Operational WW1 notes

Excellent game on Saturday.  Russ put together a well planned offensive with his 1916 German Corp that seemed to push away Mark and mine's French defence.  Even though Russ risked an extension of his pre-bombardment and allowed an extra French regiment to reinforce the front we still didn't have enough to stop the Teutonic horde - but I'll let Russ blog a proper report with pictures.

I just wanted to list some of the points we agreed on to make WW1 fit our operational one day game.

FOOs in towns and on level one hills can spot anything in the open on that table.  Level two hills allow spotting onto adjacent tables.

Pre-bombardment  will be against entire tables instead of sectors.

77mms and higher can bombard onto adjacent tables.  150mm can bombard onto adjacent two tables. 210mm can bombard three tables.  305mm can bombard four tables.

I am tempted to do away with ammunition except for preplanned bombardments.  Simpler but too deadly?  I think the difficulty of calling it in simulates ammo problems - let me know what you think?

Dug in permanently wired HQs increase their command range.  Divs can send orders to adjacent tables.  Corp HQs to two adjacent tables.  This allows the defender, using one corp to defend all ten tables tables.  In addition units can be placed outside command range but they cannot receive a change of orders.

All attacker HQs are always placed and any defender HQs placed on a contested or arial reconned table.  Once any unit has fired or has been spotted then the whole of that unit is deployed.  This speeds up play and allows some hidden deployment.  It does mean the defender has some flexibility in their set up as they deploy units to their own advantage - but it is quicker.

Tables are shell holed after three days of pre-bombardment.

We need laminated plans of each table upon which the defender can indicate what defences and units they are committing and then we can do the pre-bombardment before the Saturday game.

I need to protocol OOBs, deployments on laminated tables and pre-planned bombardments to allow as much to to done prior to the Saturday game.  As there is so much pre-planning in WW1 we may need two Thursdays to get it all done but as a result I definitely think we will get the actual battle played on the Saturday.

Any more thoughts let me know.  At the moment we are looking at either the first weekend in August or September - please confirm which you prefer.