Introduction to Battlegroup

So in these wonderful days of lockdowns, covid restrictions, political shenanigans and general all round rubbishiness its been quite hard to find either the time,  freedom or enthusiasm to get any kind of gaming done. Admittedly here in NZ we had a little more freedom than the rest of the universe during the initial stages of the pandemic (woohoo team NZ) however with the arrival of Delta that has come crashing down. Hope looms on the horizon as our population marches grumpily towards the magic vaccination percentage target and boosters arrive into the country on magic wings of steel (sounds like there's a song lyric in there somewhere).

So what has any of this for to do with Battlegroup I hear no one ask.  Well my gaming circle finally managed to create space in our respective diaries to carve out an afternoons Sunday gaming at Chez Bowman (go visit scottswargaming.blogspot.com or https://www.facebook.com/Kapiti-Hobbies-120527141849458/for more info).

As a few of us were new comers to Battlegroup we decided to run through an intro game with the theme of "err, somewhere in Western Europe some Tommies bump into some Jerrys and hijinks ensue". We didn't bother calculating points and just grabbed whatever models were to hand,  then picked an arbitrary 20 BR rating for both forces.

The mission was some kind of meeting engagement with a scouting phase involving a SD.KFZ 222 versus a Humber Scout Car and 2 Universal Carriers. Whilst Jerry was outnumbered the Tommies couldn't get through the armor of the 222 whilst their autocannon made short work of one of the carriers. The Tommies did however make to claim 3 objectives in the initial scouting phase which put Jerry's morale under pressure early on with 3 chits getting drawn to the Tommies one. 

Then the game really began as the armour trundle onto the board slowly followed by the infantry.  It took some getting used to the spot, shoot, kill tests and how to calculate the respective dice rolls but we got the hang of it in the end.  

Surprisingly the Cromwells and Sherman's did rather well against the Stugs, but struggled against dug in troops (as they should).

We're all a bunch of old fogeys so no one really took it to seriously s the whole point was to learn the rules and have fun. There was much laughter, banter and genealogy merriment which at the end of the day was the whole point. 

I have to say I rather enjoyed Battlegroup and think that for anything larger than an infantry platoon this will be my go to for WW2 games.