At the April PW meeting, Terry Sirk and Fred Haub set up a battle of the First World War with their rules THE GREAT WAR (TGW). Terry and Fred sunk some money into TGW about a decade ago... on their own, they ran off 600 or so copies of a professional-looking, finished text, presented many games at conventions to demonstrate the rules, sold whatever booklets they could, but couldn't interest the wargaming public enough to qualify the venture as a success story.
Perhaps, in part, the reason for the non-success was the era of the rules... World War I is not the most romantic, colorful, eye-catching of eras. Occasionally, at conventions, one sees a demonstration of a trench-warfare skirmish game, but that's about all the WW I you see.
I'll describe the battle we fought, and go through the ploys and systems used, and perhaps enough people will immediately be energized to write in stating "I must, at any cost, have a copy of the Haub/Sirk WW I booklet! Enclosed is a blank check", so that both Fred and Terry can retire at an early age.
TGW's sequence is card-driven... it was one of the first published games to use this method of generating a movement sequence. Each side has a deck of 8 Action Cards. (AC). The numbers on the cards, ranging from 1 to 3, denote the actions which every unit on that side is given to use for movement and firing. Hence with a "3" card, a side could employ a unit to move for 2 actions, (infantry go 3 inches per action), and fire for the remaining action. Other units could similarly be activated... a unit could move for all 3 actions - giving the infantry a movement distance of 9 inches - or a unit could fire 3 times.
Russians Against Germans
Our battle pitted Russians against Germans. The rules, portraying the Russians as having stolid, non-moving, stand-your-ground-until-death units, give the Russians more "1" cards than the Germans. The Germans get more "3" cards than the Russians. The Russians are thus inherently less flexible than the Germans, and can not respond as rapidly as the Germans to changes in situation. In effect, the non-flexible command-and-control system of the Russian army is built right into the deck, and one doesn't have to institute pseudo command-and-control systems as is done in COMMAND DECISION and SPEARHEAD, wherein the Russians are forced to cluster together more than the German units because the command radii of the commanding officers is smaller for the Russians (Russian officers don't shout as loudly, hence don't cover as much distance as can the German officers).
In the 15mm scale used in TGW, a brigade is 3 battalions. A battalion consists of eight 3-figure stands, a total of 24 men. Two stands comprise a company, hence, the battalion consists of four 2-stand companies. For the Russians that I commanded, there was one MG stand for the brigade of 3 battalions.
The set-up required the Russians, to hold a defensive position at a river line, extending from right to left across the table. Meanwhile, the disadvantaged Germans had to move up from their baseline, crossing all sorts of rough terrain (fields and swamps and mud, etc.), slowing them down appreciably. The Germans sought to take advantage of the roads traversing the rough terrain areas, but moving up in road-column while under fire is not a good thing to do under the TGW rules.
Rifles fire out to 15 inches, MG's to 20 inches. The Probability-of-Hit (POH) is a function of the number of men (figures) firing in each company. The 15-inch rifle range is divided into two parts: short, up to 6 inches, and long, out to 15 inches, and each range increment has its own POH factor.
For example, when a company of 6 men of my troops fired at 12 inches, we'd multiply the following parameters:
- First, the number of men firing. Here, it's 6.
Second, the number of volleys fired as given on the Action Card. Assume 2 volleys
Third, the range factor, which at 12 inches, long range, is 10 for rifles.
Multiplying the above three parameters, we get:
- 6 men x 2 volleys x range factor of 10
This gives a product of 120, producing one casualty and 20 percent chance of another. But we're not finished yet, for the impact zone of fire doesn't stop at the first unit that is hit... rather, it extends out for the complete 15-inch weapon range of the rifle.
Since the POH for the first company that was hit was 120, the POH for the company immediately behind it is half the initial POH, or 60 percent, and if there's yet another company behind the second, the POH becomes 30 percent for this unit. And then 15, and so on.
That's why I said that moving up in a tightly packed road-column ensures you're going to get creamed unless you deploy and spread your units out appropriately.
My troops held the Russian right flank... they were ensconsed in a town, and facing me with his Germans was Herr Jeneral Jim "Scorched Earth" Butters (AKA 'Scorch'), a man to be feared. Scorch was clever enough to deploy his troops well outside of rifle range, putting them in line abreast, so I could never get multiple hits on his units via my 'pass through' bullets.
Another requirement of TGW concerning the command and control system, is for both sides, before the battle, to count the total number of companies in all their brigade commands. I don't remember the number of companies on the Russian side, but assume it was about 30. We had, therefore, 30 Command Points (CP). A CP was required to give an order to a company. There was no need to write the order or specify it beforehand... all that was necessary was have the CP for the unit.
As the battle continued, one CP was lost every time a unit failed a morale test. This meant that, eventually, as the CP total for the side got less and less, the side would be forced, on each turn, to select certain units to stand idly by for lack of a CP... the decision had to be made, therefore, as to which units should press home the attack, and which units could, for the moment, be placed in 'standby'.
It's neat system, but I noted that with so many units per side (around 30), and with so much activity, and with multiple players (we had three per side), there's a tendency to forget to tally CP's... and the sides indiscriminately keep moving and firing all their units, forgetting about the need hold units immobile.
'Scorch' Butters' Landwehr infantry were particularly impacted by the CP requirement. Each company in the Landwehr units started out with an extremely low Morale Level of 60 percent. Each time a company was hit, it took a morale test, starting at ML of 60, and subtracted 10 percent for every casualty in the company.
It didn't take too many hits on one of Scorch's companies before it failed its test, and fell back. And immediately it failed the test, one CP was taken from the total CP available to the advancing German force. In theory, therefore, this should have held up the German advance considerably, but in practice, since for the most part we ignored the CP requirement, the dreaded Boche just came on and on.
Artillery
Both sides had a number of batteries. Under TGW, one gun model is a 'half battery', and the two models comprising an entire battery must be kept side by side, firing as a single entity. Artillery is fairly powerful under TGW, and the primary targets for both sides were the opposing gun batteries.
Each gun is manned by 4 crewmen, and as in the rifle-company firing procedures, these 4 are used as a multiplier in determining the number of hits on the target unit.
TGW employs a target template to determine which units may be affected by the barrage. the template consists of an area measuring 2 inches by 4 inches. The firing player selects the point of impact, i.e., the point at which he wants the round to land, and places the center of the template at this point.
Then the player commanding the target unit takes the template, and orients it as he desires to minimize the number of men under the template. If you think about it, this is kinda clever... my understanding is that this re-orientation of the template by the player being targeted represents the scurrying of his men to get out of the way of an incoming shell. An interesting by-product resulting from the re-orientation of the template is that a firing player will not target a unit too close to his own men. If he does so, the target player simply adjusts the template to include as many men of the firing player's as possible.
As I indicated, the primary artillery target for both sides was the opposing artillery. My fellow Russian commander, Fred Haub, had his artillery hit about 5 turns in succession. Each time, the artillery would take a morale test, fail, fall back, run up again, be hit again, fail yet another morale test, and so on. In effect, therefore, the Germans were doing a good job of suppressing enemy artillery fire.
The secondary target for the Germans were the Russian MG units... these 1-stand units had a range of 20 inches, exceeding the rifle range by 5 inches. Because the MG's reached out to 20 inches, they were more prone to inflict multiple casualties per burst, as their rounds penetrated farther into the German ranks.
On my right flank, I took one company of my stalwart Russian troops, 2 stands, and moved them up into a wooded area to get closer to the advancing Germans, and pot at them. A big mistake. Herr Jeneral Scorch, immediately upon seeing these men tippy-toeing through the woods, deluged them with three companies worth (18 men firing) of rifle fire power.
What was most interesting to me was that my company, starting at a Morale Level of 80 percent, and subtracting 10 percent every time it was hit, passed every morale test. Even at the very last, when there was only one man left out of the original 6, and the Morale Level was down to 80 less (10 x 5 casualties), or 30 percent, the one remaining Russian, the single man, passed his test. A true fighter for Mother Russia.
In deference to this stalwart little fellow, I had him retreat out of rifle range before he, too, could be focused on by Scorch's sharpshooters.
After softening we Russians up, Scorch now brought forth his secret weapon... a 12-stand brigade of Uhlans, complete with shiny and pointed lances. The 12-stand unit was divided into 6 squadrons of 2-stands each, and they raced up the road from the German baseline, attempting to zip through the Russian fire zone.
My riflemen potted a couple of Uhlans, but these were vicious men... their starting Morale Level was 90 percent, and even subtracting 10 percent per casualty, a squadron of them was difficult to stop.
Despite some losses, the lancers finally reached the river, and Scorch, when the German action card was drawn, hoped for a "3" action card... this would give the Uhlans a huge movement distance, for they moved 7 inches per action, and a "3" gave them an 21 inch move, sufficient to race across the river, to deploy and stick it to those hated Teutons.
And, of course, a "3" it was! All eyes on both sides of the table were on the charge of the lancers.
The road where the Uhlans crossed the river led directly into the main street of the town of Glotz, and this suited Scorch just fine. His lancers proceeded down Main Street, turned right at Elm, a left at Center (they ignored the stop light) and plowed into the flank of one of Fred Haub's defending Russian infantry companies.
Having been flanked, Fred's infantry didn't even get in a round defensive fire. POW!, BLAM! and BOOM! and Fred's infantry disintegrated.
But the lancers didn't stop there. Having won a melee, TGW permitted them to continue on until their full movement distance of 21 inches was expended. And Scorch took full advantage of his extended charge move.
Having wiped out the first infantry unit, his rampaging Uhlans split in two... one half continuing on against Fred's infantry, and the other half charging my own troops.
This time, the units that the lancers contacted were in line and deployed, and so the infantry got a round of defensive fire.
And now, once again, it's "Alas!" time. Alas!... for we Russians, for there was no stopping the Uhlans. Scorch's secret weapon was, indeed, a weapon of mass destruction, and with our entire right flank gone, and our center weakened, we Russians ran up the white flag. There's only so much you can do for Mother Russia.
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© Copyright 1998 Wally Simon
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