In this post, we, my wife and I, decided to try out the new Normandy Fight rules that we received recently. Though, the rules are not anything new or unknown to us, I wanted to try them out between the two of us. I have played this rule set when it first came out and several times after. It is not that bad of a rules set. For the tactical technical gamer, this is right up your alley. In a way, this can be taken as a slight review. There are some things that I like about this rules set is that there are grenades, reloading, and the ability to divide and conquer. I used the last one as a manager at work for several jobs. It also works as a military strategy. In Normandy Firefight, they mention the action of three to five men on average. They are mainly covering scouts. Honestly, I would like a little bit more troops. One reason is because I have them. Two, scouts did not really get into long winded firefights. However, with how the rules work, if I really had a problem with them, I would just used a modified WW2 of Buckskins and Rangers. But the rules covers a lot of ground to really only need several characters. You can name them and give them various weapons. The only issue I have with the rules are the simplification of them. They work with two players, and at max, four. It is a card based game. This is not so say that you could not modify the game to included more players. But honestly, it might drag on quite a bit.
Anyway, on the game we played. I wanted Kalissa to play this game on her terms. Mainly, the reason of this was because of a common fact that she cannot be tactically challenging in a game without knowing the rules. Despite being a war gamer with my war gamer ways, I will still never try to take advantage of my wife's knowledge handicap. The last and first time she played the game, she had no idea of her options. For one, the team player insisted on playing the rules as written. If this were a club game, team members are not allowed to discuss tactics in this game as it is a gentleman's game. This game sometimes can require an umpire. In the USA, this is not common in games. But in the case on never playing a game, I feel the both sides in the engagement should have been okay with going over the rules in advance. It happens. So, in a sense, my wife was not originally into these rules. It was only until she found them on a deal for $3.00 did she commit to trying them. I like them as rules so far.
So in the case of this game, we took a few liberties when playing our first game against each other. She had five men of the British Airborne. Two of them had Sten Guns and the others had Smile Rifles. I had five German Fallshirmjagers. One of them had a MP40, another had a FG42 Assault Rifle, and the rest had KAR98 rifles. The deal with the soldiers is that they can be character driven. In this case, I had Fredrick Von Strudel as my Sgt. followed by Bobbi Blackhause, Otto Pippen, Vincent Weiss, and Olsen Schmitt. Vincent Weiss had the FG42 and Fredrick had the MP40. I do not remember all of Kalissa's troops. I know there was a Bobby and a Corneillis.
So here was the battle field.
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| View from he west. |
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| View from the South. |
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| View from the Southeastern side. |
With an higher roll, Kalissa chose the North side of the board. I got the Southern end up to 12" inches. She had a 6" deployment. This was the Scout Mission in the book. I will not lie, I had a plan. It was simple: occupy the farm buildings. I set up the idea of a three man team of the FG42 with the MP40 and a rifle. The other team was to be two rifles. I wanted the three membered team to take the stable and the two team to occupy the farm house. I had no idea what Kalissa's Paratroopers where up to. Here was the turns.
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| This was my three-man team. |
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This was my two-man rifle team. The Sherman Tank was part of the scenario. It took a Panzerfaust to knock it out. I would never do such a thing!
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| Kalissa's Skirmish line moving in. |
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| Otto opens the Farm house door, while Vincent covers with a couple rounds. |
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| The British take positions. |
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| The British commander knees behind the wagon. |
I would like to add some important information to our game. Like I mentioned earlier, we tended to ignore certain rules while playing to learn the basics. For instants, we did not keep track of ammo or the previous moves. We also treated Submachine guns as Assault rifles. And we forgot about pins, completely. Some of this was not on purpose. Evening know some rules, did forget some. After all, I last played in October of 2014! So, for the hardcore Normandy Firefight people, forgive us!
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| Fredrick Von Strudel takes aim at some British! |
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The British know the Germans have the Farm House.
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| Corneillis takes aim. |
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| Otto throws a grenade out the stable door! |
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| Vincent takes aim! |
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| The Grenade proved too much taking out it's throw as well a some British! |
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| Vincent takes the final shot! |
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| Fredrick von Strudel's shot was cancelled with Vincent's shot! |
Anyway, fun rule system! We will try the other stuff we missed. Kalissa lost everyone, but I lost two men. I find that weapons can be lethal in this game. Also, grenades, while fun, are just as dangerous against yourself. My suggestion with this rule set is baby steps! Try simple rules and then, afterwards. We will report on future full rules games!
