First Impressions of The Great War

This is a First Impression article, based on a single play of a game. It is far from a full and considered review, so please take that into account while reading! Enjoy!

---

 

 

This week I went over the top with Richard Borg’s The Great War, the newest implementation of his famous (in the board gaming world) Command & Colours system, used in games such as Memoir 44 and Battlelore. Not only was this my first taste of trench warfare (in board game and real world formats, believe it or not), this was also my first taste of the Command & Colours game system! So I guess this article will be two “first impressions” for the price of one!

Let’s start with Command & Colours, since saying its name over and over again won’t make it any clearer to anyone unfamiliar with the term. This is a system that simulates the difficulty a commander might have in getting his orders followed on a battlefield, the disrupted lines of communication and the unpredictable elements of warfare. You never know what your opponent will be able to do, and sometimes you’ll be unable to do the things you most desperately want.

It is very cleverly implemented by dividing the battlefield up into 3 regions, a centre and 2 flanks. You then have a hand of command cards, from which you play one each turn allowing you to activate a certain number of units from a certain section of the battlefield. It is a brilliant system, forcing you to really think ahead about what you want to do in future turns, as well as racking up the tension when you might not have the right cards to respond as you would like. The system is certainly as good as I had heard!

To the basic Command & Colours system, The Great War adds a second set of Combat cards that give you extra tactics and abilities that can be played to boost your turn, or to respond to your opponents actions, so long as you have the resources available to pay for them. On the one hand, these cards add the ability to unpredictably screw up your opponent’s plans, which I have a moderate dislike of in games. But on the other, they really boost your scope for doing cool and interesting things. It adds to the hand management element, and could be a lot of fun. Particularly when I combined a couple and swarmed my opponent’s left flank!

We played the very first mission, the training scenario you might call it, as a slightly superior force of Brits face off against the Germans in very similar trench lines and an empty expanse of no-mans land between them. And I really struggled with it to be honest! As I said above the hand management element is superb, but in terms of strategy I really didn’t like it. The huge defensive benefit to being in your trenches and the horrific power of machine gun positions completely discourages aggressive play. Its certainly thematic! Put not very much fun.

As the British player, I had more troops so I felt it was intended that I should play aggressively, so for the sake of making a game I did so, carefully sneaking up the right flank at the edge of Nick’s machine gun range, as well as pulling off a very cool swarming attack on the left flank thanks to those combat cards I mentioned earlier. However, it wasn’t enough and, perhaps due to some unfortunate dice rolls but more likely due to the phenomenal defence offered by the trenches I lost the game, 4 units killed vs 6.

So on the surface it was a close and exciting game… but I felt like it was a mistake for me to attack. I would have been better off just taking pot shots across no-mans land for the entire game. And that is terrible! It shouldn’t be on the player’s backs to make a game interesting.

Now that was the training scenario. I am still looking forward to the main scenarios, which include all the rules for terrain and preliminary bombardments and other rules left out for simplicity. The set-ups also look like the missions feature much more attacker/defender type situations, plus more terrain and cover in no-mans land to make use of. I’m definitely with holding judgement until we’ve played those missions, and hopefully they will solve this issue.

The First World War is a pretty challenging setting for a game. The image I have (though I’m no military historian) is of near unmoving trench lines, with one side charging at and being shot to pieces by the defending force. This does not sound like the basis of a fun game! Hopefully the full missions will focus on battles for which interesting strategies and approaches are available, but the opening scenario certainly didn’t.

Turns out, trench warfare is brutal!