World War 1
July 14th, 2007Yesterday I was summoned to visit Charles Vasey, who only lives a couple of miles from me, and we played World War 1, an SPI wargame from 1975.
Charles Vasey has designed several games and runs a wargaming fanzine called Perfidious Albion, which seems to have mutated into a mailing list. I first heard about him through one of Tom Vasel’s old Interviews with an Optimist. He is a real character – very quick and clever. He played the game at a blinding pace and was way ahead of me. If he had been playing to win he would have crushed me. His dining room is fabulous, full of cycling and history books, WWII miniatures and games.
I first heard WW1 recommended by Mark Johnson on BoardGamesToGo a couple of years ago and it is definitely as good as advertised. There are two versions, one by SPI, the version we played, and a later reprint by Decision Games. Unfortunately the reprint changed a few elements of the game, which apparently make the game worse.
World War 1 is a grand strategic view of the Great War supposedly playable in three hours. As you would expect from 1975, it is a hex and counter wargame, but it has a lot of subtleties. The rules are only eight pages long and I absorbed them in two hours. The map cuts out almost all France and concentrates instead on the battles in the East. This makes sense as the battles in France are a meat grinder stalemate, while the interesting maneuvering happens in the East.
The heart of the game are the Combat Resource Points (pronounced krips) of the combatant nations. These represent the strategic resources available. CRPs are used to absorb damage in combat and to buy new armies. When a nation’s CRPs are bled down to zero, they have to retreat in every combat where they take a loss. This leads to sudden crumbling of fronts. The Allies therefore are trying to dissolve the German forces in the Western Front, while the Central Powers are trying to force an early Russian collapse, which produces a major victory point advantage. It is an interesting balance and I got a great taste of the ebb and flow of the war. The landings at Gallipoli are represented neatly too. Unfortunately we ran out of time, so Ataturk was never challenged.
I really enjoyed the game. It was fascinating for me to see how the war in the East developed, as British popular history claims WW1 only took place on the Western Front, without any of those noncy French or vulgar Yanks. Realising my ignorance, I recently read The First World War by John Keegan, but I got a much more vivid feel for the conflict through this game.
My only quibble is that the game is sold at coming under three hours. Charles basically played the game for me at lightning speed, but we still ran out of time. We accidentally forgot the winter rules, which would have sped things up, but I still think that playing with my normal pals we would have fumbled through in around 4.5 hours at least for the first time.
8/10
All in all it was a great experience. Charles hinted at Squad Leader next time. Fingers crossed.
July 19th, 2007 at 01:42
“I recently read The First World War by John Keegan, but I got a much more vivid feel for the conflict through this game.”
I know what you mean. You can obviously get a whole lot more depth & detail from reading a book on the subject (and accuracy, perhaps), but the movement, visualization, and interactivity (or cause-and-effect modeling) of a wargame gives much more feeling.