Fort Liezele

The village where I live is also the site of the best-kept armoured fort that once formed part of the National Redoubt  around Antwerp. "Fort Liezele" as it is known, recently got a complete overhaul. It is of course a military heritage site, but also has a lot of other functions.

Part of the renovation was upgrading the current museum inside the fort. The museum focuses on the building of the fort during the pre-WW1 period, but also on the outbreak of the war and the role of the forts before WW1 got bogged down in trench warfare. Fort Liezele was not realy invovled in the fighting - the German breakthrough towards Antwerp happened in another sector of the defensive perimeter around Antwerp. It's also the reason why Fort Liezele barely received any damage (and also, only 1 soldier died during August 1014 in the Fort before the Fort surrendered).

I'm also completing my training as a guide to the museum and the Fort. When there was a call last year for new guides, I of course volunteered.

But anyway, here are some pictures of the renewed museum. I restrict them to only the uniforms, for the other things, you might have to come and visit yourself ;-)

WW1 House rules

I added our WW1 house rules on their own page (available on the right).

Some World War 1 pictures

My permanent wargaming room is next to the entrance hallway of our house, and has a window such that visitors waiting at the front door can easily take a peek in. Once they enter, and unless the door is closed, they usually immediately notice the toy room, as it is called by the other residents of the house.

Hence, I always try to have a nice display of figures set up, almost as if a game could get started any minute. This makes it easier to talk about the hobby, as otherwise stuff needs to be taken out the drawers etc.

So, currently, I made a setup featuring part of my WW1 collection. Also, somewhat appropriate, with the invasion of Belgium being 100 years ago these days. Enjoy.

Wings of War hex modifications

These are the basic modifications we used for our hex based version of Wings of War. Obviously, they lack the principal item -- the hex based cards themselves. This is for two reasons:

• The cards for the small tables are not done yet
• I'm not sure whether I can publish these cards, copyright wise -- but I'll check.

For now, here's the few modifications we used:

Movement

Movement is done using the new hex based maneuver cards. There are two sets of cards:

• A version for small tables (or tables with large hexes)
• A version for bigger tables

The two versions differ in the single fact that the small table cards have had the first hex of all movement arrows removed, so in a pinch the bigger table version can be used for a smaller table by ignoring the first red (or blue in the case of a Split S) hex.

Planes are always oriented towards hex sides, not vertices.

Firing range

Short range is 3 hexes, long range is 6 hexes.

Firing arc

The firing arc is found by drawing two lines from the center of the hex out through the vertices left and right of the hex side towards which the plane is facing. Hexes bisected by this line count as part of the firing arc.

The firing arc for rear gunners is the same from the rear of the hex, but excluding the hexes directly behind the plane.

__Update__: the up to date version of these rules now live on the main site [here](http://www.nirya.be/snv/rules/wings_of_war_hexified_1.html)

Dogfight over Flanders

We had another "Schild & Vriend Revivial Game" this month, this time organized by Bart Vetters, and hosted as usual at Phil's Gaming Attic. Again, Eddy Sterckx was so kind to provide us with a gaming report:

Wings of War at Phil's place

Last night, at what is already becoming a fine tradition, we had another game in Phil's attic.

Bart had adapted the Wings of War (WWI dogfighting) system to work on hexes and we were ready to try it out in a series of dogfights : Tommies versus Jerries. As the dogfights throughout the night unfolded it would mostly come down to 1-1 fights between a slow moving, highly maneuverable versus a fast moving, slow turning plane.

The system basically is about guessing where your opponent will be next turn, picking the right three maneuver cards and hope you can get a shot in. Damage done can go all the way from a tiny hole in the wing canvas (0 points damage) to a bullet through the pilot's head (game over)

The first round immediately taught us the important lesson that given the size-constraints of the terrain you better plan ahead ... carefully ... very carefully. Over the evening more planes were lost due to flying “out of bounds” then to enemy fire. This especially proved to be a disadvantage for the faster planes who were often reduced to: fly straight ahead - Immelmann - fly straight ahead in the other direction kind of tactics. A brilliant suggestion to reduce the distance flown by one hex managed to remedy this in one stroke: the third round felt correct with real dogfights going on across the boards. I think that everyone agreed that this single correction made the system 99% playable as is, no further tinkering required, though a bigger board and missions (photographing / bombing / strafing) would add to the variety.

Now as to the question of which plane is better : the slow movers / hard turners or the fast movers / slow turners opinion is still divided, we'll probably need another game-night like this to really get to grips with the system. So as Frank would say : Ze Red Baron vill fly again !

All Quiet on The Western Front revisited

Tuesday March 14 saw the 3rd game in the now highly succesful (ahem, shameless self-promotion) series of "Games in Phil's Attic".

The theme this time was the Western front during WW1. The Germans had to attack a British trench system. Due to the fact that I have far less British than German figures, the Germans always end up being the attacker.

The map was laid out such that would be a 'defence in depth' scenario. The main attack direction was along the length of the table to allow for this. To simulate this defence in depth idea, the British deployment was such that a minimum number of units had to be in the frontal zone, but the bulk was in the rear zone, where the main trenches were located. Unknown to the Germans, the British also had the availability of barbed wire sections and minefields which they could deploy anywhere.

The Germans had to divide their force in 3 Stosstruppen, and each Stosstrupp was assigned a particular attacking axis. Units could not leave their sector, thereby simulating the idea of 3 formations attacking in parallell, but each in their own sector of the battlefield. We called this the 'German Doctrine'.

The game was spiced up by random events, ranging from infantry reinforcements, morale boosts, airplanes, an A7V tank, off-board artillery, etc.

Frank en Koen took the German side, Eddy and Bart played the British. Initially, the German advance went well. The frontal sentry units of the Tommies were wiped out fast. When reaching the 2nd line (this was the first trench), the advance halted for a moment, but in the end, the British vacated this position as well (British mortars seem to have problems hitting anything) to fall back to their third line. This third line (and full trnech system) was reinforced by troops coming from the back (and due to lucky random events).

The losses on the German side started to pile up, but the impetus of the attack was still strong. In the mean time, an A7V tank had entered the battlefield, and despite rumours of tanks not working, it kept pushing forward, refusing to malfunction. Also, an Albatros bomber had also appeared to help the infantry assaults underneath.

The German infantry managed to infiltrate the final trenches, but resistance was very stiff. However, by that time, it was after midnight, and we decided to stop the game. Some discussion followed about who would have won, but fairest thing to say is that it still could have gone either way. By looking at the random events still left, the British would still receive quite a few new reinforcements, but the Germans still had their field guns intact, with which they could keep hammering the British Infantry from a distance.

So, in the end, it went just as in WW1: lots of casualties on both sides, , and no-one really was sure who had won in the end. But gamewise, it was a lot of fun!

Here's a not so sharp picture. I just bought a new GSM, and apparantly, I don't know how to work the camera properly yet ...

All Quiet on the Western Front?

On December 26 I organized a full-day World War 1 game. 4 players (Vince, Frank, Dominique and Brendan) showed up, and all were eager to take part in some trench-raiding action. Since it was 2nd Christmas day, quite a few people still had some family obligations, so the turn-out was a little bit less than expected, but 4 players was enough after all to create some good action.

Everyone gathered at 10am in my house, and the first part of the scenario started. The big picture was that German troops wanted to storm a British trench-system. However, the trenches were not fully finished yet (this was early in the war), and were still incomplete in some parts of the battlefield. Since the Germans had no idea what parts of the position would be fully defended, some reconnaisance patrols had to be sent out.

Every player (2 British, 2 German) got a secret mission for his patrol, and they had to come to the gamesmaster one by one to give their orders. Movement was on an individual map for each player, and during each order, each player was told what he could see or hear in their immediate vicinity. Since the weather conditions turned out to be misty for most of the game, visibility was extremely limited, and all players were moving around very cautiously. All the players were physically also in the same room (the gm being in the next room), and initially did not know who was playing British or German. This created some good tension in the beginning of the game. Of course, after a while, the clever players had figured out who was playing whom by the reactions of some of the participants, and linking it to their own actions just their turn before.

Typical orders included to do a recon of some part of the sector, or to intercept enemy patrols, to go to a specific sector and cut wires, to deploy mines etc. Since the movement axis of each patrol (start position and designated end position) was usually diagonally across the battlefield, a good number of interactions happened. Some patrols opened fire without a positive ID of what they saw or heard, and sometimes there were a few lucky breaks. One patrol got very lucky when a random artillery starshell exploded nearby, illuminating the entire sector that was supposed to be mapped out. Another patrol survived with 1 member, barely enough to bring all information back to HQ. Other patrols succeeded in laying mines, although they sometimes decided that they had gone far enough and deployed their mines some distance short from their designated objective. A German patrol ran into an ambush set up by a British patrol, decided to storm it in close combat, and won! I stressed to all players that their mission had to be obeyed, and this was played out very well. Every side got a total of 5 missions (once a patrol came in, the next one started), and after 2 hours of playing the Germans had gathered a lot of info about the British defences, while the British managed to lay some extra minifields and intercept some German patrols as well.

Then it was time for some lunch, and we headed into town to get some pizza.

When we started again around 2pm, the Germans had the choice of flying a recon mission by aircraft over the enemy trench lines. If succesful, this would mean that the Germans would see the setup of British forces in the next game before having to come up with their own battleplan. We used the Wings of War rules for this game (see www.boardgamegeek.com for a more complete description of this game). This a WW1 aerial warfare boardgame, that plays very smoothly and has a very clever movement system using manoeuver cards. The British started with 4 patrol aircraft, the Germans with 3 fighter aircraft and a 2-seater who had to take the photographs of the enemy trenches.

Sadly, the German 2-seater never made it to the objective. Due to critical damage, its rudder got stuck. First it couldn't turn left anymore, a few turns later it got another critical and could only fly straight. So the mission failed, despite some good shooting by the German pilots.

Then it was time for the big game. This was played out on the big gaming table using 20mm WW1 figures and with a full trench system as scenery. Based on their recon information, the Germans had to come up with a plan, dividing their force over 4 attack groups. The British could deploy any way they saw fit.

I used some house-rules for this game, and the Germans started with twice as many units as the British ( since they were all hiding in trenches ...). The Germans started to move across the battered no-man's-land, units taking hits from artillery and mortar fire, morale dropping, officers trying to rally scared troops ... The British defended really well, but couldn't cause enough casualties to stop the attack wave once the first German lines reached the trenches. German trench raiders jumped into the trenches, and some tough fighting ensued. After a few turns, the British surrendered, so a German victory! By now it was a little after 6pm, the planned ending of the day.

Overall, I think this scneario using 3 linked games worked very well. Once the main game began, the Germans still had some blank areas on their map of which they didn't know anything about. As a result, they lost some troops to minefields. On the other hand, they managed to clear some barbed wire during the first game, and this created a big open field for a German attack wave (although this wasn't the sector were the final breakthrough happened).

The dogfighting game didn't produce extra information for the German players, but it could have, and the British had every incentive to stop the German planes to avoid having to give their troop dispositions to the German side.

During debriefing the players agreed the miniature game worked very well as, but probably the German players had too much machine guns available, and this created some unbalance, especially since MGs caused morale to drop very rapidly.

So, to conclude, a very good gaming experience, and it has encouraged me to set up similar full-day games in the future.

Sadly, no pictures ...

Phil

Wings of War

World War 1 Dogfighting has always been a favorite of mine (see the galleries at SNV). I think there's something very romantic about this early period af aerial combat (probably the people who were actually involved disagree), that is not really present in other periods of air-to-air combat.

Last weeked I tried a little boardgame "Wings of War" (published by various labels, here's the site of Fantasy Flight games that publishes it for the US market). Although some reviews are not very favourable (see reviews and pictures on Boardgame Geek), these have more to do with the mix of components in the gamebox, rather than with the game mechanics themselves.

The gameplay is very smooth. One plane is represented by a little card on the table, indicating on the card it's vital statistics including a graphical depiction of its firing arc.

During a turn, players lay 3 maneuvring cards face down. Each of these cards displays various maneuvers (sidelslip, turn, Immelman, ...), and the mix of cards is different for each type of plane. One by one the cards are revealed, and you can actually use the maneuver cards to reposition your plane on the table. On each card an arrow indicates the starting position and end position of the plane, and the card itself acts as a template to reposition your plane. So no fiddling with rulers, turning templates etc.

After each maneuver, you can shoot other planes within your firing arc and distance, and depending on your stats, you draw a card from 2 different damage decks. This card indicates the amount of damage, but also can list critical damage, which can limit the type of maneuvers you can perform in subsequent turns.

We played 2 scenarios in a single hour. The first scenario was a typical dogfight with 2 planes on each side, and the 2nd scenario was a bombing mission. The rules can be explained in under 10 minutes.

Although some might say the game is a little bit simple, it actually does a good job in capturing the same tactical feel I had in previous WW1 dogfighting games. You have to think about out-maneuvring your opponent, and take shots whenever the opportunity presents itself. Altitude of the planes, however, does not play a role, and that's the one main point missing!

Although all the planes in the game are represented as cards, it can be played very easily with miniatures, providing you use a base of the correct size.

For those of you who are interested: the rules are available for free from the Fantasy Flight website mentioned above.

A good example of how the game works can be seen on this picture.