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Firstly, where am I coming from on this. I dont play any current GW games and I never really liked WAB. I have however looked forward to this game for along time and approached it with an open mind...



The first thing that strikes you about KG Normandy (KGN) is the sheer size and quality of the rulebook. It is a massive large format book, with 346 full colour glossy pages. The book is crammed full of stuff, and illustrated with a host of period and miniature pictures. By looks alone this book is easily up there with the best of the rest. There isnt alot else to say on this score other then it features almost all of Dave Andrews wonderful 20mm collection in alot of the pictures. So on looks, it scores very high.

But what about substance.



The rules themselves take up the first 69 pages. Im sure that will lead to gasps of horror from some Grognards, but to me thats a bonus. The rules and clearly and concisely written, explained in short, easy to read paragraphs and often followed directly by examples. This has to be one of the easiest to follow rulebooks I have read. We were able to play a game simply by running through the QRS and referencing the rules. The index works well, and their is an obvious and natural order to the rules that makes finding things intuitive. From the point of view of comprehension, again these rules score high.



The style of play, is perhaps best described as 'Old Skool' with a few new touches... and it does it very well. The game is set at a nominal 1 to 1 ration, with battles played at 'platoon', 'company' or 'battalion' level, but generally governed by a total points limit. The larger the points value of an army, the larger the table required. To give an example, a 'platoon' action of 250 points is played on a 6 x 4 game. As armies get larger, so does the table. This format is very user friendly and gamers new to the period can play larger games as they increase their armies.



Next we have a command and control phase. Its simply done, a roll of x number of d6 dependant of the size of the army and the number of command elements added. This gives you the number of units you can 'activate' in a turn. Simple and fast. But as always, things can expand on this. German signal units allow a commander to re-roll the dice throw for example. I must say I really enjoyed this mechanism and its a nice middle balance between total control of Rapid Fire, and the lack of control in Blitzkrieg Commander. It works really well. Again its simple, fast and intuitive.



From this we come to the shooting. Everytime you fire you have to spot your target, once again its a simple procedure but well thought out. Then you try and hit your target, followed by penetration if firing at armour. Infantry then get cover saves to avoid becoming a casualty. With armour, its fast and deadly. Penetrating hits almost always lead to a tank being knocked-out from the battle. Its sounds brutal, but it actually isnt and plays out really well. But watch out... Vehicle have a limited supply of ammo, so make sure you bring those supply trucks for long drawn out fights!



There are also some excellent indirect fire rules, where your OPs actually drop in ranging rounds before getting the guns to fire on target. Its very nicely modelled with both players involved in the process, which is a nice touch keeping both involved. I must say that this, and the Suppression rules, are what have impressed me the most.



Suppression allows you to pin down an enemy force by weight of fire into a location. This is unobserved fire, and if successful suppresses a unit until it is 'rallied'.

Morale works in two ways. First the usual rolls when losses reach a certain point, but also the drawing of morale chits due to certain things - destroyed vehicles, lost objectives etc. These chits are numbered, and you score a tally against your armies breakpoint. The nice touch is your opponent doesnt know your score, so you never really know how bad off an enemy is. In with these chits are a number of optional event chits that give mechanical breakdown, out of ammo and aircraft support to throw at your enemy. Again a simple, yet really well thought out system. I really liked this and it plays so well.



Thats the basics to the rules. I must say I really enjoyed playing them. The game is fast and fun, without the player having total control and uncertainty clouds your every move. You have to carefully plan your attacks.

The main body of the rules is taken up with a historiography of the Normandy campaign, army lists, scenarios to play and two campaigns. Each is done from a US and a British viewpoint. Some people have moaned that its 'only Normandy'. Yer, well wake up and look at most WW2 rulebooks - They all generally are! Its a perfect setting to get a maximum amount of late-war data to players for the three most popular armies. All rulebooks tend to focus on this period, so to castigate the rules on that point is a little erroneous. But I couldnt care less anyway - Normandy is my favourite setting for WW2 games.



The background history is well done. Players new to the period will find they have a useful resource with uniform guides and no real need to by anything else on the period. Having spoken to two people new to the period, both agreed this was a massive boon to a new comer. Finally we have a WW2 rulebook that is a complete package... a typical GW style product. That in my view is very worthwhile, and it will encourge new players.



The Army lists are also cleverly done. One cant help but pick a balanced list and the tank lovers will find their all tank armies easily broken due to a lack of morale points. The whole army design process is done to promote combined, balanced armies. You could of course use historical formations (as done in several of the scenarios) but for planning a game down the club, nothing beats having a points system to fall back on for ease of getting a game together. You can play without them, Rapid Fire lists would work perfectly, but I must admit to being rather taken with the army lists. My one gripe... Is there is no British Airborne list.

So overall, is it worth £48? Thats really the question people want answered. I can only give you my view and thats a resounding YES.I will be alot playing more of KGN...

Pictures from last nights game. More indepth analysis after the next game...

Wow brilliant review! Thanks for posting it! By the sounds of things, it seems awesome. I am not going to purchase it because i have only just started FoW, but i'll be telling my mates about this. Great review as always!

Nice one Big P, I was keeping my eye out for this. Definitely will be looking to lay my hands on this now.

But how did you get Jean Reno to pose behind the book for you?

Good Review.

But you haven't sold me on it, Im still not paying £48 for a set of rules, I dont care how "pretty" they are.

Well the 'pretty' bitz are irrelevant. The rules play very well. If i get as much use from this as Rapid Fire then it will be a very sound investment... I have been playing RF for 15+ years!

Given the size (twice that of Hail Caeser which retails at £30) I think its a fair price, but then I paid £80 for my book on 21st Panzer!

I just wanted to try and give a rough idea of the system. The price point is down to the individual. only you can decide if its worth the price. I do think some historical forums are talking alot of crap about this game cos its GW. Cant stand remote reviewers. On one forum a guy who had never seen the book said there was a massive errata for it.

Hopefully this will balance the bullsh#t a little and allow people to get some idea of the game inside. A more indepth look at the gameplay after a couple more games will follow.

thanks so much for the reveiw . looks like a great investment . with a great production value . i collect tons of rules sets for ww2 since i have so many armies in three scales 15mm , 20 mm and 28 mm . cant wait to get my hands on it . thanks Big P !

Very interesting review, sounds like a nice game but at the price I'll wait a few months to see if any communities are thriving.

This sounds like it is very well done and I for one will be picking myself up oen of these

It is fun... Played again last Friday, 300 points aside using the Escalation scenario. Very interesting game.

Going to try a 600 point game this week and then try some historical scenarios.

We played a four player 600 point game this evening.




Each of us chose a 300 point army using the lists, with two on each side. We then rolled for scenario and played 'The Next Village' where one side must capture a held village. This was rather nicely done with half the defending army not arriving till half way through the game. Worked very well with staggered deployment for the Germans attacking and then the difficulty of the British reinforcements arriving under fire...






Played very well, great game. We played all 12 turns in about 4 hours and it was a real slugfest. We learnt just how deadly Panthers are... but also how one Firefly can make all the difference (he popped three Panthers!). We also had a Spitfire fly over and as I had an FAC we managed to bomb a StuG! Was a close game for a while but the Germans finally got beaten with one half of the army collapsing on turn 12 and the other half having taken huge losses with no objectives captured.




I must say this game has really reignited my love of WW2 games. It plays very fast, with a nice sense of realism and is very exciting. Very enjoyable game, one of the best games for a long time.






Just give an idea, this was my 300 point force from the British Armoured list...

I gotta say I am really likeing this book, what scale is it palyed at?

what do you do for the dirt roads ? sprinkel sand then just collect it up in a zip lock when your done ? stuff looks great . big p you have me at the edge to order this book !! damn you!!i have been collecting a lot of ww2 in 20mm too

Ralin Givens wrote:I gotta say I am really likeing this book, what scale is it palyed at?

20mm / 1:72

MattRendar wrote:what do you do for the dirt roads ? sprinkel sand then just collect it up in a zip lock when your done ? stuff looks great . big p you have me at the edge to order this book !! damn you!!i have been collecting a lot of ww2 in 20mm too

Yup... Its just builders sand. We have several 5kg bags at the club. Cost about £2 a bag, so as you can imagine they last a long time!

We just sweep it up with a dustpan and brush when finished and put it back in the bag.

Sounded like a ton of fun! Pretty neat army you have

Wow the game sounded like a lot of fun! There's nothing better than using a single tank to take out 3 bigger ones!

great review

I have done up a formatted roster sheet in Excel that adds up your points and morale as you enter them and also records ammunition for ya tanks!

If you want a copy drop me a PM.

Trying a 750 point game tonight with six players... So expect yet another report tomorrow!

I shall eagerly await!

please big p . post pics and a rcap of that game to .looking foward to how that one goes .

Last night we tried a 750 point game... Six players, each with a 250 point army.






I decided to try out something the 'haters' keep telling me that the rules promote. I went for an all tank army. All I can say is that the people who think these rules promote this form of 'power-gaming' aint played or read the rules...

My 250 point and legal army... It was a disaster.




Anyway, we basically had a good all-round Allied army, with each player having some tanks, infantry and artillery. For the Germans we had my uber-panzer group and two panzer-grenadier platoons with not much else! We really lacked in artillery.



One thing that the game models so well is the relative effect of the artillery. While the Allies had four M7 Priests, we had two Hummels. But this was not the true picture... The Allies get far higher ammo rating for their artillery to reflect their far better supply and plenty of it! The germans on the other hand find themselves with very poor ratings. This means that a Priest has 7 'shots' of artillery fire before it reloads... Our poor Hummels only had 2! This is such a massive difference but rather neatly models that aspect of the campaign. We had to park a supply truck beside the Hummels to keep them firing while the Priests just plugged away. It will be interesting to see if in other supplements the ratings change to reflect better supply for the Germans. Never in a game before have I dreaded the enemy artillery fire. This game really showed the worth of the Allied artillery as it hammered us into the ground... Indeed it struck the Hummels as they were re-supplying and destroyed a Hummel and the supply truck with direct hits... I honestly hate Allied artillery.



The other neat thing is the morale chits. As you take them and keep them secret, your opponent has no idea how badly your army is doing. While the Allies last night thought they were doing badly, we had suffered far higher losses, indeed over half our morale was gone compared to just a sixth of theirs... But they didnt realise this till the end. It adds a real sense of uncertainty to things.



As for my 'uber-panzer' army... Well I aint taking that again... It plodded along slowly, lacking enough command elements to get it performing right, and despite having more firepower than the Allies put together it was so ineffectual it was scary... Unable to take and hold objectives my army just prowled around like an annoyed slug.



Have to say, the more I play of these rules, the better they get... And this is just in the points based games. Alot of this is to do with the cleverly designed scenarios that really give a sense of the campaign and offer interesting tactical challenges to both players.

Sounded like a lot of fun! Good to see that this game rewards balanced lists over one trick ponies. Lots of amusing mechanics

Last nights game was a 500 point aside encounter between US Infantry and SS...

The US have one massive advantage over the enemy - Artillery and Airpower. They have far higher chances of requesting artillery supporting fire, and also getting it from very big guns! They also have a higher chance of getting air support.




This was the 500 point I took, based around two US infantry platoons... What you dont see is the 12 Artillery requests I took...




The scenario we played was the defence-in-depth, which saw the US having to defend against the Germans. However only a certain portion of the US force could be on table at the start, so we elected to place our two infantry platoons and our FAO on table, with all our armour off for the start.




The Germans would also have a staggered start with 1d6 units arriving per turn. Due to really poor rolls, alot of their forces hadnt arrived by the time our reserves started to arrive.






From the start we bombarded the Germans with artillery fire. Dependent o the requests you make you roll randomly to see what is firing into your sector of the front. Our first supporting fire turned out to be from a ship off the coast and on the first turn Naval gunfire smashed into the Germans.






This continued to be the theme of the game. We hunkered down and tried to shell every move the Germans made. This was quite successful and we completely disjointed their attack. The turn came when one of our 76mm Shermans got a lucky hit on a Panther coming through one of the few gaps in the bocage. The round took the tracks off the Panther and the immobilised Panther blocked the route of attack for the rest of the German armour. Unable to pass and blocked in by hedges it was forced into a long range gun duel with Shermans and infantry, causing losses to both sides.




However the single German Tiger was making a dash up the road. Sadly as it neared a position to take on the Yanks, a morale chit gave us 'Mechanical Breakdown'... We of course played it on the Tiger! Its engine spluttered and died... Immobile on the road! The following turn a P-47 Thunderbolt appeared and its salvo of rockets slammed into the Tiger but only managed to suppress it. With a combination of artillery fire the Tiger was kept out of the game.




As the game ended the Germans had made it halfway, but superior US artillery fire kept them from advancing. Once the German artillery had been used up they were unable to suppress the US defences to push through. Though not without losses the US managed to edge a slight win, but it was only by two victory point.




Great game for the Yanks, it felt great to be constantly dropping shells on the enemy, even though it didnt always work out... It certainly frustrated the German players no end! Very realistic game and the morale chits gave a great narrative to the game. What I like with this game is that each game seems to get better as you discover the nuances among the different armies and the equipment. Certainly an army works best when its built along historical lines and plays to its historical strengths.

Very nice update and game! The game system is sounding better by the minute

The game and your mini's look great. What model range are you using?

I use stuff from just about every 20mm company.

Just the figures from my German come from AB Figures, Elhiem Figures, Battlefield/Blitz Miniatures, Kellys Heroes, Britannia Miniatures, Foundry, FAA, Almogavers, Sojers... and more I cant remember.

Vehicles are all manner of resin or metal kits plus the usual plastic models from various sources.

The reason people choose 20mm for WW2 is that everything is available.

Not many other scales where I could build a WW2 Thai army...

I (finally!) picked this up yesterday.

Only skimmed it but its shiney-ness is impressive, stats look very similar to FoW (with a slight hint of 40k!).

I see unfinished project being put aside for new 20mm WW2 armies in the near future. :faceplam:

Something a little...Different.













I would love to tell more... But I cant.

Hopefully this means eastern front. Haven't picked up the first book yet but your battle reports make it really hard to resist!

Looks interesting P, and I always love to see your table pictures. For the time being, I'm holding off on this one because I'm most interested in the Eastern Front (and gaming theoretical engagements for Operation: Unthinkable). Thanks for the review!