David Bickley's Wargames Blog

The occasional ramblings of an average gamer, journeyman painter, indifferent modeller, games designer, sometime writer for Wargames Illustrated and host of games in GHQ.



Monday 8 January 2018

Sometime in late summer 1914...

For health related reasons Phil and I fought our regular Monday game here in GHQ over the same terrain layout Jon & I had used last week for our Rapid Fire2 WWII game, only on this occasion in 28mm and set in the early stages of the Great War, using Black Powder rules with our developing in-house modifications. The figures are from both our collections, Phil’s Germans and my own BEF, while the buildings were painted and landscaped for me by Colin & Sue Rumford. Mostly the figures are from the Great War Miniatures range, supplemented by some from Footsore and Foundry. The hedges, walls, trees and woodland are from The Last Valley of course.
A Battery of Royal Artillery 18lb quick fire guns support the
BEF's right flank
The scenario sees the Germans pressing the BEF’s Rearguard as they make a stand in the open countryside. Our main modification sees Companies treated as Battalions, Battalions as Brigades, and Brigades (or Regiments in the German’s case) as Divisions. This allows commands to be given to individual companies to better reflect the fighting of the period while preserving the rule integrity of Black Powder. When a Battalion looses two of its four Rifle Companies then it is treated as Broken, unable to Rally off casualties or it’s already Shaken status. {No HQ Companies can be targeted and any Machine Gun Companies failing a Morale Save are simply removed.} Machinegun Companies are treated as artillery, but have three dice at under 24" and two at 24-48, in both instances jamming on a double one. All troops not in Column are considered to be in Skirmish formation, which helps to reflect the nature of the BEF's tactics especially.
Anyway, enough of that for now, a few images of the game so far to give you a flavour of how it plays ~
The vile Hun sweeping down on the gallant BEF's rearguard
The Gordon Highlanders defend La Ferme Rouge
The South Staffords defend the left of the BEF line
By Turn 9 the South Stafford's losses are mounting
We have played nine Turns so far in this game but have had to call a halt prematurely as my hip was sore. We plan to pick up the action again next Monday and play up to another 15 Turns if needed.
Casualty evacuation under fire from the enemy front and left
To be continued next week...

17 comments:

  1. Great looking pictures, love the terrain and the minis...beautiful stretcher!

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    1. Thank you Phil for the positive comments.

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  2. Nice looking game.....that is a lot of turns ! Scale of the holdings looks fine. Not really my period but the smaller scale battle has quite a nice feel 🙂

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    1. Thanks Matt. Back in the day I did 1914 in 15mm with Minifigs, so bigger battles then.

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  3. Great table and figures. I'm a bit green with envy.

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    1. I do my best with my limited talents, plus Phil’s help of course.

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  4. This is shaping up nicely. When you say companies treated as Battalions do you mean that they are treated as 'standard sized' Battalions? Will be very interested to see if and how this adapts into the early fixed positions.

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    1. Yup they Fire with three dice as per a battalion, so a full battalion spread out in line would get twelve dice, bear in mind that it's frontage with our basing would be 400mm

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    2. I don’t really think we will move to even the early fixed positions, we do 1918 at Phil’s using Bolt Action adjustments for that kind of game at a smaller scale.

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  5. Beautiful setting, love the little extras and the Gordon's look good.

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    1. Thanks George! The Gordons have taken some punishment though so far but are hanging in there.

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  6. That's another wonderful looking game David!

    Christopher

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  7. Top stuff David...

    How many more games do you recon you could get out of the same terrain layout?

    All the best. Aly

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  8. VBCW? 1940 Bolt Action? Two at least. Glad you liked our game.

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