All Quiet At The Hissing Fuse

There's a brief hiatus underway while I prepare for Cold Wars (which won't have much Great War focus for me, at least this year). I'm continuing to read up on the battle of Vimy Ridge, which (for those who hadn't sussed it out yet) is the setting for our Winter Sports escapades.

I hope to develop a little mini-campaign of WS scenarios that will serve to involve the players in the preparations for the assault. The Canadians practiced trench-raiding extensively, often on a large scale, and it both "blooded" new men and contributed to the intelligence gathering that made the attack such a huge success. In the end, I'd like to tie the results into a larger depiction of the attack, maybe a couple of Storm of Dice scenarios or a Corps Blimey game.

The first step will be expanding the scope of the missions and ruse cards from the original article. While they're brilliant for the first few games, once you've run through them several times, they need updating to keep the suspense going. These will be a mixture of events and items that will be applicable to any Western Front setting and some that will be specifically applicable to Vimy Ridge.

One thing I'm looking forward to about Vimy is that it matches up the Canadians (the shock troops of the British Empire) against the Bavarians. The Bavarians had a reputation as doughty and ferocious fighters, and were, towards the end of 1917, the first to come to grips with the Americans as they arrived in France.

[A well deserved reputation! I got to command a division of Bavarians recently in a scenario playtest for Bruce Weigle's 1866 rules (he has a good scenario lined up for Cold Wars), and I found them quite redoubtable, considering the overwhelming Prussian firepower they were facing.]


ETA: Brief account of Cold Wars here.