Great War – Flames of War

By Tom Gall

Flames of War Great War has recently been re-released by Battlefront. Let’s take a 2023 look at the product line, what it offers, and what it takes to get started.

Great War takes Flames into the WWI period. Tanks are in their early infancy. Due to trench warfare, the mortar was refined and saw a great amount of use. The machine gun and light machine gun as infantry support weapons came into their own.

You might be thinking WWI was all trenches and mud, and certainly there was a whole bunch of that, but in 1918 especially as the front became more fluid, fighting both in and out of the trenches occurred and this game reflects that  Battlefront in my opinion really nailed the feeling of WWI in this variant of Flames of War, but only for 1918.

Nam, Fate of a Nation, and Great War are in many ways close cousins in that they’ve taken the core Flames of War rules and adapted them to each period to give you more fun gaming options.

Core Game

Flames of War Great War in its current form was released in 2019, this re-release makes available all the material that was available back then. So if you were tempted by the game now, or you started to get into it prior, now’s a great time.

The core rules are based on Flames of War v4 with a few modifications specific to the WWI era. If you play Flames of War now, or even Team Yankee, you’ll pick this one right up with little difficulty.

Flames of War is a you go, I go game system. At a minimum, you need two players and it can scale up such that you have several players on a side, though, a typical game is two players. A game generally lasts about 2-3 hours to get to a result.  For Great War, you’ll need either a 4’x4′ or 4’x6′ space.

As a player, you field an army that follows available lists from the German, British, French, American or Belgian nations. Within your list, you’ll have at least one formation which roughly equates to a company plus its special support attachments. A formation is made up of units that are paid for with a certain point cost.

When you play a game, you’ll agree ahead of time how many points you’ll play. You have to stay within that budget and this will cause you to make sometimes tough choices. Want those trench mortars or a machine gun platoon? Only if the points limit will allow both.  The great thing about a point-costed system is that both you and your opponent can come to the table with your army and if they are the same amount of points have a fun balanced game.

To get started with an army Battlefront makes what are called army boxes. These boxes have a great starting set of figures that are not only a great deal but get you going. It’ll get you enough to get started playing and from your first experiences on the table, you’ll better understand what additional units you might want to pick up.

Let’s talk about the game itself. A turn has a starting step when issues such as morale and reinforcements are taken care of. This is followed by movement, where you move all of your units that you wish to move. Next is the shooting step, where you fire all of your units that you want to fire. Last is the assault step where you move into assault and conduct the melee. Then the turn flips and it is now your opponent’s turn to perform all of those steps. Once they are done, then you have completed one turn.

While one side is the active player the other player isn’t completely dormant. They’ll have various activities they’ll have to perform. Don’t be misled by a you go, I go description.

Great War has a system of unit cards that have all of the information you need to know about a unit. The cards are roughly the size of an index card. No flipping through a book to find some stat. This is especially useful to new players of Flames of War. It also makes building a force a snap. You’ll find a wide collection of units, from infantry, specialized units like stoss troops, machine guns, tanks, flamethrowers, snipers, mortars, it’s all there. Great War does not have an online force builder, however with the cards you won’t really miss it.

When you play a game of Flames of War, the very back of the book has a complete set of missions. This makes every game of Great War uniquely fun and challenging. Both you and your opponent often have to either take or defend an object to decide who wins the game.  Mix in terrain, wire, and minefields, and each game is a different experience.

To get an idea of what a game looks like here is a past video . You’ll get a good sense of what a miniature war game like Flames of War Great War is like. It is fun.

The Units

The game features Americans, British, Belgians, French, and Germans. As it is set in 1918, Austria Hungary, and Russia are both left out as are a number of other minor powers. Don’t be frustrated by this, Battlefront’s initial goal is just to return the game and the time period to the shelves!

As you might imagine this is a game where infantry play the central role with some amount of armored cars, tanks, mortars, and artillery thrown in to make it fun.

The Germans for instance have four different formations to choose from, Siegfried for defensive lines, Stoss for shock troops on the attack, Infantrie as bog standard fellows as Jägers as the light infantry.

Besides the core formation, you have support elements of artillery, tanks, and snipers. These are the gray boxes under the formation choices.

Within the formation selections of infantry are found additionally the machine guns and the minenwerfers. The support options (the boxes in gray below) offer up a plethora of tanks, infantry guns, field guns, and snipers. Just like Flames of War, gray boxes are optional choices, while black boxes are required if you choose this particular formation.

The book features 19 different formations so there are plenty of ways to mix and match forces.  In a future article, we’ll have a much more in-depth breakdown of the nations and their forces.

In closing…

Great War is a wonderful addition to Flames of War, especially for the fans of WWI. It’s worth your time and your investment. In a future article, we’ll look more at list building, as well as a play-through or two.

Mademoiselle from Armentieres, Parlez-vous,

Mademoiselle from Armentieres, Parlez-vous,

Just blow your nose and dry your tears

We’ll all be back in a few short years

Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.