mm by some.
So, I hope you found my wall of text useful or informative or both
(And yes I am well aware my spelling is awful and no the work computer does not have spell check)
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April 28, 2024, 02:59:31 PM
September 13, 2011, 08:59:10 PM