Gameplay

Battlegroup™ is played with two, three or four players divided among the axis and allied side. Players start the game with six ship cards and six action cards. Action cards control the flow of play and each have two sides. The action card to the left is played with the long edge facing the opponent. So the card is being used to conduct an airstrike. All the combat vaules are found on the ship cards. The card to the right is the Aircraft Carrier Kaga. The action card on the left would allow the Kaga to launch an air strike against an allied ship. The other half of the action card is a sortie which has victory points that can be captured by the side winning the sortie. At various times during the game you can choose to play a sortie card to sortie your ships and commence combat operation against the enemy. During a sortie the first side to destroy two enemy capital ships wins the sortie and scores the sortie victory points in addition to the points scored for destroyed enemy capital ships. For an example of play see Battlegroup™ as explained by our Publisher S. Craig Taylor Jr. in one of his memorable Pubisher’s Corner feature articles - "Busy, Busy, Busy."

Once a sortie is completed a period of refit, reinforcement and repair commences allowing each player to ready their ships for the next sortie. The person or team that scores the most points in a wins the season - the first to win two seasons wins the war.

Battleships in Battlegroup™

The battleships use the Surface Combat dice to attack enemy ships during close range rounds of sorties. Yamato above was equipped with 9x18” guns and was along with her sister ship Musashi the largest battleship of World War Two. Yamato receives a "+2" for night actions and rolls all three combat dice—the ten, eight and six sided die. The highest number rolled has the plus two modifier added and the shot. It is compared to the highest die rolled by the target ship from among the protection dice. If the attack is double the defense the enemy ship is sunk. If the attack beats the defense the enemy ship is damaged—making it easier to sink and less effective in combat. If the attack-die is matched or is less than the defense die the attack fails.

Carriers in Battlegroup™

The Battlegroup™ aircraft carriers provide daylight striking power in the form of the carrier’s air group. All carriers have a defense in addition to a protection. The defense is used to defend the air group during strike missions from enemy combat air patrol CAP and anti-aircraft AA attacks. The defense dice reflects the quality and quantity of aircraft on the aircraft carrier. During day turns of a sortie air strike or CAP can be flown from a carrier. Carrier air strikes can attack during the long range daylight portion of a sortie, bringing the combat power of the carrier to bear before the battleship big guns can come into play.