Battlegroup™ Card Game

By S. Craig Taylor, Jr.

Q: There are considerably more battleships than aircraft carriers in the game, although, historically, the aircraft carriers were both more numerous and more important. Why is this?

A: Because the Axis powers were historically so underrepresented in flattops, our (Jeff Billings and I are the co-designers) choice for a design was to try to balance a completely asymmetric situation (hordes of Allied carriers versus the primarily surface fleet of the Axis) game or to go with the present card mix, which does feature every completed Axis battleship and most of their really potent carriers. I think that the current card mix and the feature of overall Axis superiority at night (the Japanese battleships) versus overall Allied superiority in the daylight (carriers, especially the American ones) gives an enjoyable and balanced game that still recreates many of the key historical problems.

Q: Why don’t some of the ship’s factors seem to match the capabilities of the actual ships.

A: See the first FAQ. These are balance issues. In the past I worked on a number of hard-core board games on this topic (CV and FLATTOP) and found that the Axis situation gets worse with each passing month after 1942. By the end of the war the American Essex-class carriers and their air groups were unmatchable and the radar on Allied battleships was equally daunting. Of course, everyone always wants the neatest toys and, for the Allies, these didn’t show up until later in the war. To balance these factors, we sort of concentrated on the early war years when things were better matched and radar was less of a factor. The Japanese aircraft carriers, for example, get the benefit of their experienced airmen from the first half of 1942, before four of them passed from the scene at the Battle of Midway. The problem with the big Essex flattops is that they did not appear in combat before 1943 and always featured large and effective air groups and incredible concentrations of antiaircraft (especially when you include their escorts, their tactical formations and an often overlooked item, the proximity fuse, which entered use in December 1942). Even after the earlier considerations, we had to make the antiaircraft protection of the big Essex ships a little more subdued and made them a lot easier to sink – despite what you read about their unarmored decks, several of these ships took horrendous damage and still remained afloat.