WW2 battlefront rules

[desertraider]

Has anyone tried ww2 battlefront rules? what was you experience on playability ease of understanding document quality etc, there loads of info online about orbats and toe etc but not many actual reviews.

[Fitz]

Edit: Doh! I read the OP's title as "Battlegroup", not "Battlefront", so I was talking about a completely different game. I've never played battlefront.

They are my favourite set of rules of all the ones that I've tried. They're not perfect — what set of rules ever is? — but they best suit my preferred style of play.

Me and my usual opponent had to teach ourselves, as we know of nobody else locally who plays them who could tell us how to do it. It was pretty straightforward, taking it in easy stages and adding more capabilities with each new game. The only troublesome part was coming to grips with the rules for indirect artillery, but a few careful step-by-step run-throughs and that too came together.

The Quick Reference Chart is about all you need to play, once you've read through the rulebook a few times, and that to my mind is an indication of a well-crafted set of rules.

[sausagesca]

These are a very good set of rules, well designed and actually quite easily played. However, like all of R. Hasenauer rules, the design is not particularly fast play largely because of his preference for pinning and suppression results as opposed to measuring a unit's endurance by permanent damage. This might be sound in many ways but slows play to the point that we found it difficult to finish games. Also, the weapons range bands and shooting factors are quite granular which, again, is sound design for its detail but slows play.

So, an excellent game, but you need time and a group (opponent) willing to really learn the rules if you want to crack through a battle.

[SteveBurt]

It is an excellent set of rules. Probably the best integration between infantry and armour combat I've ever seen, and very good artillery rules.
very nice treatment of troop quality. Morale is handled as part of activation, as in Fire & Fury.
Not the fastest playing set, although we find a game with a battalion or so a side will complete comfortably in about 3 hours.
There's a ton of excellent scenarios on the website. www.fireandfury.com

[Jemima Fawr]

Yes, they're absolutely my favourite WW2 rules (to the point I've not really played any other WW2 rules for 20 years). As has been said, they integrate infantry, armour, artillery and air perfectly using the same basic rules mechanisms. Artillery in particular, works extremely well an I don't know of any other rules that allow you to use realistic amounts of artillery, up to and including AGRA (i.e. corps/army) without making it completely unplayable.

When I first picked them up, I found that I could work out all the basic mechanisms simply from reading the two-sided play-sheet and the various unit cards (an idea since copied by Flames of War, I notice), which was a good start. Like Rich Hasenauer's Fire & Fury rules, the core structure of the rules is quite different to others, but I found it easy to pick up and find it easy to teach to new players. Although it's designed for 'Battlegroup' (i.e. reinforced battalion) sized battles, we've run many, many brigade- and even divisional-sized games (over two days) without dramas. Here are some of the bigger ones we've done: http://www.jemimafawr.co.uk/category/world-war-2/

[Hincmar]

Have had the rules for years but never actually played them despite how highly regarded they are. At one point we used some of the mechanisms for a homebrew game. They do look very interesting.