KAMPFGRUPPE NORMANDY AT 28mm

One of the most common questions I have been asked is why the game is 20mm (see earlier article for the answer), but I am aware that 28mm is a popular and growing scale to play WWII wargames with. Big battles at 28mm isn’t really my bag, although I do have quite a bit of 28mm stuff, mostly infantry, and enjoy the occasional infantry skirmish. When playing at that scale I don’t use tanks or artillery at all, so KGN would not be my first choice for rules.

That said, for those wishing to play the ‘big battle’ game at 28mm the rules will work just fine. Here are my tweaks and notes to alter the scale and give little more detail to the infantry.

Command and Control

Don’t change at all, it’ll work as written.

Movement

Don’t change at all. The distances are relative to the table size, and as such will be just fine. For detail with infantry movement, I’d rate a few more terrain pieces and obstacles as difficult ground for them, reducing their movement by a D6. So dense woods would be difficult ground, and bocage hedgerows would be linear obstacles.

Shooting

Ranges

When playing with the larger models the ranges on the weapons will seem very short. Double them all. So, Close assault range becomes 0-16”, Short range 16-32”, Effective 32-48”, etc.

This is going to close-up the ranges, and mean most of a tabletops engagements take place at close assault, short and effective range, unless you can play on a very larger table. This is fine, so the 28mm battle becomes a close quarters engagement, where infantry side arms have a more decisive effect on the battle, which befits the scale. 

Small Arms Firepower

The game rates all side arms, be they rifles, sub-machineguns, pistols etc as firepower 1. It just doesn’t worry about the specifics. In a game of tank combat this generalisation works fine, but when the infantry are 28mm tall and you can clearly see what they are armed with then it’s worth including a little more detail.

28mm Small Arms Firepower Table

                                       Firepower           Maximum Range

Rifle                                       1                             48”

Semi-automatic rifle¹             1.5                           48”

Submachine gun                     2                             16”

Pistol                                     1                             16”

Assault Rifle²                        2/1                           32”

Light Machine Gun                 2                             64”

Medium Machine Gun            5                             64”

Heavy Machine Gun               7                             64”

¹ For semi-automatic rifles round any fractions up.

² Assault Rifles have firepower 2 at 0-16” and firepower 1 at 16-32”.

Indirect Fire

The 8” ‘danger-zone’ from Indirect Fire’s target point means these are very tight barrages at 28mm scale. Expanding it to 16” means that most of the table is in danger from a mortar barrage, and will mean that friendly fire becomes a common occurrence, perhaps so much so it’s not worth the risks. I’d split the difference and play with a 12” danger zone around the target marker for each stonk. That still makes it large and risky, but means you can sometimes keep away from your own artillery targets.

PANTHER SQUADRON

This was something of an unplanned addition to my German forces. Whilst visiting a Nottingham model shop I came across three Altaya ‘Legendäre Kampfpanzer’ diecast models on sale at just £5 each. The models are fine, but the paint jobs dreadful (flat spray, no highlighting or weathering - see below), but to me they did not seem beyond redemption - and at £15 for a pre-made squadron with the basecoat painting complete it was too good to be ignored. 

So I spent an evening happy upgrading my impulse buy. First off I sprayed the models with a good layer of gloss varnish, so they were very shiny. Next, I gave each tank a generous all over wash with spirit-thinned black and dark brown oil paints. The gloss varnish allowed the oil paints to run very rapidly and neatly into all the depths around rivets, bolts and plates. The oil paints then had to be left to dry over night.

The next task was to repaint a few details, adding extra camouflage paint in green and some highlights on the dunkel-geld. I also painted out the same numbers and added new ones with transfers. Once dry I gave the models a careful coating of spray matt varnish. This I repeated to get rid of the gloss. Any parts I couldn’t reach with spray I hand painted matt varnish onto, and then added weather powders to the tracks, wheels and surrounding area. First a mid-brown, followed by light earth colour over the top. 

The final stage was to tear up a few strands of Woodland Scenics clump foliage and stick them on with a dab of superglue.

Over all it was very quick and easy. I tried to get a few crew on them, but the model’s diecast construction meant I was going to wreck the model to open up the hatches. So no crew this time, but they are ready to stalk the hedgerows.

AAR Paras - Advance to the Seine

Friday night saw a play-test game for the British Parachute army list I’ve been working on. It was a Hold the Line scenario, with the Paras attacking and a Luftwaffe Field Division battle group (treated as an Infantry Division) defending, assisted by some captured French armour in the shape of 2 Char-Bs and 3 Somua S-35s (all started as reinforcements). The Para’s reinforcements were their supporting armour: 2 Cromwells, 1 Churchill and an M10 Achilles.

Having set up the terrain and deployed, the Paras first had to negotiate a stream and marshy area that stretched the length of their deployment zone. It was hard going, and they emerged only to be engaged by suppressing fire from distant machine guns and an 88 positioned with a grandstand view from a far hillside. First objective for the Paras was the farm buildings on their right flank and, aided by their Ram Kangaroo transport, two sections just beat a Luftwaffe squad to it. As the two sections occupied the farm they destroyed the lone attacking German squad and then endured a heavy barrage of machine gun fire, mortar rounds and 88 fire, only loosing 3 men (but become suppressed).

The fight around the farm would rage for most of the game, and see the paratroops make a remarkable (flukey) string of 10 consecutive 4+ concealment saves to avoid becoming suppressed by the fusillade of MG fire directed at them.

For both sides the armour was slow to arrive. The Paras’ Cromwells and Churchill first navigating the difficult ground, and coming under long range 88 fire (one of which bounced off one lucky Cromwell). 

Meanwhile, as the farmhouse battle continued, a single recce carrier team had made its way down the opposite flank, found an undefended gap and taken cover in the wreckage of a crashed Waco glider. Form here they took the Luftwaffe’s battle group HQ under Bren fire - a rude surprise for the German commander and 1 man died and he dived for cover. 

At last the German armoured arrived (all at once) and made full speed (no great speed though) up the table, only pausing to destroy the bold recce Bren team. Meanwhile the hillside, along with the 88, mortar team and spotting platoon command squad were under 75mm pack howitzer fire, the 88 becoming suppressed and loosing 2 crew, then the survivors abandoned their gun!

The British armour cautiously advanced, taking the Luftwaffe’s hardened machine gun pillbox under suppressing HE fire, but to no effect. Still the Germans were having by far the worst of it, machine guns teams being destroyed by the return fire of paratroopers, who (still miraculously unsuppressed) pushed on from their farm to assault the orchard opposite, Ram Kangeroo alongside in support. The last defenders were already suppressed and stood little chance in the face of the British Army’s finest...

Then, with the German position already crumbling fast, the USAAF showed up (take cover!) - a P-47 swooping in to rocket a Char-B to destruction (the P-47 was standing in for Typhoon in the lists). The air attack was too much for the German morale and they broke. It had been a solid victory for the Paras, loosing just 9 morale (to the German 27), 10 men and a carrier. Their Achilles never showed up!

The Luftwaffe 88 – the master of all it surveyed! 

The Para’s deployment zone, behind the marsh and stream. Note a section has already reached the farm.

Lurking Luftwaffe troops in the central woods. The pillbox with HMG is behind.

Behind enemy lines, the lone carrier and its target, the Luftwaffe commander.

The USAAF arrives as the tanks wade the marsh.

Death of the carrier – arrgh!

‘German’ armour racing (well not much!) to the front.

The P-47 overflies the hill, having just rocketed a Char-B. Score 1 kill.

End game, in true para-spirit a section assaults the orchard's last remaining (suppressed) defenders at close quarters.

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.