"1914" from Great Escape Games - Friday Night Battle

 "For many are called, but few are chosen" - don't know where it's from, the Bible I assume! Anyway, the relevance is, Julian had issued a general invitation to several players for a Friday Night Bash, but for a variety of reasons, I was the only one who was available.

This meant we were free to do a trial game of "1914", which is basically Iron Cross for WWI. Julian has a nascent Polish 1920 Army in the wings and is planning to use this rule set to pit them against the Bolshevik horde. I, meanwhile, am thinking these rules might quite work well for my Spanish Civil War project, so we were both keen to give them a run through.

It was a small level game, using a scenario from the 1914 book where the British Guards Brigade are defending a river crossing against a larger but less well-trained German force. Julian had three battalions and one field gun, with a total of 9 activation points, while I had six battalions and two field guns with 22 action points. Of the various victory conditions, one was that if 13 bases of Germans or 11 bases of Brits were knocked out, the other side had won.

Just to confuse you a bit, as Julian explained to his wife when she made a polite enquiry in passing, the part of the British is played by Belgians, whilst the part of the Germans is played by RCW Russians! All figures, terrain etc were supplied by Julian - I did bring my own dice though! And some beer. And $20 for my share of dinner :)

Layout at the start - Belgians at the bottom, Russkies at the top of the image

Russian deployment, my plan was to hit one unit holding the building on the Belgian left flank and overwhelm it with sheer numbers, then pivot (the word of the decade, surely?!) to the left and move towards the bridge in the centre of Julian's position

The extreme right of my line with the target building in the distance

Belgian defenders - the figures are by Brigade Games I believe (don't get me started......!)

Some more gratuitous images of the rather nice Belgian figures

The advance began and seemed to go well initially. Each battalion had an attached HMG, so I had poured three guns worth of fire into the building - 9 D10 requiring a 7 for a hit, and for every hit, roll a D6 requiring 5 or 6 for a second hit (such fun!) - and I think after this initial assault, Julian was minus one base of the four-base unit!

The six battalions advance against one, supported by the battery of two field guns on the hill

Julian withdrew his battered troops from the building to the cover of the railway embankment to the rear, to prevent them being wiped out by the concentrated HMG fire

Everything seemed to be going along nicely - and then, we started a new turn, and Julian won the initiative. His unit moved back into the building, and succeeded in activating three or four times in a row (first activation is free, second you need to roll 2+ on D6, third 3+ on D6 etc)

In three or four rounds of withering fire, he rolled 6 D10 each turn, requiring only 6 or better to get a hit. For every hit, he then rolled a D6, where a score of 3 (HMG) or 4 (rifles) inflicted a second hit (easier when the target is in the open, of course). 4 hits removed a base from a battalion. Above and below are the results. Meanwhile, I attempted to interrupt and fire first, only requiring a 3 on a D6 - and rolled a succession of 1 and 2! I was starting to feel a lot like Rick (our renowned bad dice roller)

To add insult to injury, Julian advanced a unit on his right flank and used one of the three command cards we each had to take a second free move, bringing him within range of my field guns. Very soon, they had also been swept from the field - bloody hellfire!

Above, the state of my forces after Julian had finished mowing them down, and below, the butchers bill.....!

We broke for dinner, and I must admit I was pretty despondent and muttering darkly about how hard it was in the open against HMG's. After three quarters of an hour or so, we returned to the fray, with both of us suspecting the game was not long for the settling, however....

I had only lost a couple of actual full units - 1 battalion and the gun battery, so my 22 activation points were reduced to 18. Julian, I think still had 9 at this stage. I lined up my HMG's (they can be detached from the parent unit and moved separately) In two or three activations, I obliterated the remnants of the battalion in the building that had caused me so much pain, then, I moved one full unit plus an extra HMG into the building, and was in a position to pour fire into the adjacent building, wherein there were a couple of companies of Julian's third battalion The rest of the force wheeled left and concentrated a large volume of fire on the Belgian unit who had taken out my artillery, the hunters had become the hunted!

Having lost a unit, Julian was down to 7 activations v 18, which made it pretty hard for him, and fortunately for me, I found some luck with the dice, rolling 4,5 and 6 for repeated activations when I needed to, which allowed me to fire on Julian's beleaguered unit multiple times without response in the other direction.

At the end of the turn, we had a count up. I had lost 11 bases (13 required for a Belgian victory) but Julian had lost 11 - which meant my assault had succeeded -Urrah!!

Well as they like to say in these parts, that was certainly a game of two halves - the All Blacks could learn a thing or two from my Russians about perseverance :) 

We both thought the rules worked well, being successfully engaged in the open is very costly, but then, it should be really. There were some odd things in the rules that we will check out and consider changing e.g. max move for infantry is 8" but max rifle range is only 12"?? We changed that immediately, as it does not seem logical - what do you think? The other very odd thing is, there do not appear to be any close combat/melee rules...Shome mishtake, surely??Anyway, Julian is in charge of rules, I don't worry myself over such trifling matters, so he will pop onto the 1914 forum or whatever and see if he can get to the bottom of that conundrum before our next game. 

Overall, I like the rules in this era just as much as I like them for WWII. There are some strange things that happen (and it could be we just didn't read all the details in the rules properly) e.g. when activating, you calculate the score required by looking at the number of previous activations PLUS the number of casualty hits being carried - so a unit that's been activated twice and is carrying 2 hits, for example, would need 4 or better BUT if that unit had suffered 4 hits and lost an entire base, the casualty markers go with it, so now, it is easier to activate, as you only count the two previous activations, and roll a 3+ to activate.... seems a little bit counter intuitive - but as I say, maybe we got that wrong and removing a base adds a permanent plus one or something....

Next time, Julian wants to give an all or at least majority cavalry clash a try - it will be interesting to see how that works out!

Thanks for dropping in for a wee lookie and hope you enjoyed the AAR enough to leave a comment :)