The Marne: Two boardgame depictions

As promised, I'm starting a look at the First Battle of the Marne through the eyes of a couple of different boardgames.

This entry contrasts two different treatments by the same designer. As I mentioned, I recently received the new editions of Ted Racier's two early war operational games, Glory's End and When Eagles Fight. A few brief words on opening that treasure trove follow.

First, the box cover: handsome cover art, a painting entitled France! 1914 by the French war artist Leon Reni-Mel. It's quite evocative, in its depiction of a young poilu in the famous pantalons rouges at the moment of his death, rushing forward in the spirit of French Army's "attack, attack, always attack" doctrine.

The back of the box provides a look at the two major maps it contains, one of the western front (including Belgium, Luxembourg, and bits of France, Germany, and the Netherlands) and one of the eastern front (featuring pieces of Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany, and Romania). We get a sample of game pieces, a list of contents, and details on game scale. The design, development, and production crew are credited. And the box provides the publisher's assessment of the game's complexity (low-medium) and solitaire suitability (high--luckily for me!)

Inside the box we find the usual high-quality components one expects from GMT Games: rulebooks for both games, two sets of player charts for each games, three and a half sheets of counters (plus the ubiquitous GMT bundle of ziplock bags for counter storage), a mini-map for playing a short scenario of Glory's End, and the main map sheet itself. In a practical move, GMT has printed one sheet, double-sided, for the two games, with western Europe on one side and eastern Europe on the other.

Since my goal was to post a piece on the Marne battle, I was delighted to find the small map with the short, introductory scenario specifically focused on the Marne. I was particularly amused, too, since I had set up the intro scenario from Clash of Giants, which focuses on the exact same moment. Nothing would make it easier to compare the two games that to take a look at the starter's scenario for these two Ted Racier games of the early war on the western front.

Here is a look at the Clash map, set for "The Allied Counterattack" scenario, which begins as the French and British are about to spring their trap on the advancing Germans. I've provided only a small image, but to the west (left) side of the map, if you squint you can probably see the grey blob that is Paris, wedged in the loops of the Seine River. Around and to the north of it are the troops of the Fortified Camp of Paris, and in a north-south line to the northeast of the city is the advancing French Sixth Army. A few scattered blocks of grey represent the flank guards of the German First Army, most of whose combat troops are committed in the bulge east and south of Paris. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF), a few lonely stacks of khaki counters, screens the gap between the city of Paris and the French Fifth Army under it's newly appointed General Louis Franchet d'Espère. The Fifth faces not only von Kluck's seemingly triumphant German First Army but also von Bulow's Second Army, trying to widen the east side of the German penetration. To von Bulow's east is von Hausen's Third Army, Saxons all, and the screen formed by the scattered Fourth Army, the link to the (unseen Firth Army, battering the walls of Verdun and the Sixth and Seventh, deep in the hills and mountains of the Vosges.

East of the French Fifth Army is the high shoulder formed by the clustered French Ninth Army of the inimitable Ferdinand Foch, future commander in chief. And to their east, facing the German Fourth Army, is France's own Fourth Army, likewise spread thin to maintain contact with forces to the east. The date is the 5th of September, and the solid mass of Michel-Joseph Manoury's Sixth (French) Army is about to give Friedrich Sixt von Arnim's IV Corps a horrid surprise.

Contrast that setup with the same scenario, more or less, in Glory's End, set up on the mini-map provided with that game (it's the same scale and size of hex as the main Glory's End map, but easier to set up in a small space). One thing you'll notice right away is that the map covering the same area is much smaller, the counter density higher, while at the same time the overall number of counters is much lower. That's because Glory's End packs the entire western front into its main map. Each hex is 9.5 miles wide, instead of the 3.3 miles of the Clash of Giants: Marne map. Most of the units in Glory's End are corps or corps-sized formations, while CoG:M units are most of them divisions. (Those three hexes covered with ignominious "Out of Command" markers contain the regrouping forces of the BEF.)

So, that's a quick look at the new title, and a swift visual comparison with another treatment of the same action by the same designer. I have a number of other titles that cover operations on the western front in 1914 (The Great War in Europe and Grand Illusion, both also by Ted Racier, and Michael Resch's 1914: Offensive a Outrance), but none of them specifically call out the First Battle of the Marne for scenario treatment. There are half a dozen games that specifically focus on the First Marne, but none of them are in my library, alas.

Next time: that promised letter. And, soon, hopefully, an account of playing through one of these Marne scenarios.

preview of coming attractions: the Battle of the Marne

I decided that a walkthrough of playing of the Clash of Giants: Tannenberg game, even solo (with all the deficiencies in competitive thinking that that entails) would probably create an undue influence on developments in the triple-blind running of the game that's underway (we're partway through Turn 2). So I thought that instead I'd embark on the other title in the first CoG pairing, the battle of the Marne.

This idea was reinforced by the timely arrival of Ted Racier's latest effort, a reboot of his early war operational games, 1914: Glory's End/When Eagles Fight, just published by GMT Games. The western front portion of this package features a short introductory scenario, also featuring the Marne battle. Between this, CoG: The Marne, and possibly a look at (though not a full playing of) relevant portions of GMT's other 1914 west front offerings, 1914: Offensive à outrance and Grand Illusion: the 1914 Campaign in the West, we should be replete with lovely maps and examinations of the opening portion of the war, which everyone thought would go so quickly and which instead lasted a very long time.

The First Battle of the Marne was, of course, not the beginning of the war on the western front. That had been what was called the Battle of the Frontiers, where both the French and German armies began plunging swiftly into the breakneck operational advances that their pre-war planning had assumed would be the key to success. The French, underestimating German numbers and resolve, had committed on a tremendously wide front and were driven back bloodily. The Germans, partly due to superior numbers and more effective concentration, had succeeded in their offensive moves.

And because the British and French armies had not engaged in as much pre-war communication, planning, and liaison as they ought to have done, the Germans had also found an opportunity to drive a wedge between the British Expeditionary Force and the French Fifth Army, creating a gap they were at pains to exploit. French and British forces scrambled backwards in the Great Retreat, an exhausting pell-mell attempt to redefine defensible positions somewhere short of the outskirts of Paris.

In the battle of the Marne, French (and allied) commander in chief Joseph Joffre used the success of the German armies against them. Rushing forward to capture their operational and strategic goal, the French capital, the German First Army had become dangerously separated from the rest of the German front line. By pulling together a scratch force, the Sixth Army, Joffre enabled the Franco-British forces to attack the Germans' most successful force in detail, driving it backwards and halting the enemy advance. One of the best-loved, if historically uncertain, elements of the battle's narrative was the delivery of several battalions of the attacking French Sixth Army at a crucial point in the engagement, but a fleet consisting of all the commercial taxis and buses of the city of Paris, pressed into service to rush 6,000 men fifty kilometers to forestall a German advance.

I'm hoping to post a quick "unboxing" preview of Glory's End this weekend (I'll confess, dear readers, I didn't wait to unbox it...). If I have time to walk through an attempt at playing its Marne scenario, as well as one of CoG: The Marne, I will, but that may have to wait until next week.

I hope to have time to post another of my grandfather's letters this weekend. We'll see how overly ambitious I'm being.

in the works: Tannenberg 1914

Ludendorff explains the 22.5 Königsberg Corps rules to von Hindenburg.

To kick off my experimental study of the first year of the war, I'll be looking at the battle (camapign, really) of Tannenberg, the first large encounter of Russian and German forces on the war's eastern front. My first effort will be a solo play of GMT Game's Clash of Giants: Tannenberg. I'm looking forward to this, as I've played one of the games in this series before and enjoyed it

As a quick introduction, I can recommend this four minute overview of the events from The Complete Landmark Television Series' World War 1 in Colour. Though the documentary images are indeed colourized in a rather flat, washed out way, the footage is itself still interesting, and the map animations simple but clear.

For a longer description of the battle, I can recommend Wikipedia's article, which covers the operations in quite comprehensive detail (though it curiously fails to mention Russian Northwest Front commander Yakov Zhilinski), while the FirstWorldWar.com website's piece on Tannenberg contains links to biographies of many of the senior commanders, as well as accounts of the engagement by German 8th Army commander Paul von Hindenburg and Russian First Army cavalry corps commander Vasily Iosiforich Gurko.

Russian Bielozerski Regiment relaxing while awaiting the next blog post.

Given that a principal feature of the battle was the failure of the two Russian armies to coordinate effectively (due both to poor technical communications provisions and to major antipathy between the First and Second Army commanders), the Tannenberg campaign seems ripe for a triple-blind kriegsspeil. I've recruited three players who are willing to give it a try, so I hope to be reporting to you, faithful readers, on that project in coming weeks.

"...the gun, however, had been removed..."

Last weekend we had the opportunity to recruit another member to our section of Mud and Blood enthusiasts. My friend Ash has played other wargames with us a couple of times, and he was up to trying something new. Mr Sherwood and I gave him a brief run-through on the basics of M&B and of simple infantry tactics, and then he was given command of a raiding party (with Mr Sherwood acting as his trusty senior NCO...)

For the event, I had put together a simple scenario that I hoped would be a fairly painless introduction to the rules, providing enough challenge to be fun while not being so brutal as to discourage the beginning player. As the subject, I picked the very first ever trench raid, as mentioned by Anthony Saunders in his Raiding on the Western Front.

This action took place in early November 1914 near Festubert. A German unit had pushed a sap forward towards the British lines and placed a machine-gun there "which was causing annoyance", according to one source. The 2nd Battalion, the Black Watch staged a small attack to capture or destroy the gun and its position.

Ash and Bryan had two sections of Highlanders to clear the sap and its supporting trench. They advanced side by side separated by a road, one section crossing an open field and taking cover in a tree line while the second section occupied the ruins of a farm about 50-60 yards from the sap.

The Germans had a good deal of trouble with their MG. They fired off a couple of bursts at one section of Scots as they advanced to the treeline, but after dropping a couple of kilties, they suffered a stoppage that lasted through the rest of the game. The supporting gruppe of riflemen did their best to stave off the inevitable, but with the MG out of action, the Germans were like the Lady of Shallot--their doom had come upon them.

I had tried to give the British an edge (justified by their success in the historical event) by including both the Up and At 'Em and Mad Minute cards. These proved crucial, as they allowed the British to get in position under cover and to pour a steady stream of fire onto the German positions that even their trenches could not wholly shelter them from. Eventually, the Highlanders just shot the Germans to pieces, with the German NCOs being shot down last, one by one, as they tried desperately to get their gun back in action (once the German units were gone, I allowed the British to shoot directly at the German Big Men). The Hun lost the MG, the sap, and the trench, with all ranks wounded or killed. The British took four casualties, much the same as in the historical raid.

I was quite happy with the result. It was intended to be a British win from the beginning, but I was impressed that the players managed (with help from the dice gods) to keep so close to the original British casualty figures. I think the scenario works well as a starter piece, a short scenario with the beginner as the British and an experienced player in the German role (and, if necessary, acting as umpire--it's not about winning and losing, so he can stand to be impartial). We skipped out on using blinds and spotting in our game, so as to limit the complications, and since they would be likely to be of short duration in any case.

Incidentally, on digging around for more information on the original action, I found a brief passage in Mereweather and Smith's The Indian Corps in France that describes the action and gave me an additional piece of information.

Before dawn on the same day, a similar raid on a smaller scale was carried out by the 2nd Black Watch, with the object of capturing or destroying a machine gun which was tormenting our men. Captain Forrester with twenty men rushed the German trench, and had a hand-to-hand scrimmage with the enemy, of whom they killed ten. The gun, however, had been removed, and the party were lucky to get back to their own trench with only Captain Forrester and one sergeant wounded.

Another account (A History of the Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) in the Great War, 1914-1918, A.G. Wauchope, ed.)says

The chief incident in the left section was a night raid made on the German trenches by some twenty men of No. 2 Company under Captain Forrester, with the object of destroying a machine gun which was causing annoyance from a sap pushed up close to our line. The raid took place on November 9th. Captain Forrester was wounded through the lungs as the raid started, but continued to lead his men, who reached the German trenches and killed ten of the enemy in hand-to-hand fighting; the machine gun had, however, been removed. The party returned with Captain Forrester, Sergeant Wallace, and one private wounded.

So, in fact, our stoppage had had a fairly historical effect--the original German defenders had not had the advantage of an MG to defend themselves with--and neither did our fictional Germans!

I'll publish the scenario here as soon as I can format it properly.  Here's the scenario.