Liege 1914 game report

[Wargamorium]

Hello

Last week in the Wargamorium the German attempted a coup de main against the intervals between two of the Liege forts and came to grief outside Fort Evegnée



For a full report please see the Wargamorium Blog here
http://thewargamorium.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/liege-1914-the-battle-for-the-intervals/

The pictures alone are worth a look.

Regards

[Calimero]

Pretty cool stuff... what scale are the figures? 10mm?

[Wargamorium]

Thanks

All figures are Peter Pig 15mm.  Rules were homemade and the fort was scratchbuilt.

There are other reports on the Wargamorium Blog on 1914 games.

Regards

[fred]

Great looking fort. I hadn't realised that the armoured couplas were this old, I had always assumed they were a 1930s thing.

[Wargamorium]

As far as I know armoured cupolas appeared from the 1880s onwards followed later by retractable turrets.  The heavy turrets on the Liege forts in 1914 were not retractable - only the light 5.7" gun turrets.

[fred]

Cool, I might have to do a bit more research on the 1914 forts.

[Wargamorium]

Osprey have a very good introductory book in the Fortress series called The Forts of the Meuse in World War One which is worth a look.  Tons of stuff on Google search as well of course.

Actually I see from your posts that you do 1914 French in 10mm (I presume).  My Liege fort would suit them as well.

I don't know where you are located however.

Regards

[fred]

Yes my WWI forces are in 10mm

I'm in the NW of the UK.

I will do some digging around on the internet, as the 1940 fortresses have always fascinated me. But I was unaware that the WWI ones were similar.

[Wargamorium]

WW2 French Maginot line fortresses were usually underground although they did have some bunkers above ground which could make an interesting model project.  Maybe have a think about Fort Eben Emael in Belgium.  You could do a representation of that and the fall of that fortress was quite spectacular and would make a great game.

Regards

[fred]

Eben Emael is very interesting as an operation - not so sure as a game.

I've just been looking at the Leige forts on the web - including google maps - they seem fairly low to the ground - and also a big ground area. Might have a play at what size would be right for GWSH.

[Wargamorium]

There are two types - large and small.  Maybe the small one would be sufficient for your purposes.

[fred]

This is Fort Barchon from google
The green and white lines are each about 100m long



Which gives the back of the glacis at about 400m, which is about 5.4" in GWSH ground scale

The trench around the fort looks to be about 200m on the two forward sides.

There are some quite good plans of the forts on Wikipedia

[Wargamorium]

My fort model is not built to scale but is rather a representation of the fort on the wargames table.  Otherwise it would be enormous and impossible to include in a game.  The 1914 forts were not stormed by infantry but reduced by artillery.  In the Liege game the Germans avoided the fort (which is what really happened) and focused on the intervals instead.  In reality the day after the Belgians withdrew their forces in the intervals and the German siege train came up and took out the forts one at a time over the next few days.

In the game the fort's guns could fire on the table but they had quite a long minimum range - 150cm.  The fort itself were covered by flanking trenches, protected by barbed wire and an internal ditch and two retractable turrets with rapid firing 5.7" guns (these fired 20 rounds a minute of canister and pellet)  Even if the German player had got past all of that he could not have crossed the ditch and even if he did he could not have entered the fort.  So a game could include one or more forts in your scale but they could not be stormed.

Even in 1940 the only fort stormed by infantry was Eben Emael as far as I know.

So maybe re-think your scale and go for a representation.

Just a suggestion.

Regards

[fred]

Yes, good points about representation vs real world size. It helps me to have an idea how big the real world thing is - to have some idea how to represent it on the table.

The storming or not is an interesting point - as various Verdun forts were stormed - though I have no idea if they were of similar designs or not. And some were captured due to them having very little in the way of defenders or guns as they had been stripped out to be used elsewhere.

[Wargamorium]

Well Fort Douamont was infiltrated rather than stormed and was found to contain 50+ reservists of whom only one gun crew was on duty.  Fort Vaux surrendered as the garrison was cut off and was driven demented by thirst.  I am not sure about the other forts but these were the main ones to fall.  However both were re-taken by the French and I am not sure of the details.  The Germans used Douamont mainly as a shelter and I think the garrison was happy to surrender but that was at a later stage in the 10 month battle.

If you do decide to proceed then please do post details and photographs.

Regards