Help with Battle of Britain Kriegspiel

[paulr]

The video above has the Filter room trying to make decisions on what the various tracks actually are

I suggested the rules as a useful source of information to the Kreigspiel umpire

[pierre the shy]

Depending on what you scale you want to run your kreigspeil on can I also suggest these two items from Two Fat Lardies?

If you are interested in running one squadron of around 12 aircraft then the "Their Finest Hour" and "Squadrons Forward" booklets may be for you, but if you want multi-level Command - Group - Squadron approach then probably not.

https://toofatlardies.co.uk/product-category/bag-the-hun/

I have used these and found them pretty good for squadron level campaigns.
 
Hope you find a suitable solution LH, please keep us informed...BoB is always an interesting gaming subject.
 

[Last Hussar]

I may well get these separately. Many years ago I wrote these

https://lasthussar.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/battle-of-britain-free-wargames-rules/

I have a lot of Spitfires, Hurricanes, 109s etc!

These are written for classic dogfights of a few models per player.

What I'm interested in here is the very top level decisions at Group level.

[henjed]

Sounds like the sort of thing that John Butterfield's RAF: Battle of Britain game deals with?

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40209/raf-the-battle-of-britain-1940

[Gwydion]

This may be worth a look - its for a similar level - duty Group controller.
https://wargamedevelopments.org/Games/Battle_of_Britain/handout.pdf
It is aimed at a public display game running one player through as the controller pretty rapidly with the umpire guiding but it is tweakable/expandable.

WD and Megagame makers have both run big KS style Battle of Britain games but tracking down material is proving harder than I thought.

[fred.]

LH - if you are looking to do this in real time - you are realistically only going to get one day (or perhaps even part of one day) played through. 

Given that BoB was a battle of attrition with strategic objectives, I'm not sure how you will give the players this wider decision making when looking at a narrow split of time. 

They are either facing a single raid, so scramble everything to intercept. Or are facing multiple raids, so decide what to hold back for a second raid. Being gamers scrambling everything will still be the likely choice as getting more guns firing is nearly always the right choice in a wargame. 

I also think you will have huge periods of nothing happening. Eg
Player - move squadron 603 to readiness
<15 mins pass>
Umpire - Squadron 603 ready to take off
Player - scramble squadron 603
<2 mins pass> 
Umpire - squadron 603 airborne
<13 mins pass>
Umpire - squadron 603 at patrol height
Player - heading 180
<5 mins pass>
Umpire - squadron 603 sights enemy
Player - Tally Ho!
<3 mins pass>
Umpire - squadron 603 reports 2 enemy 109 shot down and bombers engaged
Player - squadron 603 - continue to engage
<3 mins pass>
Umpire - squadron 603 reports low fuel 
<10 mins pass>
Umpire - squadron 603 lands
<10 mins pass>
Umpire - initial damage reports from 603....


Even if the players have a few squadrons I'm not sure what is going to give the players much to do, or much tension. 

The Umpire on the other hand, sounds like he will be mad busy!!

[Last Hussar]

Looking at it, I think I will end up with a mixture of two command levels. I think I am looking at a maybe 3 hour segment.  As it will be the whole of 11 Group, we are looking at up to 24 squadrons needing vectoring, calling in reports etc, as well as Chain Home and the Observer Corps reporting detections.

FC were getting up to 14 calls in an hour.

I've run Modern kriegspiels (on the Brecklands OS map), and yes, it can be umpire resource heavy!

If anyone has a model timetable for a day of BoB, please point me towards it.

[steve_holmes_11]

Behind the zzzzooom zoom dakka dakka you have.


A bunch of amphetamine junkies in cramped bombers and extremely cramped short ranged fighters.

The best chaps form around the world.
Steered by "Dowding's woodchipper" - the worlds finest communication and data processing facility.


Lord Hardthrasher's video contains rude words, but swiftly describes the RAF strategy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj37zXgz-w0