Battlegroup 28mm WWII

We had another game of Battlegroup last Saturday … Each side had a reinforced company from the Fall of the Reich supplement. Steve commanded the Russian Mechanized force and Bailey commanded the German Kampfgruppe (I commanded the store … so I was only able to rules mediate for most of the afternoon).

It is hard to see but the SU-85 in the middle of a ridgeline.

 

The game started with both sides recon forces on the table, but it was not long before the first wave of reinforcement troops arrived (each side rolled very well on turn 2). The German forces pushed into the center and up the right flank, while the Russian force mirrored them on the other flank.



It was going well for the Russians as they quickly knocked out a Marder III and Jagd Panzer IV, plus another section of troops were able to move up the German left flank and capture an objective. At this time they held three of the four objectives. They had a good base of fire on the right flank and overwhelming troops on the left. It started going bad when a lend lease Sherman blew up from a mine strike though.



Then it went from bad to critical when the Tiger showed up! It proceeded to drive into the open area, disregarding all enemy tanks. It was hit six times but none of the hits failed to do any damage to it. Of course it put an end to the fire, by brewing up three Russian tanks in rapid succession!

Both sides placed their FO’s in the center of the lines and proceeded to call down mortar and artillery barrages onto the table. The German FO tried several times unsuccessfully to get the division big guns to fire. The artillery fire on both sides really pinned down the action for several turns, but eventually the Germans began to push on both flanks, and moving into close combat range.



The casualties were extremely heavy for both sides, and it looked like the Russian would hold as a T-34 took out a half track and most of a German squad (who failed to hit with their Panzerfausts). But then a Panzerschreke team, which had been sneaking up the right flank woods, fired and brewed up the T-34.

 

This last exchange of fire was to much for the Russians and they retreated from the field.



Aftermath

This game we tried a couple of rules adjustments … as we play in 28mm we increased all measurements by 50%. I thought it worked really well for the most part, though the large open areas seemed more daunting to cross.

The second adjustment was to change most of the tables to formula’s. As an example, armor levels are listed as a Letter and you cross index the letter with the penetration number of the shot to get a “kill” number. If you convert the Armor Letter to a number you can find the Kill number by just subtracting the Pen value from the Armor value.

The only House Rule we used was to add a couple of maneuvers to vehicle movement, so that they did not move exactly like infantry. Namely they could turn, rotate or reverse in addition to moving forward. This worked ok, but do think I need to tweak it some more.