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Battlefront WWII
Converting SkirmishCampaigns

Developing a scenario from SkirmishCampaign books.

Kevin Rolfs recently posted his Norwegian battle replay on the forum., He got the concept for his scenario from the excellent SkirmishCampaigns : Norway book. If you aren't familiar with SkirmishCampaigns, check out their website.
SkirmishCampaigns
They have a scenario generation system for World War II. While they are starting with the early war and working forwards, and we are working in the opposite direction, eventually we will both cover the whole war. Their books are based on a slightly lower organizational scale than Battlefront WWII, and this page is a guide to how to convert their scenarios into ours and also how to come up with reasonable prototype units for the unit cards we haven't yet produced. We heartily recommend their products and have received their permission to use some of their information on our site.

STEP 1 - Choose a battle

Kevin chose the Road to Lillehammar - Encounter at Roa scenario. As this is the first battle in the book, this is a logical place to start.

STEP 2 - Develop unit prototypes

Most of the early war forces are available as part of our new Blitzkrieg supplement, and those that are not (including the Norwegians) can be found in our unit data base or printed cards can be constructed using our Prototype PDF creator.

Step 3: Modify the map

We are making very few adjustments to the map. We split the stone house into two building sectors (if you wish you can orient it differently) and labeled the area where the roadblock can be placed. Otherwise, we leave the map about the same as in their scenario book (used with their permission).

Step 4: Modify the forces

This is the most difficult part. The SkirmishCampaign scenarios are based on individual soldiers and vehicles, while Battlefront WWII works with squads and vehicles that represent multiple vehicles. If you did the scenario verbatim, you would have three or four stands on a side covering a rather large map. We need to expand the scenario to make it interesting. We are going to offer two solutions: The first is an almost 1:1 substitution for our squads and units for their individuals and vehicles. The second is the battle that Kevin proposed, which expands the scenario from Encounter at Roa to a more extensive Battle scenario by making the optional forces standard and turning a small battle into an battalion sized action.
Note on discipline ratings. SkirmishCampaigns has a system where it assigns both individual training and morale ratings. We combine our training and morale into a single discipline rating. In their Polish Campaign book they give a translation table
SkirmishCampaign ratingBattlefront Rating
T1+,T1Elite
T2Veteran
T3Experienced
T4Trained
T5Raw
Also, while in our rulebook, we recommend that all the stands in an organization have the same discipline rating, there is no absolute requirement that this be done, as maneuver rolls are resolved for individual stands. You just need to have an easy way to determine which stand has which morale. In this scenario, the commanders and selected stands sometimes have a higher DR than their troops.

Time and victory conditions

We added a few extra turns to the scenario length to compensate for the slightly slower movement of infantry in Battlefront WWII. Note that the paved road doubles movement. The game length is one factor that could be modified if you find the scenario too uneven. We kept the original victory conditions from the SkirmishCampaign books.

This page was last updated on 01/05/2020 at 07:30AM

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