Torch Campaign - map movement & reinforcements

A friend and I are going to try our first Battlegroup campaign, specifically “First Blooding”, the Kasserine pass campaign in the Torch PDF. Looking for some clarification on some of the rules surrounding the campaign map movement and engagements.

1. If a unit withdraws from a battle and then wishes to move when its new location is activated, does the withdraw move count against its remaining move?
2. Is there an order in which players must declare reinforcements? Does the player who initiated the battle declare first? Should we write it on pieces of paper and reveal at the same time?
3. If my units move to an enemy location and the enemy chooses to withdraw, does this count as “being in a battle” or can I use my units as reinforcements in another adjacent battle?
4. The reinforcements section says to treat reinforcements as a separate mini-list. Does this mean reinforcements must also contain a minimum number of infantry units? Does the cap on Unique & Restricted units include the reinforcements list?
5. Not rules related, but I’m playing the axis and if anyone has some advice on opening moves/strategy that would also be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Hippaforalkus,
While I have not played the torch campaign I have the very similar Barbarossa one. So here are some suggestions:
1. We played it so that the withdrawal does not count.
2. Not specified. Our houserule was that the defender declares first, since the attacker has the initiative and should get an advantage. The defender can then withdraw if outnumbered.
3. Not specified and did not come up. I suggest that this does not count as a battle, in order to encourage attacks. The purpose is to generate tabletop battles after all.
4. Not specified. Our houserule was that reinforcements are treated separately for arrival only, but that the whole force counts as one for battle rating, unique units etc. If you do it differently you run into problems with low numbers of initial attackers and with low BR, since they can loose the battle before the rest arrives. While historically possible it makes for poor games. Also airstrikes, off table artillery etc. need to be in the initial force in order to avoid questions like „can they be used before reinforcements arrive?“ or „can the main force even request them at all“? . You also need to talk to your opponent about situations when a scenario dictates reinforcements, scout units etc. while the campaign says some thing else.

Hope that helps a bit, nothing official just our way of doing it.

Thanks Gaius,

I was worried I wasn't going to get a response. Tried the Facebook group and got nothing there. It may not be official but it at least gives us a reference allowing us to say "well, that's how they did it, so I guess we'll do it that way as well".

We're starting with the Torch campaign but plan to do Battle of the Bulge next, and I hope to do Kursk and/or Barbarossa after that, so these question likely do carry over to the other campaigns.

These are the questions that arose before we even started. Did you have other situation that were unclear when playing Barbarossa that we might expect to encounter?

Regards

Not a situation in game as such but rather a suggestion before the campaign or the individual battle. We adjusted the number of points each Counter represents downward so that an average size game would fit our table and available models. For example consider a full stack attacking another full stack. For Barbarossa we made that a 600 point game - roughly all the soviets available. If you add reinforcements from other adjacent points you can quickly get larger size games, but we handled that on a case by case basis so that the ratio of attacker to defender remained the same and we could field the required forces from our collections. 8 attacking counters against 6 defending ones can be handled as 800 points vs 600 or as 600 vs 450.
Also be prepared to be flexible: if for example you simply cannot field enough recce units to to fill out the numbers of points the counters on the map indicate talk with your opponent and field something else.

For all of you who run the BG campaigns (Barbarossa, Normandy, Torch), will find this article useful:

http://www.thewargamespot.com/new-bg-barbarossa-campaign-detailed-log/

Hope it´s useful to you

Regards,


Diego