I have recently begun working on a WWI project. It seems inconceivable but I actually think that it is possible to game out battles in France in 1918 that would be fun to play. This is possible due to the coming together of several other gamers work. They have created alternate approaches to handling players and "little men", that make it possible to create fog of war without having to use traditional hidden movement. Howard Whitehouse ran a Science vs Pluck night battle last spring in which two Egyptian columns had to make a night march to a town to capture the Mahdi. The players laid out their men in front of them. The referee then moved the terrain by the figures, video game style, to show their movement. Commanders had a limited radius of vision beyond which they could not see. If one's unit was deployed beyond sight, then the referee would remove it from the board! Those troops could become disordered or lost without the player knowing it. I lost one of my companies in this way. Scouting and good communications became essential. Once the enemy was found, Howard fought out the actions using normal Science vs Pluck rules. They are relatively quick and too the point. But they are not suited for WWI. Not long ago, Mark Walton was running a Sudan game at his house in which the combined British and French crushed us poor Arabs in a bloody killing ground. Tom Long, my co-religionist, in frustration noticed that the British machineguns/small arms fire killed between one to six of our stands each turn. He jokingly suggested that it would be quicker to just roll one six sided die to find out the casualties rather than go through the rigamaroll of rolling to hit etc. This hit me as we were talking after the game. I suggested that that would be an excellent way to run a WWI game. Most gamers know WWI from the Battle of the Somme. We think of it as a bloody mess. Given this impression, a roll of one six sided die to find casualties fits the pattern people have in mind about how cheap life is and how fast it passes. It is true that combat in WWI was devastatingly bloody. The US lost 100,000 soldiers in WWI. Most of those who died in fighting were killed in the five months from June to November 1918. But it is not true that the war was static. The Somme was what the war was like in 1916. Poorly trained troops, long artillery bombardments, no surprise, open terrain, day attacks, was a recipe for failure. In 1918, casualties were still high but the war moved. First the Germans pushed the Allies back in spring and Summer. Then the Allies pushed the Germans back in late Summer and Fall. What is interesting to me is how wargamers ignore the fact that the war started moving again in the last year. We rationalize it away by saying that, "The Germans were beaten." or "German shock troops were better than other soldiers." Neither looks true to the facts. Yes the Germans were beaten in the Fall of 1918, but it was not until mid October! And even then they fought a very hard fight in the Meuse Argonne area. The fact that they gave ground in front of the British does not take away from the British gains in Fall 1918 either. If the British had not pressed them then the Germans would not have given ground. As to the second rationalization, shock troopers were more lightly armed and no better trained than the reservists of 1914. They certainly were more tied and less enthusiastic. What they had was better doctrine on how to fight. The two sides lacked the tank forces to effect a decisive break through. Had the Germans had tanks, they could have pulled a Dunkirk on the British in 1918. Had the Americans had effective tanks in the Meuse Argonne offensive they could have pulled a Market Garden on the Germans, via Sedan. As it was, the Allies did succeed in forcing the Germans to roll back their line. This was much like what happened in Blitz Krieg after a breakthrough. The infantry armies would go into full retreat as the front moved a hundred miles or so in a week. The front was moving in 1918, only at a slower pace. Suffice it to say I think that the period has something worth studying. There are infantry actions to rival all infantry actions. Sergeant York, and the Lost Battalion, could have just as easily happened in WWII or Korea. The tactics are the same. Move and fire, coordinate attacks, infiltrate. Most of the actual fights of 1918 took place on a battalion level. A division might have two battalions in assault but the battalions were basically on their own to fight the enemy who were in front of them. They might have 500 to 1000 yards of front to advance over, so maneuver was difficult to do. Strangely to wargamers minds, though, is that maneuver was used extensively. Most of the fighting was done during the day, but the marches happened almost exclusively at night. There in comes Howard's approach. As I see it, a WWI game can be done that focuses on battalion level actions. The players would take on the roles of the company commanders, with one as battalion command. All but one of the players would be on the attacking side. The one remaining player would represent the defender reserve commander. His job is to lay out the defense and then decide where and when to commit the reserves. The attackers on the other hand have to plan their attack and then carry it out, through the fog of war. All the players would sit around the same table. Their men, laid out in front of the in formation. Ala Howard's rules terrain moves by them, not vice versa. At the start of the battle the attackers will likely know where they are in relation to their comrades. As the game goes on, this confidence about knowing where they are will evaporate. As enemy (or friends) are encountered at vissibilty range, the referee will place black figures to the front or flanks of the company. The player must then decide how to react. Friendly fire is thus inevitable! In Howard's Mahdi game, I happily opened fire on the other Egyptians when they appeared in front of me. I was expecting Mahdists and took no chances. In the end, I killed more of my comrade's men than the Arabs killed! Once combat is started, then it is resolved in five minute chunks. One die is rolled for each company of fire (or in smaller units with negative modifiers). Consequently battle is fast and decisive. This frees the rules from the minutia of weapon statistics and allows them to focus on the real problems of WWI, command and control. What I anticipate having is a one page set of rules of thumb which the referee can use to sow disorder in the attack. In each instance, the problem should be fore shadowed, so that the player can decide how to handle it. So the referee might say "The men are grumbling that they don't want to attack." just before going over the top. The player must decide what to do. His men's morale is clearly low. Or the referee may remove figures from the board that drift out of the players sight. They may still be on course, or they may be drifting away. They player must decide what to do. In addition to the one page rules (and one page of combat rules), there will need to be a book of actual examples of each of the principals mentioned. This book will not only explain why such events are reasonable to asshole gamers, but also act as a teaching guide to new WWI referees. Sighting is the real key. I've gleaned a sighting table from various sources. Made a lot of guesses, and figured out what should work best on the game table. 500 yards stands out as a range where men see one another. The example book will show cases where men were not seen at all, just to show how no table should be stuck to exclusively (especially if the one side is not looking for the enemy). Maybe sometime next year I'll be able to report more on how this project is coming along. Back to Experimental Games Group # 27 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by Chris Engle This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com