Why You Should Be Playing the Great War

In my last on the Great War game I mentioned how it plays different from its parent game, In this article want to elaborate on that point with the hope I can get many of you on the fence to check out this great game. The Great War was a watershed period in warfare. While many of the factors of the war were not new (trenches, machine guns, etc.) it was the sheer scale of the use of these factors and the massive bloodshed they caused.

In 1914 Europe was enjoying a century of peace on the continent and many nations were enjoying the fruits of years of prosperity due to industrialization, education and technology. This gilded age came crashing down in the fields of France, Poland, Africa and the Dardanelles, which shook the entire world. Many feel that the Great War was the birth of modern warfare and directly lead to the events that took place in 1939. For these reasons I feel the Great War should appeal to the diehard Flames of War player.
Standard Rules
As stated by Battlefront, the core rules for all of their games will be standardized into a single ruleset in order to help the players who play each of the games they produce. The Great War book is the third game in which these rules have been published and will eventually come to both Flames of War and Team Yankee. For players who want to master these rules I feel that the closest representative they could play now is the Great War game. The unit capabilities in the Great War game mirror what you will find in Flames of War more than either ‘Nam or Fate of a Nation, so playing it will reap benefits in your WWII games.
Infantry Focus
The other titles from Battlefront feature armored warfare very prominently, in fact, it’s not a stretch to say that the other games are armor based games. In Great War, you cannot field tank formations. Instead, they are support for your infantry forces and in a 100-point game, you cannot get very many of them.

This places the onus on the infantry to win the game for you, which may be a challenge for even the most veteran of players. I have seen many players struggle with playing or playing against infantry lists. While the Meta of the game heavily favors tank lists some very skilled players have caused their opponents fits by bringing infantry heavy lists. I feel this game will help players learn how to use and defeat infantry in games such as Flames of War.

The other interesting factor here is more obvious, for those who like to play infantry heavy lists, the Great War game is just what you are looking for.

Old Weapons, New Tricks
What I love about the Great War game is how it makes you think about the units and their abilities in the game. The usual list-making method of “Smoke, Template Weapon and Recce” will not work in the Great War.

First of all the game does not have smoke and your template weapon may be a Heavy Machine Gun platoon instead of artillery, which is one of the most expensive units in the game. Mortars in Great War are all single unit platoons and they do not bombard, they can only use direct fire on the enemy.

I have only used an HMG Bombardment once in my many years of playing Flames of War, and hardly ever used mortar platoons in direct fire. However, seeing how they are used in the Great War game makes me consider using them in the same way in the WWII game.

Another new aspect of the game is how you will use your sometimes large infantry platoons, they now have a lot of additional capabilities for you to think about. At its basic level, an infantry platoon has rifle, light machine gun and sometimes rifle grenade teams. As you advance you really need to keep your LMG teams with a clear line of fire while your infantry advances with the rifle grenade teams lobbing dice on your enemy.

You want to make sure you get these teams straight because as you close into assault only the rifle teams get things like the Trench Fighter special rule. This also makes using rules like Mistaken Target a thing you need to remember. You enemy can destroy your firepower by targeting those LMGs or if you are close they can target those rifle teams to deny you using the Trench Fighter rule.

What this creates is fire and maneuver elements within one platoon as opposed to using different platoons to use this tactic. You also can add flamethrowers, anti-tank rifles, 37mm guns, and other goodies to your infantry platoons to play with. I recommend using these units as they were created, not as extra stands for your infantry to absorb hits with.

Another weapon that changes in the Great War is the tank. In the GW every tank is a King Tiger, meaning that when playing against one it will take up more of your time thinking about it as opposed to any actual hurt it can do to you. In the game, tanks move slower than your infantry and most of the time it’s one tank per platoon, so getting your tank damaged means it will have to roll to see if it sticks around. So you will want to use these units much differently than you do in other games.

The last new trick is the German HMG, with an anti-tank rating of 3 you may want to use these weapons in a dual anti-infantry or anti-tank role.

New Capabilities
The new version does add a host of new things for you to play with such as cavalry and armored cars. In Flames of War, only a few nations had cavalry lists and only a few players ever used them. The players that did use these boutique cavalry lists loved playing them and those players should be excited that their inclusion in the Great War book really brings the horse into the mainstream. While I fear painting horses, I may get one platoon as a black box support option just to check it out.

The Forces
One issue I always had with Flames of War is how the game had a natural imbalance between its books. What I mean here is that the war the Allies fought against the Germans was way different than the one the Germans fought with the Soviets. The war in the east was one of mass and grand maneuver because of the vast space the armies had to fight in, where the war in the west was more of a finesse fight.

This difference was evident in the lists each book had which were never really balanced with each other. In Great War the forces are very balanced with one another and a player can really use the new rules to make some very cool formations to play with. Even if you select a single faction to paint and play with you have the ability to make it the force that fits your playing style. This is not unique to the Great War game, the fact you can take multiple formations, Allies and those black box single platoons in V4 goes a long way to balancing out the lists in the game if a player chooses to do that.

Missions
The new book has unique missions that really change how the game is played along with adding some new rules that really brings out the flavor of the period. The mere fact the game is played on a 3’x4’ table changes more than you may realize until you have actually played the game. Since the table is smaller and the book includes the standard missions from Flames of War you can just imagine how some missions will play much differently. Having played more than a few of the missions I think they add some new challenges that players will enjoy.

Re-Learning History
If none of the above reasons change your mind about playing the game, I could add that by playing it you will lose many of the preconceived notions you held about the Great War. I get a lot of push back from folks that trench warfare is boring and that is why they will not try the game. First of all only a few of the missions require a trench set, so you can enjoy the game without this wonderful piece of terrain.

Also the game focuses on 1918, when mobile warfare returned to the Western Front, so many battles were fought outside of the massive trench system that scared the countryside of France during this period. Which brings up yet another point I wish to make, nowhere else in the game do you have a single volume that covers a particular period better than the Great War book because it really gives you the flavor and feel of a period of warfare that many do not understand.