Kampfgruppe: Normandy Mods for 28mm

Let me start off this post by stating that I think KGN works fine for 28mm as is. It is a game with some rather large abstractions that allow the player to focus on the tactical aspect without getting bogged down in piles of useless stats.

I have been following Warwick Kinrade's blog for a while and trying to get a better feel for the game by reading the author's thoughts. One thing I found interesting are his ideas about the game when using 28mm figures. He feels that the larger figures, having more detail, changes the focus of the game and generally makes the abstractions, particularly the infantry, seem strange. At first I didn't really understand his issues, as I have already stated, I thought the game played well as is. He suggested a couple of changes when using larger figures.

The first idea he presents is to increase the range of everything in the game by doubling. That is a really huge change. It is also a change that I feel is not needed at all. The ranges are good and allow for a good size game on a 4'x8' or even 4'x6' table. Doubling the ranges would ruin this as almost all shooting would be happening at Close Assualt or Short range. I quickly decided to ignore this idea.

The second idea, that I like a lot, is to bring more detail to the infantry weapons stats. The slight reduction of the abstraction with infantry would really enhance the game without, I believe, bogging things down. This additional detail would involve more granularity in the fire power for small arms as well as restricting the ranges of these weapons. Basically, no more SMGs firing with the same range and rate of fire a rifle. This is a very common sense idea.

Here is a list of fire power and max ranges that I would like to test out in future games. These ideas are based on Warwick's stats without the range doubling.

28mm Small Arms Firepower Table

Firepower Maximum Range

Rifle 1 24”

Semi-automatic rifle¹ 1.5 24”

Submachine gun 2 8”

Pistol 1 8”

Assault Rifle² 2/1 16”

Light Machine Gun 2 32”

Medium Machine Gun 5 32”

Heavy Machine Gun 7 32”

¹ round any fractions up.

² firepower 2 at 0-8” and firepower 1 at 8-16”

If anyone tries these ideas out I would love to know how they work. Thanks to Warwick for the idea (hopefully he doesn't mind me swiping it).