Its here!

The Great War

It has been six months almost to the day since the Kickstarter kicked-off and now it has arrived, and with some extra bits.  

The box of course, slightly dinged from the inclusion of the extra sprues outside the box which got pressed into the cardboard during posting. Nice all the same.

Big and nice 13 by 11 hex map board. Green one side (for early war) and brown the other (for the muddy bits). The hex grid runs up to the edge at the sides therefore allowing it to be easily butted up to other maps for epic (Overlord for M44 types) games.

Eight metal generals, one of the extra bits. I'm hard pushed to put them all into their correct nationalities, I think we need a guide!

Mine came with five 18pdrs and five 77mms and their crews. The 18pdr looks good. Plastic is hard (a little brittle perhaps). The gun snaps together nicely but feels very light, as do the gunners. Since these models are for the representation of off board fire (reserve artillery), then they can be appropriately based without any game problems.

German sprue from the starter box. These look good. Nicely molded and not too fragile. Still worried that they might be too brittle. Time will tell. I must admit I fancy painting these guys up and mounting them on pennies (or similar) to give them some weight.

Here is a nice video review of the whole product if you want to see some more.

So far very happy. I've not found the voucher yet, I'll have to drop them a line. All this and the rugby world cup on the way too. Hurrah!

Keeping it up...

Morale that is!

Over the past few weeks I have seen my team Saracens lose in two finals, the England rugby team lose three on the trot to New Zealand and, to top it off, the England football team having an early bath. This requires urgent morale boosting activities....and that does not include watching tennis!

Fluff.....

Activity number one involves Saalfeld by Decision Games. I got this out the other day and started taking the counters off the sprue with a craft knife as I know these things can be tricky. The Decision Games counters are quite nice but their separation in the die cutting is not very good.

Given that these counters are in the tufty club I resorted to counter clipping. Not something that I ever imagined I would spend time doing. However the results are good.

The rules for this series are not the same as the old SPI Napoleon at War/Last Battles folios. They are more complex and, as yet, I haven't decided if I like them. I'll have a couple of goes during the coming week and get a flavour for them.

Cardboard mountain

Activity two is admiring the contents of Heroes of Normandie which I got on Father's Day. No fluff or tufty bits here. In fact it is difficult keeping the counters in the frames while I figure out how to store them. Admire these pictures or else...

The game itself is like a euro miniatures game, if that is possible. Lots of fun to be had here. 

Buying more stuff....

Yes, stuff that is not shopping, shoes or gardening equipment. However, times being what they are, merely stuffing things on to a card is not an option. One regular purchase of mine is Wargames Illustrated and the August issue (so available end July) is looking very interesting.

Flames of War are releasing "The Great War", a new set of rules and army lists for the last year of WW1. These are free with WI 222 and so are not to be sneezed at. They are an adaptation of FoW so will probably not be my cup of tea but I'm certainly looking forward to having a look. See the details here. I will not be needing to spend lots on the official figures. My extensive Revell, Airfix, Emhar and HaT toys should see me through.

Pleasant surprises...

are always very welcome!

Books: We don't make a big thing of Easter but my wife gave me a very interesting book, Crowns in the Gutter by Ted Raicer, published by Strategy and Tactics Press in the US. Ted is the expert on WW1 in terms of board games (Paths of Glory to name but one) and this book represents his analysis of the war as a whole, focusing on military operations. As you can see from the pictures, the book is very nicely produced and the format is very similar to the sort of articles you get in magazines like the now defunct Command. From what I have read so far this is very well written and very balanced. It is not just a collection of old articles. I wonder why this was never published in the UK?

Salvo!: A tiny promotional solitaire naval wargame from Minden Games on a postcard. I have this and a slightly bigger version, Great War Salvo, free from the Minden Games website as an article in Dispatches Magazine.

This afternoon I shall be playing this with my youngest son as my executive officer. I have been incentivised by Marco Arnaudo who reviewed Salvo recently on his You Tube channel, well worth watching.

Birds: Oh yes the feathery ones. I'm happy to report not only a Robin's nest in the garden but the close presence of four or more Goldfinches. if you haven't seen one of these they look very tropical!

I've got an OB..

and I'm gonna use it!

Yes, progress is proceeding at a snail's pace on the Tannenberg project but it is proceeding which can only be a good thing.

Starting with the Germans I have built up an initial picture of the units involved. This has come from a variety of sources including the Nafziger Collection but also the appendices to the Golovine book, The Russian Campaign of 1914.

Evocative picture of German troops resting in East Prussia 1914. Pugarees?

Russians ready for a fight

The Golovine appendices are great because they give numbers of battalions, squadrons and batteries. This gives a real sense of the components of the German army. I must admit that I wasn't expecting to feel any romance in this story but there is something about the thought of the German fortress troops leaving their positions to reinforce the field army that strikes a cord. In some ways it feels almost medieval.

The data in the book seems OK, having checked against my other sources. Golovine makes some interesting points about how the Russian troops were outgunned by the Germans. He makes an argument that German troop superiority was 3:2, largely because of German heavy artillery. This is part of a sequence of arguments that he puts which are intended to give the impression that the Russians on the East Prussian front were not especially superior to the Germans. Norman Stone in his book "The Eastern front" has a good go at demolishing these arguments.

Hey ho, I'm designing a game and not solving the mysteries of the universe so my design assumptions are:

• Germans and Russian troops are broadly comparable. Russian first line infantry were professional and should be reasonably equivalent to German first line troops. Both sides had pretty rubbish cavalry, the Russian just had more of it. The artillery on both sides was professional and competent but the Germans had more heavy batteries.
• The real difference between the two sides are command, control, communications and intelligence and this should be reflected in a number of different aspects of the rules mechanisms.
• In facing one or other of the Russian Armies the Germans are unlikely to be at a disadvantage in numbers, even on a simple comparison.

My first go at preparing OBs and combat factors for German 8th Army and Russian 1st Army are shown here:

I have used the same combat weightings as shown at the tops of the columns for both armies. Obviously the whole of the German 8th Army is not going to deploy against the Russian 1st, but it has sufficient combat power (weight) to be able to take them on at equal strength. I'm interested that I have not had to apply a different divisor to the Russian numbers, the disparity in strength coming partly from their lack of heavy artillery, one of the points made by Golovine. They also lack infantry but have lots of cavalry. I'm worried that the Russian cavalry "corps" is too strong, this contains four divisions. I'll need to think up a different approach, perhaps applying a different factor to the Russian squadrons. 

Next steps are to research Russian 2nd Army and then to examine the reinforcements. Hopefully I'll have some time over Easter to do this.

Mobilisation begins!

First draft counters for Tannenberg

This game is beginning to grow on me. I have been re-reading Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August and started sketching out some of the factors to be taken into account in the rules. Mmmh, that General Francois can't obey an order even if it was wrapped round a brick. That will fun!

In my own head I have a model for what I want to do but developing this and producing a decent and informative game may be tricky. But the momentum is growing and I'm really looking forward to getting this on the table.

I've started work on the counters....

A bit rough and ready at this stage but good enough for a play test.

These counters are generated in Excel with some added pictures, the flag and the Landser and dragoon. The flag is the German naval jack but I like to see iron crosses marching across the map! The Landser and dragoon are cut out of 1914 posters/prints and are a little blurry up close. My intention with the design is to be clear about the type and strength of the unit but to build in some real period feeling while avoiding any copy right issues. Not being a good drawer I'll have to rely on pinching other fellers work.

I'm pleased with the general format of the counters. I developed the Excel model when I wanted some colourful counters for the Minden Games' 1914 Opening Moves, a very nice little solitaire game. There's more about this on BGG. 

Hopefully some more progress tomorrow.

Real life evasion

Return to Tannenberg!

Last weekend's plans for research were stuffed by an inordinate workload. My only respite was the rugby so its a good job England won!

Looking forward in hope to this weekend, I have just competed another round of thinking on sources for the game. Having already got both Russian and British first hand accounts I have now turned up Max Hoffman's memoir of the Eastern front.

Max, left, and chums at Brest-Litovsk 1917

This is entitled "The War of Lost Opportunities" and is available on line. It is a very easy read and one gets a real impression of the man behind the glasses.


Being slightly frustrated by my current sources for the narrative I have returned to Amazon and with the help of a nice gift certificate have ordered today "Tannenberg: Clash of Empires 1914" by Denis Showalter. Denis is an American historian of whom I was unaware until I recently started looking at some books on the Red Army. He has a good rep and I'm looking forward to getting into the detail.

I have also taken the opportunity to look into my games boxes and have come up with both the 1978 SPI "Tannenberg" game and also "When Eagles Fight" from Command Magazine. Both bring back happy memories so I just have to resist them to get on with my design. 

If I'm too tired to do anything sensible tomorrow I'll get the crayons out and play with some counter designs.

Electronic maps...

the learning curve

Why do I need an electronic map when I have a trusty paper one?

Last week's draft map

Well, I will need one eventually so I can publish on this blog but my main motivation is to be able to storyboard the campaign as suggested by Phil Sabin. The scale of the map is around 15 miles per hex so two hexes will represent 3 days travel for foot mobile troops. The key dates are:

• 7 August: Russian First Army enters East Prussia
• 17 August: Battle of Stalloponen
• 20 August: Battle of Gumbinnen
• 23-30 August: Battle of Tannenburg
• 7-14 September: 1st Battle of the Masurian Lakes

This is around 38 days which at, say three days per turn, gives 12 or so turns. Anything longer than 12 turns is likely to be beyond me. This means I'll need at least 12 maps to get a grip on the storyboard and to test out movement rates and combat duration. Ideally. the story board will be on PowerPoint so I can effectively animate the action and use standard unit icons to move around the maps. I know I can do this in PowerPoint so that is the plan.

I have never made an electronic map before. Step 1 is to get some hexes. My hex grid is predetermined by my design parameters (13 by 9) so I generated an SVG file, using an on-line programme, which I then loaded into Paint. 

The rest is trial and error. Here is the map as of today. The only missing items are names and railroads. The terrain and features are pretty standard and you can probably guess most of them without difficulty.

I have to say that I'm quite pleased with this so far. Now I know a few things about Paint, I can make a better job of the final version.

The town icons are interesting and this is a really cool part of the story. I'm with Redmond Simonsen in terms of what information you put on the map. It should be designed for play and should be very simple. However, I'm increasingly interested in "visualization". The things that you play with, toys, counters, maps, model terrain, should be designed to form part of the narrative of the story. This I suppose is a set designer approach and like the theatre or the movies, we should look for style and, perhaps, some necessary exaggeration. I'm not a realism junky so don't look too closely at my toy soldiers, they're painted for effect.

In mucking about on the internet I came across this hand drawn map, obviously from prussianpoland.com!

I don't know the source of this map but it looks post-Tannenberg and may well be a child's artwork. What I really like about it is the characterisation of the different towns and cities and the very nice little drawing of Fort Boyen. I have tried to use some of these little drawings in my map as it helps put the player (i.e. me) back into the early 20th century.

If I'm lucky, story-boarding at the weekend which will lead onto OB compilation.

Fortresses and Zeppelins

History or Dystopian Wars?

I have had a chance today to pursue some further research into the Tannenberg project. What I hadn't appreciated fully before is the extensive use of fortifications by the Germans in the wide open spaces of the east. I was aware of Konigsburg and Danzig but was not conscious of the plethora of fortifications, armed camps and forts that existed in August 1914.

Fortress Boyen

My understanding is that German fortifications were grouped into districts under a District Commander. The relevant districts in the east are:

• Konigsburg District: Including Konigsburg itself (a first class fortress/fortified camp), Pillau (a star fort, part of the Konigsburg defences on the Vistula Lagoon), Memel (coastal fort), Lotzen (Fort Boyen, a brigade sized armed camp in the Masurian Lakes).

• Thorn District: Thorn (a major fortified camp), Marienburg (minor fort), Graudenz (minor fort), Dirschau (minor fort); all of these being on the Vistula south of Danzig, except Marienburg on the R. Nogat. These forts represented the final line of defence for Prussia from any incursion from the east.

• Danzig: A major coastal fortification at the mouth of the Vistula.

• Posen District:  Posen (fortified camp), Glatz (minor fort), Neisse (fortified camp), Glogau (railroad obstruction fort). 

These were not static defences. While having thick walls, heavy guns and supplies to outlast a siege, each fort had a main infantry and artillery reserve. The purpose of these reserves was to prevent the fort itself becoming invested. In wartime, fortresses in the war zone would come under the control of the appropriate Army commander. The fortresses would give up their main reserves to support that army.

For example, Thorn was a major fortified camp providing a home for the equivalent of a whole Division (35th Reserve Infantry Division). There are some 15 individual forts encircling Thorn and covering both sides of the Vistula. The garrison included:

• 35 Reserve Division (two Landwehr Brigades plus artillery and cavalry)

• The equivalent of 14+ heavy artillery batteries (estimated), mainly Landsturm and Reserve;

• A Landwehr Infantry Regiment plus six Ersatz Battalions;

• More than one Fortress Machine Gun Battalion;

• Two armoured trains.

Further details of the garrison can be found in this summary. The 35th Reserve Division was deployed with the field army on the outbreak of hostilities.

What has really spiked my interest is the presence of aviation detachments (aircraft) and Zeppelins as part of these garrisons. Posen, for example, had:

• 16th Feld Fleiger (Field Aviation) Battalion

• 4th (Posen) Fortress Aviation Battalion

• Z-5 (Zeppelin) in Posen (Army Airship: Haupt. Gruener)

A further Zeppelin, Z-4 (Army Airship: Haupt. von Quast), was operated from Konigsburg.

Nice German with aerial toys

Right from the off German air units, including airships, mounted reconnaissance operations as well as bombing enemy targets with improvised weapons. The two Zeppelins conducted the following raids into enemy territory.

10 August: Mlawa Z-4
11 August: Lodz Z-5
22 August: Lager by Gumbinnen Z-4
22 August: Modlin (Novo-Georgievsk) Z-5
25 August: Sierpe-Rypin Z-5
26 August: Lager by Nordenburg Z-4
27 August: Mlawa Z-5
28 August: Lager by Muldszen Z-4
9 September: Lager by Insterburg Z-4
24 September: Bailystok & Lomsha Z-4
25 September: Warsaw Z-4

Note that Z-5 ended its career when it was forced down by the Russians during its last attack on Mlawa.

Another thing that has got me interested is the Baltic Fortress Route. Effectively a tourist trail around the Baltic forts. Great stuff, not sure the wife will let me book it as a holiday!

Pillau, very pretty

Why Dystopian Wars? Well, Germans in pointy hats, airships, aircraft, armoured trains, cossacks? You can't get much more steam punk than that, even without dreadnought type ships and armoured river gunboats. Sometimes real life is richer than even the best created worlds. 

Does Googling while drinking beer count as serious research?

Well really, how else are you going to do it!

My adventures with Tannenberg continue and the research is going well.

I have prepared a test map based on the general East Prussia map in Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August. I'm doing this because I believe that all wargames should have direct links to the material that people actually read. If they encounter a game that has a map that is instantly recognisable to them it will enable them relate game play to history.

I generated a 13 by 9 hex map using an online programme that generated an svg file (whatever that might be). Being technically brilliant I printed it out, took it to the copy shop and got an A3 version made of the grid. I then used pencils and pens to make a map Simple!

Having said that, I will try to make a wholly electronic version but this will take me a while as I will actually have to learn how to create this on the computer. 

Unusually, I made this map very quickly and am pretty happy with how it looks. I spent some time trying to eliminate questionable areas. My only concern is with the Masurian Lakes section where the inter-lake defences need some verification. One of the issues is with Fortress Boyen and in deciding what the fortifications on the map actually represent. More in this in a later post.

In terms of research I haven't just been Googling, tempting as that may be. I have used:

• The World War 1 Data Book: James Ellis
• Guns of August: Barbara Tuchman
• The Eastern Front: Norman Stone

No beer here despite misty outlook!

I think that if you are a casual reader of military history you will have come across the latter two books. The Databook is quite good on OBs but can be a bit limited. I have, of course, cast my net on the internet and found two brilliant references:

• With the Russian Army 1914-17: Maj-Gen Alfred Knox. British Military Attache and front liaison officer. He was with Second Army at the time of Tannenberg. Great stuff from his diaries and it really captures the atmosphere of the times.
• The Russian Campaign of 1914: N N Golovine. A professor at the Imperial General Staff College before the war and holding a variety of staff and command roles during the war this is truly brilliant. Part analysis and part polemic, this was written while the author was in the West following the Communist revolution. Careful Googling that name though, he has a long lost relative called Tatiana!

Both of these references are free on the web through the Internet Archive and US Command and General Staff College respectively.

On the OB front I've used the Nafziger collection. Getting the OB straight, designing the counter manifest and starting on the shape of the game is next on the list. There will as usual be a slight detour, this is around the nature of the fortresses in the east and the tactics of their use. Fortresses with Zeppelins?

I have settled on a  name for the game: "Under an August Sun: Battles in East Prussia 1914"

I shall now do some pointless Googling while drinking some Brains SA Gold, highly recommended.

Action stations!

Anything can happen in the next 30 ...er weeks 

Having pondered my priorities for the year I have made a decision. The target is to design two games. Last year I had considered entering a game to the BGG solo game design contest. My chosen subject was Kursk. In fact I started out on this really well but got severely bogged down in the sizable data about the battle. I missed the deadline but, never mind, it is still on the list, perhaps number 3. 

I have carefully thought through my strategy for this year (on the back of an envelope). My two subjects will be Tannenberg 1914 and Neuve Chapelle 1915. The reason for these selections is:

• They are both relatively small actions. Although Tannenberg is bigger in both geographic scope and numbers of troops, the numbers of formations is limited as is the geography.
• Although games have been published on both subjects, neither are big name battles and there is plenty of scope to take another look (Kursk is, of course, the subject of huge numbers of games and therefore it is difficult to do something really new).
• They are both WW1 battles and therefore there will be a ready current interest which will keep me going. 

So which one first? Well obviously Neuve Chapelle which is why, after making a good start I have suddenly reverted to Tannenberg as the first item. Why? Because I found this brilliant little game on BGG which deals with the whole battle in four "tiles" (i.e. one map and three counters!). This has given me some real inspiration and insight into how perhaps I might pull this one together.

Tannenberg 4 game

The way that I plan to design these games is inside out (top down might be a better way of describing it). The following are my key design parameters:

• The game should be playable on a small surface and fit a 13 by 9 hex (or area) board. This is because I have not yet decided how the game will be presented. It could, perhaps, be a type of Memoir 44 (M14?) game with toys or it could be a very tiny hex and counter game. I'd really like to use some toys on this but will test out the game concepts using counters.
• They should be real, playable games, not just wargames. They should be games that my children would enjoy playing for fun without having to understand early 20th century technology or obscure military terminology.
• One side should be playable by primitive AI (of some sort) making the game an enjoyable solo experience.
• The game should be playable quickly so that balance can be tested out over a large number of plays.
• The towns, terrain and general geography as well as the key units and formations should be instantly recognizable by anyone playing the game who has read one or more popular works on the subject. So if you pick up Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August you should be able to relate the game and the game play to the descriptions in the book.
• An historical outcome should be achievable in up to 50% of plays so the outcome is not pre-determined.

So far so good...and here is some evidence!

My first attempt at the map using the general map from Barbara Tuchman's book. At last, we have some action.....

Ask a stupid question....(1)

Artillery in France 1914 

I have a long standing interest in the First World War and recently read a new book by Ian Senior “Home Before the Leaves Fall” (Osprey 2012). I found this a very well written and informative book that describes in a good level of detail the military events of 1914. Of particular interest is how the author describes the actions of the BEF in the context of the joint operations with the French. Whilst the BEF was not unimportant, it was a pretty minor cog in a big French machine and one which was not perhaps as reliable or useful as we might like to think. 

"75"s at the Marne

The stupid question arising from this book is about the relative weight and effectiveness of French, German and British artillery support. What caught my eye was that a standard French infantry division had only three groups of artillery each of 3 batteries of four guns i.e. 36 guns in total. Even though these are the renowned “75”s, this looked a little thin compared to equivalent German and British organisations which are both twice as big. The question therefore is, did the German army have a significant artillery advantage in 1914 over their most important opponent on the western front? 

There isn’t a short answer and a long answer is actually difficult to find. However, in researching this question I have found some really interesting material. I have recorded this and my thoughts on the matter in the attached PDF.

It has taken me over a year to reach some conclusions, the main problem being the lack of a consistent set of data covering organisations, OOBs and weapons characteristics. So it has been a frustrating journey. Nevertheless I have reached a conclusion. The evidence may not be to criminal standard but, for me, it allows a decision on the basis of balance of probability. 

So, returning to the original question therefore, did the German army have a significant artillery advantage in 1914 over their most important opponent on the western front? The simple answer is no. 

Brilliant shot of US troops using a "75" at full pelt

French forces could generate significant firepower. Divisional commanders and corps commanders could take on their equivalent German foes without major disadvantage. The key area of French disadvantage was their over reliance on one weapon type allowing neither tactical flexibility in the use of howitzers or the ability to destroy hard targets using higher calibre weapons. These problems would become more pronounced as soon as the fighting became more static and entrenchments came into play along the front. 

British forces could also compete equally with the Germans in terms of artillery support. The Germans, however, did have the full range of weapons available giving them tactical flexibility and also the tools to deal with heavy fortifications. 

Note: Having encountered some technical problems with my original post I have revisited this and upgraded the main document to PDF status. This should work OK but takes time to load. Let me know if it doesn't work.

What's inside a CoW? Well that's obvious....

Pig iron and steel

I have had further look at the French data for WW1 to assess whether the loss of the iron and steel producing areas in 1914 had a material impact on their war fighting capability, at least in the CoW numbers. The answer is yes, both historically and in the data, but as I suspected, the other numbers in the calculations compensate for the variations.

I took a close look at French iron and steel production since 1869. this is because we know that France lost its iron and steel production from Alsace and Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War. We should therefore be able to test our assumptions.

French Iron and Steel production shows three major dips over the time period represented in the graph.

• 1871: This shows the impact of the Franco-Prussian war and the annexation by Germany of Alsace and Lorraine with their ore deposits.
• 1900: This is the change in the basis of the data from pig iron up to 1899 to steel from 1900. I assume, in the absence of other information, that the change in the basis of the data is the reason for the discontinuity.
• 1914: This fall represents the impact of the German invasion on French access to iron ore and coal (an estimated loss of  75%) and the fact that 75% of the blast furnaces in campaign (i.e. operating) in 1913 were either in the German occupied region or too close to the front line to continue in operation. There is an interesting article on this at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/fr-industry-2-production.htm.

I think this data is really useful because I can relate it to real world events. As I have said before, it will repay further study. What I plan to do at some stage is construct a view of the pre-WW1 situation using economic data, such as the CoW information. I'm particularly interested in assessing whether what people actually thought at the time matches the reality. For example was Germany really surrounded by enemies whose strength was growing apace? Was a first strike strategy a sensible and realistic approach for Germany? With the 100 year anniversary of 1914 rapidly approaching with all of the complete nonsense that will be generated by the media it is time to have a good think based on real data.