Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

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 :lol:

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)

Yes, it was useful and informative. Thanks!

Thanks for the review. Looks like I will be picking this up for 15mm or micro armor use.

What are the guidelines on basing models?

You can base however you want, for 15mm I'm using stuff that was based for FOW. All you need to do is mark casualty's with a small dice.

We demand moar! This game system looks intensely fun. What's the play time look like? What bo size?

BGK Forum;

http://www.guildwargamers.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=303

I'd be interested to see a demonstration of it being played with multiple miniatures per base (FoW style figures).

I'll be playing that way, but I've got to put together a complete German force from scratch, so it might be awhile.

What they need is a brief Quickstart summation of the rules, or something like Battlefront's Bootcamp for Flames of War (see link - http://www.flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=106 ). There's already an 800 pound gorilla in the WW2 room in the form of FoW, and there's another new WW2 miniatures ruleset that was just released (Bolt Action, by Warlord; slightly different scale, though). It'd be nice if they had a way for people to figure out what makes BGK different/better than the other games out on the market right now.

Only in a world as silly as this could anybody claim FOW is an HISTORICAL wargame. And I would say that someone has smashed into the room and shot the Gorilla in the ass and it's in alot of trouble...........................

I wouldnt know about FOW, dont know anyone who plays it. So more a mute monkey in the room as far as Im concerned...

As for an idea of BGK, I would suggest looking over the BGK Forum linked above. There are avarious threads that may help.

I also have a small piece covering some of the basics on my blog;

http://ww20mm.blogspot.ie/

 Aldramelech wrote:
Only in a world as silly as this could anybody claim FOW is an HISTORICAL wargame. And I would say that someone has smashed into the room and shot the Gorilla in the ass and it's in alot of trouble...........................

Yes, but here's the problem that you're overlooking. Unless you actually have some real exposure to BGK, you have no reason to know how BGK is any different from FoW (aside from scale, and a much, much, much more limited force list - right now, you can refight Kursk, and... well... refight Kursk). And so far, there's been almost nothing made available about the game mechanics. That's the point of quickstart rules, and the point of all of the videos that Battlefront has made available. You can talk all you want about how FoW is unhistorical and BGK is better, but that tells me nothing about how the game actually works.

What they need to make available are either, as I noted, Quickstart/Tutorial stuff (not necessarily videos, mind you), or actual examples of play.

You can get a basic grasp of the rules through the quick reference sheet. It looks like alot of fun, but I would like to see a quickstart too. It would help with the convincing of friends to jump on board.

Right, lets have a reality check shall we?

The rules are published by a bloke who runs his company pretty much single handedly, this isn't Battle Front or Games Workshop, it's a guy, one bloke, on his own.

Way i see it FOW is a WW2 themed game not a WW2 game even some basic knowledge of WW22 would tell you this .any WW2 game that sells packs of two sturmtigers has lost the plot if you ask me."

"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. "
most of the people on here prob still have no idea warhammer historical existed lol and your being diplomatic about them fleeing in the night man .but yeah Kampfgruppe Normandy weren't bad rules (a damn sight better than FOW anyway) and im sure the guy who wrote them is sound enough .PSC has a decent line already to get people started im 15mm or 20mm and for not a lot of cash .just picked up a box of their 20mm panzer IV`s them seem pretty good for quick build tanks .you can find reviews of their stuff on youtube just look for plastic soldier company and there is an interview with the guy who owns it over at meeples and miniatures .

I mostly play rapid fire and a friend at the clubs rules which he hopes to publish .will i buy these rules prob not but that doesn't mean i don't think they are good or that other gamers shouldn't .just that i already play two WW2 games and secrets of the third reich ,if i am going to pick up another its prob going to be I aint been shot mum for a bit of a change

catachan1brainleaf wrote:
.any WW2 game that sells packs of two sturmtigers has lost the plot if you ask me."

Why? Sturmtigers were used historically. Their first appearence was in Warsaw during the 1944 Uprising (as opposed to the earlier uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto), but they also turned up later on. Some of them were supposed to support the Bulge, for instance, though it's doubtful that they ever got out of their staging area due to the way that the fighting developed. The pair that fought in Warsaw later went on to support the 1st SS, iirc. There was reportedly even one incident on the Western Front in which a Sturmtiger managed to catch a small US armor unit (a tank company, iirc) off-guard in a small village and absolutely devastated the US tanks with a surprise blast.

And Sturmtigers operated in pairs. This is a known fact.

FoW may have many issues, but selling Sturmtigers in pairs is not one of them. That was the historical deployment pattern.

The rules are published by a bloke who runs his company pretty much single handedly, this isn't Battle Front or Games Workshop, it's a guy, one bloke, on his own.

And we're not asking for a dozen videos like Battlefront has produced. We're asking for a short bit of "this is how the rules work". Just a few pages that give a quick run through of the barebones versions of the rules basics. Not something that's going to survive contact with rules lawyers. Just something that will clue people in to the mechanics of the game. A step by step sample turn would probably also do the same thing.

Something like that shouldn't take very long to throw together.

So in effect you want the rules........ for free...........

Eumerin wrote:

catachan1brainleaf wrote:
.any WW2 game that sells packs of two sturmtigers has lost the plot if you ask me."

Why? Sturmtigers were used historically. Their first appearence was in Warsaw during the 1944 Uprising (as opposed to the earlier uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto), but they also turned up later on. Some of them were supposed to support the Bulge, for instance, though it's doubtful that they ever got out of their staging area due to the way that the fighting developed. The pair that fought in Warsaw later went on to support the 1st SS, iirc. There was reportedly even one incident on the Western Front in which a Sturmtiger managed to catch a small US armor unit (a tank company, iirc) off-guard in a small village and absolutely devastated the US tanks with a surprise blast.

And Sturmtigers operated in pairs. This is a known fact.

FoW may have many issues, but selling Sturmtigers in pairs is not one of them. That was the historical deployment pattern.

FOW is a platoon based game and yes there was two of the 17or 19 sturmtigers ever made ya want to know how many platoon were at Warsaw ? it also does not reflect WW2 OOB very well the tactics used or the abilities or numbers/availability of the units listed .3 were used in the whole battle of the bulge and any you see later on are in ones or twos then abandoned when they run out of ammo a lot of the time or taken out by infantry or tanks.my point is by the time you can justify having even one on the table you'd need to be playing a very big game or a very boring/silly one . you should check out the miniatures page and look at some of the grievances people have with FOW .to me its a WW2 themed game not a WW2 game .not saying FOW shouldn't let you use this kinda stuff just maybe its better suited to something like SOTR or what if style game were Germany isn't as badly battered and some of the uber weapons come out and the war drags on .



here is an interview with the owner of the plastic soldier company people may or may not find interesting .

http://www.meeplesandminiatures.co.uk/


great link for anybody looking for 20mm 1/72 scale plastic figs .

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Index.aspx

 Aldramelech wrote:
So in effect you want the rules........ for free...........

I'm looking for something like this - http://dp9.com//download/L&L%20Quickstart%20revised.pdf

If you think that releasing something like that is going to hurt BGK, well, then, I don't know what to say. It's been done by plenty of companies in the past, and there's no indication that it hurts sales (except, perhaps, to warn people that this is not the game for them). It gives you a very basic feel for the game without providing all that much depth. At this point I am, in essence, being asked to buy a book blind for a battle that I'm not all that interested in (move the action down the Crimea later that same year, however... but that's not really possible until the author introduces the Romanians). I'm trying to indicate the best way to fix my ignorance.

FOW is a platoon based game and yes there was two of the 17or 19 sturmtigers ever made ya want to know how many platoon were at Warsaw

I'm well aware of how many were at Warsaw. Two were sent from the factory for evaluation purposes, used to put down the uprising, and then sent back to the factory. They were guarded by the infamous 3rd SS division while in Warsaw, and were given to the 1st SS division when they left the factory for the second time later on. Further, I believe I already indicated most of this information above. I don't understand why you feel I don't know this already.

Further, I'll note that the operational history of the Jagdtiger was only marginally better than that of the Sturmtiger. Are you going to complain about the fact that FoW allows the use of them? A grand total of 20 Pershings saw combat in World War 2 (for combat evaluation purposes; quite a few more reached the continent before the end of the war, but their crews hadn't finished being trained on them by the time Germany surrendered). Is their appearence in pretty much every game that covers World War 2 in 1945 a problem?

Yes, the Sturmtiger is a bit of an attention getter. But so is the Jagdtiger and the Pershing and the Maus and the JS3 and a number of other vehicles that were introduced in 1945 (most of which never actually saw combat). It's not as if FoW is the only game guilty of putting them into the game.

Also worth noting is that, quite frankly, the Sturmtiger as featured in FoW isn't all that great. It's an extremely erratic weapon, and according to the statistical numbers that I ran once out of curiosity, you'll get about the same value for purchasing a battery of 10.5cm artillery due to how hard it is to actually hit anything with the Sturmtiger's main gun.

I feel like this topic has strayed away from BGK and we should refocus back on it. This looks like a great rule set and we should not blemish its release by arguing about the validity of FOW from a historical view.

I understand this is a small operation but $50 USD is alot of money just to get a look at some of the core principles of the game. I dont feel like its giving the book away, it will just confirm your purchase or will remind the buyer the game isnt for them and keep a negative review from being posted about it later on. Hopefully in time the author gets around to it.

Had a quick look through the other day, couldn't find anything specifically about playing with multi model infantry bases. Could someone point me to the right section?

Page 10 "Notes on Infantry basing"

People may find this interesting or useful .

"Welcome to Episode 96 of the Meeples & Miniatures Podcast

In this show, I take an in-depth look at the new World War II rules from Iron Fist Publishing and The Plastic Soldier Company: Battlegroup Kursk.

Firstly, I talk to the author, Warwick Kinrade. Then I am joined by co-host Mike Hobbs and we look in-depth at the rules.

I hope you enjoy the show."

http://meeples.wordpress.com/2012/11/03/meeples-miniatures-episode-96-battlegroup-kursk/

Evening Gents,

I recently bought some PSC Panzer IV's, Panthers etc ready to get back into FoW after many many many many years away from that game but I find myself more interested in doing BGK...

just wondering about a few things:

does the 15mm scale of BGK have to be based like Fow on med sized bases or could I do individual bases? or it has not bearing on the game?

can I play larger games at 15mm on a 6" x 4" table or will I need to go up to 6" x 8" ?

where do I find a list of the Order of battles/ToEs/army list etc so I can figure out what I would need to play a game?

The reason why BGK has caught my attention is that it can be played at Squad, platoon, company and brigade levels which gives me alot of scope to do different games and campaigns.

any insight into my question would help me decide on buying the rulebook.

Cheers
LGW

Heya Lord GreyWolf.

I'm in a fairly similar situation to you, except that I've decided to get the book but am still waiting for it to arrive.

So here's what I can answer based on scouring the interwebs!

You can play it individually based or using FoW style basing. If you do FoW style basing them you'll need some way to keep track of casualties such as casualty rings or roster sheets. If you have the option between both (ie nothing already based) then I think the recommendation is to go for singly based. That's what I'm doing though I am probably going to do up things like mortar crews with 1guy+mortar on a slightly bigger base (25mm steel washer) and the 2nd crew member on a single base so that I can make change for casualties. I got that recommendation in the official BGK forum from the guild wargamers forums. If I ever want to use the singly based models in a group based game then I can attach them to a group base with magnets as I base all my 15mm infantry (previously sci-fi) on 1 and 2 cent coins or steel washers.

The ToE info is in the book. You can get a rough idea from the after action reports. I'd love this information too. To err on the safe side I'm buying basics like infantry (german grenadiers, the basic troops), panzer IVs, half-tracks and german infantry heavy weapon teams. I believe that you require an infantry core even if you're planning on going vehicle heavy, so buying some basic troops is a safe bet and you can get 120 of them in a box from plastic soldier company for about 15 euro IIRC. The game uses a points buying system but from what I hear it guides you towards more historical looking forces by requiring certain amounts of typical (core) units in order to take more specialised units (like Tigers).

The game is designed to be playable on a 6x4' - I've read/heard Warwick say that repeatedly but I don't think that's the bigger end of games. I'd guess it's fine for a platoon or two a side. Knowing myself that will be plenty and I'm happy to play at that level of troops but I do like the idea of having the option for 8x6' in my FLGS at the weekends Table size and ranges doesn't change between 15mm and 20mm . For me 15mm looks better on those size tables as ground scale is that little bit larger but I think 20mm models look significantly cooler. I went with 15mm as there's lots of Flames of Wars players here who might be temptable into a game

They've been helpful to my beginner questions on the official forum.

@quozl: thx for the quick reply and it gives me what I needed to know.

Its looking more and more likely that I'll get the BGK rulebook on my next pay week.

I like the idea of having the infantry on single bases something I've been wanting to do for awhile.

really would like to see a Battle Rep from a 15mm perspective only seen 20mm games so far.

so hard to decide on buying a book with out checking out what I am getting into. $50USD is roughly $60NZD so not a small amount for me to off load with out the wife asking 101 questions.

Will see how it goes.

thx again for the answers.

LGW

This http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?344427-Attacking-the-Collective-Battlegroup-Kursk-AAR gives you the makeup of two lists. So you can see two example legal 600 point lists.

15mm battle-reports are very scarce all right. I'm sure I've seen a couple but a quick google there found me nothing.

I wants!

I got a copy yesterday. It's gorgeous - looking forward to playing it.