House Rules for Kampfgruppe Normandy

Since the game’s publication there have been a few questions asked about aspects of the game which I either deliberately ignored, to avoid over complication and too many ‘special’ rules, or that I did not consider at all. In response to these questions I have compiled a few ‘advanced’ or ‘house’ rules to cover them.

These rules are completely optional, use none, one, a few or all at your discretion, depending upon how much detail you like in the your games (and how well you are likely to remember more rules – a distinct problem as I get older!).

This Armoured Car is Reversing! - going backwards faster

Some vehicles, mostly armoured cars, were designed to travel backwards as fast as they could travel forwards. These vehicles do not have to half their movement when reversing. This applies to the following vehicles.

German

SdKfz 222

SdKfz 223

SdKfz 233

SdKfz 234/1

SdKfz 234/2

SdKfz 234/3
SdKfz 263

Panhard 178

US

M8 Greyhound

M20 Utility car

British

Dingo

Daimler Armoured Car

A Bridge Not Far Enough – Heavy Bridging Operations

The game only deals with small bridging operations, covering up to a maximum of 6” or 8” of crossings over ditches and streams and the like. Crossing larger rivers would require a far larger bridge than that represented by the light bridging unit included in the HQ Assets.

Should players wish to play a game involving the construction of a larger bridge then the rules for Heavy Bridging Operations are included here. Please note that given the nature of such a task (perhaps taking a day or two of construction) these rules include an abstraction (in time) to allow it to take place over the time period of a game.

Also, actual engineer bridging units were very large. A British pontoon bridge occupied 21 large trucks – which just isn’t feasible in a tactical wargame at 1 to 1 scale.  By necessity this has been drastically reduced to allow players to actually collect and field an engineering heavy bridging unit (rather than it just filling their side of the table with models of large trucks!)

Heavy Bridging Unit (unique)                      22 points     3mv

Unit Composition: 2 Heavy Trucks and 10 men

Options:

Add up to 3 additional Heavy Trucks – 3 points each

A Heavy Bridging Unit can build up to 12” of bridge. Each additional heavy truck allows an additional 6” of bridge to be added. So a maximum 5 heavy trucks can build up to 30” of bridge.

A Heavy Bridging Unit is a HQ Asset in all armies.

Trees are Dangerous - Indirect Fire and Tree Bursts

Artillery and mortar shells that hit woods often ‘tree-burst’, exploding in the upper branches to shower shrapnel over a wider area from above, making them more effective.

If an infantry unit, soft-skinned vehicle, a deployed gun or any open-topped armoured vehicle is in woods when it is affected by suppression or a direct hit from indirect fire, then the artillery affects counts as being one level higher than it actual is (so light artillery is treated as medium, medium as heavy etc). The maximum is still Very Heavy. This applies when rolling for damage from a direct hit (but not armour penetration) or when rolling for suppression.

Eyes in the Sky - Aerial Reconnaissance
In Normandy this rule only applies to British and US battle groups.

If the battle group includes an air artillery observer then the battle group will have much improved picture of the enemy’s dispositions and movements, because the observer can see so well.

As well as its normal role, the air observer also gives the battle group a bonus of +2 to its recce total.