Great War Rules Suggestions

[Darryl Smith]

I am hoping that the esteemed members can help with some suggestions in my search for rules to cover The Great War.

Here are some of the parameters:

Squad to company sized commands for each player.
Multi players for each side (or co-op is fine as well).
Simple enough to teach at conventions, yet captures the period flavor (national characteristics, weapon differences)
Figure mounting either individually or a couple of figures per stand.
Late war (meaning Yanks)
Prefer print versions

I see a couple of things from Nordic Weasel, but am a bit confused. For FiveCore Trench Warfare do I need a set of basic rules or is everything I need in Trench Warfare? What about Price of a Mile? Does that cover the later periods and is it a standalone product?

I’ve player Over the Top (GDW), and while I thought the system was great for WWII and moderns, for WWI it really didn’t seem to work. Perhaps we simply were not using enough troops as any attacking side could never make any gains on the tabletop.

Buckeye Six Actual
https://ambushedinthealley.blogspot.com/
http://foragecaps.blogspot.com/
http://germancolonialgaming.blogspot.com/

[kyoteblue]

I played Over The Top as well and died a lot as attacker..  I ave also played Battle Fronts Great War rules for FOW and it works better for attackers, but I still died a lot…  It maybe that I just have very bad luck.

I have not tried Trench  Warfare from Ivan’s 5 core systems.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Cheers. Fivecore trench warfare is replacement campaign tables for fivecore skirmish. It is NOT stand alone.

Price of a mile is pretty generic and does stand alone.

[Konstantinos Travlos]

If you are not averse to their design philosophy I think the Two Fat Lardies Through Mud and Blood might fit your needs.

[NKL Aerotom]

You could have a look at Westfront:

http://www.wargamevault.com/product/200698/Westfront

It’s about right for your scale (being company to battalion sized), simple enough but capturing the flavor of the period.

In regards to flavor we decided to focus on dealing with orders from above, communication issues, artillery and machine gun tactics rather than distinguishing between nations with regards to infantry equipment. We found that all nations tended to use roughly equivalent equipment – close enough that the differences weren’t worth representing in a wargame. A rifle is a rifle regardless of nation, an MG is an MG, and artillery is broken down into trench mortars, flat-firing field guns, howitzers and heavy howitzers. One place where the differences do matter is the vehicles – tanks and armored cars, so we do provide specific stats for all the vehicles involved, divided into allies and central powers. The German anti tank rifle in late war is the only real exception to the “all infantry are the same” kind of premise. German tactics of advancing machine gun teams through allied creeping barrages into no-mans land in order to deal with infantry attacks are represented, as these kind of tactics do make a difference in game play.

Artillery create smoke markers that flip over to reveal crater markers, so tactics like creeping barrages really work in-game. The artillery will provide a temporary smoke and debris screen and then cover in the form of craters afterwards.

There are 3 different qualities of infantry, so you can have fresh conscripts, hardened veterans and the regulars in between. Machine gun teams are handled separately to regular infantry and operate on their own.

The rules cover 3 periods of the war, with army lists for the allies and the central powers included in the rules.

Here’s a few images of a Westfront game in action. A late war game where Germans are attempting to attack the right flank (orders being randomly generated before the battle), supported by an A7V, a few 77mm Feldkanone and two 21cm Mörser. You can see a few crater markers there.

German infantry before the assault

Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/

[Darryl Smith]

Thank you for the replies, folks. I’ll have to start checking into some of these, probably starting with Westfront.

Buckeye Six Actual
https://ambushedinthealley.blogspot.com/
http://foragecaps.blogspot.com/
http://germancolonialgaming.blogspot.com/

[Darryl Smith]

Seemingly the group I game with wants to go larger, meaning division and corps actions, so I now have Great War Spearhead II on order, along with the two Eastern Front scenario books.

Buckeye Six Actual
https://ambushedinthealley.blogspot.com/
http://foragecaps.blogspot.com/
http://germancolonialgaming.blogspot.com/

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