Who on earth would want to wargame the First World War?
It's all suicidal charges, trenches and machine guns, isn't it?
Well, yes, of course it is .. if you only want to game the
Somme or Verdun, but the war was also fought in modern-day
Iraq, East Africa, the Balkans .. all over the place... and that's
not even adding on the Russian Civil War, which lasted six
years and stretched the fighting from the Baltic to the Pacific.
It all began with East Africa, when I built up a small German
Schutztruppe force, using 28mm Brigade Miniatures, Foundry,
Battle Honours and Copplestone Castings figures. Then came
the Turks, pictured below. The idea was, I could use them
against many of the British figures which people painted up
for East Africa, and they could also join in the Club's "Back of
Beyond" campaign, set in Central Asia in the 1920's. The picture
above is them storming a Bolshevik trench at Baku, while the
shots below show the army in the deserts of Palestine a few
years earlier. Johnny Turk is nothing if not versatile...
7 comments:
Your description of WW1 games is the most common perception of the era, and war-gaming battles from the western front in particular.
However history has moved from these perceptions, based so often on histories written by people with self serving agendas, thanks to the work of historians such as Paddy Griffiths.
In addition, thanks to rules sets such as Great War Spearhead, wargamers can now recreate battles from the era that reveal the underlying tactical issues behind the evolution of tactics and technology that were occuring at the time.
This is not to understate the human tragedy of the battles of the war, and the fact that (on both sides) there were incompetent generals directing battles - of course there were. But there were also generals struggling to deal with battle in an era where technology squarely favoured the defence, while that available to the attacker had not yet caught up. I am referring here in particular to the dramatic evolution that occurred in the use of artillery over the first 3 years of the war.
Take a look at my web site
http://www.wargaming.org.nz/
for resources related to the Great War Spearhead rules.
On this site:
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/rsutton/after%20action%20reports/Breaking%20The%20Line/breaking_the_line.html
is an after action rpeort of a typical trench warfare battle set in 1915.. exciting, and certainly not a matter of pointless charges across no man's land.
Hope this helps readers to see a little more in the period than they might traditionally have done so.
Keep up the great work on the blog.. I love your work, and check out your contributions daily - Thanks
Cheers
Robin
Robin,Good points all, Those
were not my opinions however.
I just put up the link and a
qoute from the web page owner.
The reason I put up
this page was the quite exceptional painting!
I do agree with you,
there are many misconceptions about this time period.
Also when you put the death
toll beside the troops involved, our American civil war was far worse!
Robin, I've looked into Great War Spearhead,looks like a well thought out set of rules. I also
saw the BBC series that covered
the Battle of Amiens, many of the tactics used then we still use today.
Bill
I realised that the text was a quote from the web site....I didn't ascribe it to you :-).... and yep, the painting is VERY nice.. perhaps I should break my fingers now...LOL
Cheers
Robin
Robin Sutton said...
Bill
I realised that the text was a quote from the web site....I didn't ascribe it to you :-).... and yep, the painting is VERY nice.. perhaps I should break my fingers now...LOL
Robin, don't you dare brake those fingers (at least not until you show me again how to paint a windshield on vehicles and air craft etc). Sorry if I misunderstood you, I was having an old Sargent Major moment...they happen lol.
Bill said...Sorry if I misunderstood you, I was having an old Sargent Major moment...they happen lol.
OK CSM, we understand! But can you tell me what's up with the COB grass cutting thing? lol
Joe said...
OK CSM, we understand! But can you tell me what's up with the COB grass cutting thing? lol
Sorry sworn to secrecy on that one.
You'll learn that when you get to
the Sargent Major Academy...)
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