Thursday 16 June 2016

Saturday's World War 1 Game

Saturday saw the welcome return to Great War Spearhead II. It has been a long time since we played a WW1 game and as part of the build up to our operational game later this Year I was keen to re familiarise ourselves with the rules and concepts of play.



I also got to use my new German army which is now almost finished bar a few stands of this and that.


I attacked with a full corps and assets whilst Mark defended with a Division of three regiments.



German forces awaiting deployment. The other regiment is still in the box.



Marks defences laid out.....




I opted for a 5 day pre bombardment as I had learned from previous games with Ian that clearing the wire with your field artillery was hit and miss so I wanted to try and remove as many sections of wire as I could and inflict as much damage on the French defences with my heavy guns...




My attack went rather well and for the part I was mostly unopposed coming over the wire. Mark had retreated out of the from sectors probably as a result of the barrage of artillery.


The French did receive a free regiment as I went past 3 days on the pre bombardment.

Mark lost this early in to the game but I had a potential problem with a FO and some brigaded field guns which MArk was starting to thump me with. My stosstruppen managed to contact the FO and kill it which silenced the guns.



I opted to use some pre planned gas attacks which ended up killing more of my troops than Marks



I managed to secure two out of three objectives with minimal losses, something which is rare !


Over on the other table side I launched a second wave with another Division of three regiments.

The wire held them up for a turn but they were soon across and over





All quiet on the western front....


Where are all those French?





I just had to take this last objective.....

But soon came under heavy fire from the entrenched defending regiments of French.


Over on the right I opted not to open up with my firing as this would allow the French to call in a lot of nasty artillery. I was going to close assault to clear the trenches.







Mark needed to leave early so Ian took over.....




We only played on for another hour or so but the result was pretty clear in that the Germans had just enough numbers left to push and take the last objective but only just!

It was an interesting game and I did not expect the result. Usually the attacker takes a beating big time but for some reason this was not the case.

A few machine guns and more on table guns would of slaughtered me on the wire but I guess the pre bombardment was effective enough in deterring the French from doing this.


Great game, looking forward to another soon.

2 comments:

Ian said...

It was a great game Russ. Your attack was very well coordinated and your on table artillery was very effective.

Russ said...

Thanks Ian, I kind of had a good idea before hand on how I was going to do this.

It's funny how you remember things from previous games that cost you dearly and adapt to change to avoid making similar mistakes.

Like I said in AAR I doubt that this could be done again, it was a one off result and unusual to have a lot of intact regiments still on table. I can't even say that Mark did anything wrong apart from leaving his FO exposed. Those brigaded guns would of really hurt me and I was quick to seize on taking out his FO.