New starter blood and valor

[Marshall]

Hello

I've just ordered the. Blood and valor rule book and a box of wargame Atlantic germans.

I've never wargamed or had any involvement with WW1 wargames so I've got some very basic questions...

What's the real differences between early and late war?

Which broadly is the more popular/played more? I'm tired by the pointy helmet but don't want to isolate myself if everyone uses late war.

The wargames Atlantic box stated 16-18 is this due to equipment or uniform?

How do people find the blood and valor rules? I've seen some interesting online reports.

Thanks
Marsh

[Mad Gadgeteer]

Main difference is uniforms and weapons innovations.  Shock troop units,, on both sides,  were starting to come into their during the late war.   

[armchairgeneral]

With Late War you have greater numbers and variety of support weapons. Each section in platoons has a specialist role such as a Light Machine gun section, assault section equipped with grenades, rifle grenade section. Gives you more of a tactical choice and challenge IMHO.

Heavy machine guns were more common. Mortars were being used in the Late War as of course were tanks.

As MG said, uniform differences as well with steel helmets being more or less universal.

Not tried Blood and Valour. I use Bolt Action for my WW1 games. Chain of Command also seems popular. These are WW2 rules but are easily adaptable.

I couldn’t say which of the EW and LW is more played.

IMHO LW has more tactical choice and challenge at the 1/1 man/figure ratio.

I have considered EW on a larger ratio with units on the table representing companies or battalions. The uniforms are more varied. I considered trying Great Escape Games 1914 rules for this although they are written for the smaller scale of 12/15mm.

[fred]

Reinforcing what is said above, from a wargames figure perspective, there are significant difference between early war and late war.

The main one is the switch from soft head gear to steel helmets generally by mid-1916. The British and Germans maintained the same basic uniform throughout the war, but there would be changes to webbing and equipment to support new weapons such as MGs and grenades, and gas masks etc. And additions to uniforms to support front line living.

The French uniform in 1914 was essentially the Franco Prussian war uniform of red trousers and dark blue overcoat. This was rapidly found to be unsuitable and swapped to a horizon blue uniform in 1915.

Weapons also changed, in 1914 infantry had rifles - and that was pretty much it. There were a few tripod mounted MGs at battalion level, and field guns would be used in direct fire roles. As the war progressed more and more weapons came into play. And platoons were broken down into smaller specialised groups. While the German storm troopers are well known, the British and French were employing similar tactics - just with less exciting names! You do get cavalry in 1914 which was used in large numbers by both sides. Both sides did keep large amounts of cavalry ready through out the war, but the big break through to use it, never happened.

If you are playing small scale skirmish games, then late war offers the most options - although most will revolve around trenches. Early war is known for huge battles - but there must have been smaller scale actions on the fringes of these.

Rules wise, we tend to play at a higher representational scale, usually a stand of figures is a platoon - our current preferred rules are If the Lord Spares Us by Too Fat Lardies - which is written for Mesopotamia but works well for Western front both early and late war.

We tried Great Escape Games 1914, and while initially interesting, we found the ability to give multiple orders to a formation a bit much, as it gave the player a lot of ability to keep ordering units, which didn’t feel very WWI. We did only play these  rules remotely and I think that tended to stop players using the reactions as much as they could. We do like the WWII version of these rules, but it is more of a skirmish scaled set.

[levied troop]

As a broad generalisation I’d say early war 14-15 was by far the more flexible of the periods - later war tends (on the Western Front) to bog down in trench warfare.  But in the earlier stages you have far more ebb and flow as the Germans invaded Belgium and France. There’s a lot of scope for small scale actions involving infantry and cavalry.

One fascinating book is ‘Infantry Attacks’ by Erwin Rommel (yes, that one) which describes his experience as a platoon commander from the first days of 1914 and has many mid-level skirmish game ideas. There’s a Skirmish Campaigns book covering these, see:
https://thewargameshed.blogspot.com/2012/12/skirmish-campaigns-rommels-route-to.html
for more details.

We’ve used the Too Fat Lardies rule sets to good effect in representing them and it sounds like Blood and Valour are operating at the same level.

[monk2002uk]

What's the real differences between early and late war?
Which broadly is the more popular/played more?

Hi Marsh.
I don't know the Blood and Valor rules, apart from what is available as reviews online, but I am reasonably familiar with WW1. Broadly speaking, B&V appears to be a skirmish-style ruleset. Each miniature represents one person in real life - is that correct? In any case, online examples appear to show 3-4 'units' of infantry for a 150 point game. If each figure represents one person then a 'unit' appears to be half a section, squad, or Gruppe depending on nationality. This means that a 150 point game is about half a platoon in size; 300 points would give a platoon. From these ratios, you can work out ground scale. Platoon frontages were much narrower in WW1, even at the end of the war, compared with WW2 - by an order of magnitude. The 3' x 3' table size is a good approximation for this IMHO.

Turning then to your questions, which focus on the specifics of B&V rather than WW1 in general, in reverse order:

1. There is a fairly even spread between early and late war with gamers. Early war tends to be favoured because there were far fewer trenches (though the British made use of trenches in both Mons and Le Cateau for example). This means that terrain is easier, often re-using existing terrain such as intact buildings, bridges, trees, hedges, etc that might feature on a WW2 skirmish game table for example. The tactics are perceived as easier too.

There is still a tendency to think of early WW2 as 'Napoleonic' in style, with massed formations advancing against the enemy. This categorically not true. Fire and movement, even down the section level, was a key feature from day one. These fundamentals were no different in the late war.

There are gamers who favour late war because of the trenches. These bring trench raids into scope for example. Another reason why some gamers like late war is the ability to field more cool models on the table. The likes of tanks for example, though there are some cool toys for early war games too. Here is one example that I painted up for just such an occasion:



2. At the skirmish level, the main difference is more variety in the models that you can put on the table. You can have figures were different types of weapons, such as automatic rifles, rifle grenades, etc, etc. If you are playing amongst friends then the differences in uniforms doesn't really matter. It won't be a problem to use late war figures for an early war game, so long as everyone agrees that the French fantassin with an auto-mitrailleuse is actually armed with a Lebel rifle and has madder red pantaloons ( ). On which point, the French high command already knew before the war that a new uniform was needed but, like heavy artillery, the public funding was not available pre-war to make the upgrade.

As for the rules themselves, enjoy.

Robert

[Baron von Wreckedoften]

Can I just add that very late war - ie the Hundred Days campaign - reverts to the mobility of August/September 1914, but with updated TOEs.  Another chance to give those cavalry units an outing.

Also worth repeating that during that last campaign, the British Army was essentially using "blitzkrieg" (a word that journalists had yet to invent and which the Germans themselves never actually used, even in WW2), involving massed artillery including self-propelled guns, massed tanks, armoured personnel carriers, resupply from the air to forward units, etc.  All that was missing was widespread use of radios (and tanks that you could sit in for more than an hour without getting carbon monoxide poisoning!).

[armchairgeneral]

Also worth repeating that during that last campaign, the British Army was essentially using "blitzkrieg" (a word that journalists had yet to invent and which the Germans themselves never actually used, even in WW2), involving massed artillery including self-propelled guns

This is news to me, what self-propelled guns did the British have? They had the gun carrier but artillery guns weren’t intended to be fired from it.

[Driscoles]

Hi,
have you checked the threads here in the ww1 section of our Forum?
Iam sure you will find some informations.
Years back I started with Ospreys World War One trench warfare vol 1 and 2
Thats a good read for the beginner and gives you some ideas. It also contains coloured plates as a hint for painting!
Have fun and good luck for your start
Bjoern

[carlos marighela]

So if Blood and Valour  is a 1:1 figure ratio, I suspect that late war trench raids are probably its realistic parameters, unless you have a large budget and a preparedness to play long games moving lots and lots of figures. Tactical thinking for the early part of the war didn’t really focus below the company as the smallest tactical element and platoons were huge. A German zug circa 1914/1917 had a paper strength of around 80 men.

Leaving aside the effects of casualties and overall depletion of front line battalions, German platoons remained (at least on paper) quite large by modern standards at around 45 men by late 1917/18.