Trying Out WW II Rules 'O Group'

    Well, we did it -- we played a battalion level WW II game using (gasp!) micro armor...!!

Prior to this one, there were precisely five World War II tagged posts on my blog. That's for more than a dozen years of documented gaming on Lead Legionaries. Among those five posts, all but one were either aerial or naval games. So, to say we don't really do a lot of WW II land battles in our Sunday evening game group is probably an understatement. To be clear, I don't document every single game we play. We have played What A Tanker (which I enjoy) a handful of times, for example. I just didn't take pictures or make a blog post for most of those games.

So, when Tom said he wanted to run a battalion level WW II game for us, we were intrigued. It would certainly be a change of pace. He wanted to use a set of rules I'd never heard of called, O Group: Wargames Rules for Battalion Size Actions in World War II.  They are written by David C.R. Brown and published by Reisswitz Press and Too Fat Lardies. Now, I've read about the Lardies' Chain of Command rules. They seem to be pretty popular. Those rules state they are at the Platoon Level, though. Tom was drawn to a set of rules that had us in command of bigger forces.

    Allen sends his tanks down the center of the board towards the Americans - what could go wrong?

When he explained the scale, I was a little bewildered. I wasn't aware Tom owned that large of a collection of WW II figures. I asked him what he'd be using, and he replied his micro armor miniatures. Now, my friend Jason knows that, at this point, I would usually run screaming in the other direction from a micro armor game. I flat out NEVER play in them at conventions. Why? It has been my experience that a good number of folks running micro armor at a convention want to throw every damned miniature they own on a tabletop. Never mind that there are no aircraft, so you don't need the anti-aircraft vehicles! They own them and want to sit back and proudly survey their entire collection on the table. Never mind that it will take so long to move all those dang miniatures that the game is going to be slower than slow! They own those figures and want to inflict them on their players. "And, they're in the TO&E...!"

Another reason I typically avoid micro armor (ha, ha...he said "typically" -- read that as I "typically" avoid swimming with Great White Sharks!), is that the rules sets used are often overly complex, focus on the bewildering and unending varieties of armored vehicles, angles of fire, armor thickness, which type of round you're firing...bleh! These games often ignore the infantry entirely because they looove their armored vehicles! Jason and I played in one game at Cold Wars decades ago which still may go down as the worst convention event I have ever signed up for. It was part of the battles the National Security Decision Making (NSDM) folks were fighting out, featuring China vs. Vietnam. Whoa...sounds interesting, right? Nope. Not a single stand of infantry in two of the biggest infantry-heavy armies in the world. We were all given so many vehicles to control (some irrelevant to the battle like those air defense vehicles), that it took forever to complete our turns. It was such a horrible experience that it was the moment I swore off micro armor. Never again. The shark has been jumped! Um, Tom...are you sure about this micro armor thing?

    Two of my three German infantry companies holding the ridge as the Americans advance on us

Anyway, Tom's game would feature lots of infantry. In fact, the TO&E (those words are like nails on the chalkboard for me) for the Germans and Americans meeting in North Africa would feature so much infantry he didn't have enough stands to represent them all. In O Group, each player takes on the role of a battalion commander. For example, I was given a German infantry battalion, with attached assets because...you know, TO&E! I had three companies of infantry. Each company should have included its company commander stand and three platoons of three stands of infantry each. In my case, two of my companies had an attached heavy machine gun instead of the third infantry platoon. Short on infantry stands, Tom telescoped this organization to each platoon being one stand. Things got a little confusing and required some modifying when it came time for shooting. Still, I liked the infantry focus.

Don't get me wrong. There were armored vehicles in this game. It was micro armor, after all! Allen commanded our center and his battalion was an armored one composed of all vehicles. On the other side, the Americans had lots of tank destroyers and other such vehicles. They would spend the game blowing up Allen's command, who took their tactical inspiration from the ditty, "Hey diddle diddle, up the middle...!" I don't think Allen actually had a plan and just intended to drive down the road going through the center of the board and shoot things. On the other hand, his more tactically cautious subordinates (myself and Mike W), chose to hold the difficult terrain on the flanks with our infantry and utilize cover and shoot the Americans as they advanced upon us (in my case, as they advanced across open ground towards me).

    The mess of foam hills represented a "badlands" where American & German infantry fought

Now, before anyone comments on things we did wrong, Tom did send an email this morning after the game, which began: "Lord! We did so many things wrong!" Haha! One of the things about O Group that I discovered in my blog reading and watching YouTube videos beforehand was that its heart is the command and control system. Battalion commanders (us) receive only a limited number of orders and we need to issue those to companies. So, we won't always be able to do everything we might want. I went in thinking the system sounded a tad "fiddly," but actually we picked up on it fairly quickly. The fiddly bit was the minutiae of any big WW II game with its overwhelming number of caliber of guns, mortars, artillery, etc. "Which line of that tiny chart goes for this scout car I have attached to my battalion?" And honestly, it is one of the reasons I don't usually enjoy WW II armored engagements. I don't really care about the various versions of Panzers and Shermans, and the last thing I want to do is argue about whether its an A or D version, which gun it was equipped with, or whatever. That part was pretty exhausting.

When I asked Tom partway through the game what his impressions were, he responded, "I think I should have read the rules more deeply beforehand." My friend Keith, who loves all that I hate about WW II, wasn't particularly impressed with the rules either. He and I seemed to pick up the mechanics the quickest, though, and we did our best to help out the others (and Tom). In the end, I told Tom the best thing to do to really test them out would be for he and Keith to get together some evening and do a one vs. one game, with each controlling a battalion. That's what the rules are intended for. We were already stretching them by triple sizing it and having three battalions each. After sleeping on it, Tom pronounced himself ready to give them another try, but trying to scale down the level of command each player represented. Some players might be company commanders instead. I'm still unconvinced of that, as then he is changing the core component of the rules -- the battalion level command. 

Keith (left) and Mike S ponder what doom they will unleash on Allen when he rounds the corner

His point that he doesn't have enough infantry to represent three battalions per side doesn't seem like the right reason to give it another go. I say get more and we'll try it then...ha, ha! And actually, I found my micro armor gaming experience less than satisfying. I simply cannot see those teeny tiny infantry and vehicles well enough to be able to tell what they are, in most cases. Many times during the game, I picked up one of my stands and said, "What is this stand again, Tom?" I honestly couldn't tell the heavy machine gunner laying down from my forward observer laying down. Part of the reason we do miniature gaming is for the spectacle -- the look of a miniature army on the tabletop. A micro armor army doesn't provide that satisfaction for me. I'm sure it does for others (Keith), but it is lacking for me. I think the spectacle would be fine if we were playing this game in 15mm, or maybe even 10mm. At one point in my gaming career, I was actually building 10mm WW II forces. I know...shocker!!

Anyway, we called the game after about three hours. My command on the right was still in great shape. We had chewed up Joel's U.S. command opposite us pretty good. On the left, Keith and Mike W were giving and receiving punishment about equally. In the center, Allen was a disaster. He lost the most stands by far of any German player. Of course, we figured out more than halfway through we were doing shooting vs. armored vehicles wrong, but I'm not sure that would have made as much difference. I would hazard a guess that the Americans had a slight edge when we called it quits.

    Keith moves his American battalion to attack Mike W on our left, while taking pot shots at Allen, too

What did I think of O Group? Well, the command and control was easier than I thought it would be. The shooting was very fiddly -- maybe part of the things Tom said that we did wrong. Shooting against infantry was very slow and attritional, taking multiple terms to get a company to a point where it had to withdraw. On the other hand, armored vehicles blew up like popcorn! So, that felt wrong. Finally, the scale. Micro armor. Sigh, I am simply not a fan. I feel it is a scale that deserves a "Thanos snap" (Marvel Comic Universe reference for the confused) and to be replaced by at least 10mm, if not 15mm. So, if anyone knows of where Tom can pick up three battalions each of Germans and Americans, please send a link to Tom...ha, ha!

MINIATURES Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Miniatures acquired in 2025: 237
  
• Miniatures painted in 2025: 117 

TERRAIN Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Terrain acquired in 2025: 21
  
• Terrain painted in 2025: 41

SCATTER Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Scatter acquired in 2025: 115
  
• Scatter painted in 2025: 106