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So I was watching this video( on Battlefronts Youtube channel) on what's gonna be coming out soon for the FOW lines including Vietnam and arab Israeli war .... but at the end they said something else was coming out because of the significance of the year 2014. I believe since that marks the 100th year mark for the start of the first world war that they could be talking about a WWI range. I won't get my hopes up or anyone elses but I think that'd be pretty sweet since hardly anyone plays WWI wargames.

It seems plausible. I too remember them talking about expanding into other areas, even after they had shown the Arab-Israeli and Vietnam stuff.

I always assumed the Pacific theatre would be on its way but that doesn't seem to connect to 2014.

Well if it is WW1 good eye on the connection.

It was confirmed, it will be WWI. I'm trying to find the video but there was an official video released not long after that one where they pretty much confirm it.

Also Steve confirmed it on the WWPD podcast as well.

Nothing has been said about what parts of the war will be covered, other than the obvious part that it will include the tanks.

Found it, Skip to 16 minutes http://www.wwpd.net/2014/01/news-from-front-episode-70.html

He also alludes they will be "dipping their toes in" similar to how they did the Arab Israeli release, which might mean we could be getting another "mini book" with their magazine.

Well...Time to start the trench board I guess.

Will be interesting to see how they tackle this, them having a tank fetish and all that.

 Strombones wrote:


I always assumed the Pacific theatre would be on its way but that doesn't seem to connect to 2014.

I generally have little interest in historical gaming, but I think a Pacific Theatre system could very well tempt me. I'm not really sure why, to be honest... Maybe it was Pearl Harbour with The Affleck.

Thankfully Bolt Action has a fully worked out 28mm range of Pacific Theatre miniatures.

I haven't finished painting my FoW WW2 stuff yet (or got in like half of my orders), but I can see me picking this up too, it's odd that the Great War gets such little gaming attention.

Maybe because it can be static? There's only so many times you can play the "over the top" scenario I suppose.

Mind, not that WWI was all that of course, what with Gallipoli and the more mobile warfare on the Eastern Front.

Will be interesting to see what Battlefront is going to do with all of this, I'm sure the male/female tanks and the A7 will see a release this year.

The flip side is that there isn't nearly the variety of weapons that WWII had. I mean, you basically just had riflemen, a couple of machine guns per nation, and some trench mortars. Toss in a few tanks, snipers, and officers, and you've got most of your range.

I think having more detailed scenarios for trench combat could overcome a lot of the static aspect. Maybe make it more raid style?

Raid style would be fun, but at that scale? Sounds like a job for 28mm minis to me!

 Strombones wrote:
Well...Time to start the trench board I guess.

Hell yes! Any excuse to make a trench board.

Herzlos wrote:
I haven't finished painting my FoW WW2 stuff yet (or got in like half of my orders), but I can see me picking this up too, it's odd that the Great War gets such little gaming attention.

I've always assumed that WW1 gaming might lack the maneuver aspect that other war games seek to capture and maybe turn off some people, but now that I'm imagining 15mm slow moving tanks and infantry fighting across an elongated trench board I think there is potential for some awesome gaming.

I'm imagining a 15mm biplane that stays on the table as it flys around.

The FOW rule sets tend to be a bit too complex for my tastes but Battlefront is a good company who makes good models and I would buy these regardless.

Edit: ninja'd. And 100% agreed with more detailed raid style options. Im thinking in stead of a standard 6x4 an elongated shallower table where players have a larger front to defend and attack.

Gotta agree with some of the concerns here. Trench warfare isn't known for varied strategy or creative tactics. Hell, the cultural legacy of the war is one of senseless violence and trauma (hello, Hemingway!).

Are there other examples of WW1 rulesets out there? I've heard that they exist, and that they're no fun.

 Guildsman wrote:

Are there other examples of WW1 rulesets out there? I've heard that they exist, and that they're no fun.

Not true at all! Take a look at the TMP Early 20th Century boards for examples.

The problem is that these rules either look at WWI from a very small, on-the-ground view (like trench raids), or from on-high (moving around battalions). Company-level action- which is what we can assume Battlefront is doing - tends to be the sticking point. And that's only when the combatants got stuck into trench warfare, which wasn't the entirety of WWI, regardless of the 'cultural legacy'.

 infinite_array wrote:


Not true at all! Take a look at the TMP Early 20th Century boards for examples.

The problem is that these rules either look at WWI from a very small, on-the-ground view (like trench raids), or from on-high (moving around battalions). Company-level action- which is what we can assume Battlefront is doing - tends to be the sticking point. And that's only when the combatants got stuck into trench warfare, which wasn't the entirety of WWI, regardless of the 'cultural legacy'.

I feel FOW will kill all pre conceived notions that WWI is a boring period for wargaming. I would do a little more research into the war before I would call it boring.... I hope you can undermine peoples defenses and use chemical weapons ....that'd be sick.

when you google search "flames of war world war 1" on the results page this comes up -

"Flames of War - Official Site

www.flamesofwar.com

The home of World War Two and Vietnam gaming. Welcome to the Flames Of War and Battlefront Miniatures website the home of World War II Gaming Last Updated On …"

Says Vietnam on the description of site....

Yeah, Vietnam has recently been upgraded from side project to full blown range.

Well horse charge, mine fields, siege guns and chem weapons. those would make for a more dynamic game. There is a lot of room for more than just trench warfare.

 battlematt wrote:
Well horse charge, mine fields, siege guns and chem weapons. those would make for a more dynamic game. There is a lot of room for more than just trench warfare.

Not to mention other uses of artillery then just to kill people. I.e. clearing barbwire and rolling barrages. Hell anti-battery fire might also be interesting as well. I hope they give Canadian and Anzec troops there own rules as appose to just being just being variants of the british lists. These two forces did infact fight very differently to how the british did.

I hope this is the case. I just got my first production run of 15mm trenches back from casting (see the seperate post in the FoW section). This would really help with my sales.

Seeing as this will be a limited release at first, expect Tommies and the Boche first, with other armies coming in a few years from now.

Tresson wrote:

 battlematt wrote:
Well horse charge, mine fields, siege guns and chem weapons. those would make for a more dynamic game. There is a lot of room for more than just trench warfare.

Not to mention other uses of artillery then just to kill people. I.e. clearing barbwire and rolling barrages. Hell anti-battery fire might also be interesting as well. I hope they give Canadian and Anzec troops there own rules as appose to just being just being variants of the british lists. These two forces did infact fight very differently to how the british did.

Not really, us ANZACS for among the first times had up to date weapons and gear for the war and the NZ forces were pretty much british. Australians the same except they where really slack, especially with discipline and officers. Australia refused to execute their soldiers etc too, but on the battle field they where the same, in my opinion (after years of having anzac history drilled into my head ) they belong right there by the british.

Im really hoping for some non trench fronts or really early war fighting with cav and so on. But the picture of what seems to be a tank says other wise. Aircraft will be done really differently too, maybe aircraft will act as arty spotters more than anything? And Gas might see itself some rules for the first time.

Given Battlefront's love for tanks, I think we can safely assume that we'll be seeing the later years of the war.

 infinite_array wrote:

 Guildsman wrote:

Are there other examples of WW1 rulesets out there? I've heard that they exist, and that they're no fun.

Not true at all! Take a look at the TMP Early 20th Century boards for examples.

The problem is that these rules either look at WWI from a very small, on-the-ground view (like trench raids), or from on-high (moving around battalions). Company-level action- which is what we can assume Battlefront is doing - tends to be the sticking point. And that's only when the combatants got stuck into trench warfare, which wasn't the entirety of WWI, regardless of the 'cultural legacy'.

It's interesting, certainly from a rules mechanics perspective about how they would approach platoon-level action in this period, and how they would alter the basic FoW rule structure.

Also, a shrewd move in terms of the 100th anniversary of the conflict, it's certainly on a lot of people's minds at the moment.

Although it's interesting how little there is on the market in terms of WW1 games and miniatures. And it's something (in terms of the type of warfare it represented, and the era) that speaking personally I find massively distasteful.. and that is speaking as someone who has collected miniatures and played games from a extensive range of periods. When I read about events such as the Somme, I have absolutely no desire to re-create this in a wargame. Although, I realise that is probably quite a subjective thing (I know people who feel the same way about WW2 for instance).

 Pacific wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:

 Guildsman wrote:

Are there other examples of WW1 rulesets out there? I've heard that they exist, and that they're no fun.

Not true at all! Take a look at the TMP Early 20th Century boards for examples.

The problem is that these rules either look at WWI from a very small, on-the-ground view (like trench raids), or from on-high (moving around battalions). Company-level action- which is what we can assume Battlefront is doing - tends to be the sticking point. And that's only when the combatants got stuck into trench warfare, which wasn't the entirety of WWI, regardless of the 'cultural legacy'.

It's interesting, certainly from a rules mechanics perspective about how they would approach platoon-level action in this period, and how they would alter the basic FoW rule structure.

Also, a shrewd move in terms of the 100th anniversary of the conflict, it's certainly on a lot of people's minds at the moment.

Although it's interesting how little there is on the market in terms of WW1 games and miniatures. And it's something (in terms of the type of warfare it represented, and the era) that speaking personally I find massively distasteful.. and that is speaking as someone who has collected miniatures and played games from a extensive range of periods. When I read about events such as the Somme, I have absolutely no desire to re-create this in a wargame. Although, I realise that is probably quite a subjective thing (I know people who feel the same way about WW2 for instance).

In ww2 people where used to clear minefeilds, there where competitions to see who could behead the most prisoners, there was massed civilian killing on a scale never seen before, ships were ordered not to stop and pick up drowning sailors, thousands perished with nothing left but their shadows burnt in the ground and the list can on forever.

So if you find ww1 distasteful, there should be no war period to collect because there is a long list like the above for every war zone. In my opinion WW1 was far better in terms of sick things that happened.

I mean I understand what you mean but I do find it odd that one warzone is a moral no go while the rest are ok. Is there are reason WW1 is a no while the rest are ok? (assuming the rest are fine of course, you didnt specify)

WWI did more or less wipe out a generation of young men in certain countries, but let's just take that gak to OT where it belongs.

 BrookM wrote:
WWI did more or less wipe out a generation of young men in certain countries, but let's just take that gak to OT where it belongs.

So did WW2... in certain countries....

But yea will do. Enough of that

Yes, absolutely I know that every period of war has featured massively distasteful acts of violence, that's the nature of the beast. But, if one is to view these things on a sliding scale it was the scale of human loss in WW1 that I find appalling and having read a great deal about first-hand accounts of some of the battles that took place I honestly think it is perhaps one of the strongest efforts we have made to create a hell on earth.

In terms of casualty rates, was it something like 70,000 in a single day from the British army alone that died on the Somme? But it's not just the casualty figures which were horrendous, but the nature in which the people died. Of the thousands of men who were ordered 'over the top', the chain of command knowing full well that to do so was suicide for all of those involved, but the inefficient and utterly uncaring and un-adaptive chain of command just kept on feeding men into the meat-grinder. That their own soldiers were executed for failing to go to their certain death. We laugh about it when it happens with an Imperial Guard Commissar in 40k, but I don't think really like to imagine that these things happened. There was a reason that WW1 created such a high volume of mentally damaged and shell-shocked survivors, so many of the 'war poets' who tried to put into words something that could not have been imagined.

Perhaps Stalin's troops and commissars, ordering their troops onto the machine guns of the invading Germans until they ran out of ammunition, and the absolute sheer scale of death would be comparable in WW2. Perhaps I would feel the same about WW2 if I were a Russian, but the 'nature' was similar, of an elite within society herding their own kin to their deaths.

To be fair, I don't think it's reasonable to reduce this topic to a few paragraphs talking about a wargame. My opinion of WW1 isn't a fanciful one, just an opinion that after reading extensively on different periods of warfare, I find the 'Great War' to be most distasteful. Not just in terms of the casualty figures, but in terms of the nature of how human beings can claim ownership over their own people and so flippantly order them to their deaths. And, it's perhaps because those deaths are specific to people that I recognise as being part of my own culture (as I said, it's subjective), rather than something that could well have come from a work of fiction if one is reading about battles in the Dark Ages or ancient Greece. It's much easier to distance ones self from the conception of these battles.

I remember my grandfather, the most dyed-in-the-wool Conservative (a portrait of the Queen above the mantelpiece) telling me that had the British public seen even an instant of the misery and suffering taking place on the continent, that the ruling powers would not have lasted a single night here in Britain. I'm inclined to believe him, and extremely thankful that in the modern age even a few thousand soldier deaths can turn public opinion against a war, and question the reasons behind it.

Anyway, sorry this is a bit of a de-rail about the topic! But, I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling this way, and that perhaps is represented by the relatively few number of WW1 games when compared to other eras. Would much rather BF tackled the Cold War period (perhaps some kind of 'what if' scenario)?

 Pacific wrote:
Yes, absolutely I know that every period of war has featured massively distasteful acts of violence, that's the nature of the beast. But, if one is to view these things on a sliding scale it was the scale of human loss in WW1 that I find appalling and having read a great deal about first-hand accounts of some of the battles that took place I honestly think it is perhaps one of the strongest efforts we have made to create a hell on earth.

In terms of casualty rates, was it something like 70,000 in a single day from the British army alone that died on the Somme? But it's not just the casualty figures which were horrendous, but the nature in which the people died. Of the thousands of men who were ordered 'over the top', the chain of command knowing full well that to do so was suicide for all of those involved, but the inefficient and utterly uncaring and un-adaptive chain of command just kept on feeding men into the meat-grinder. That their own soldiers were executed for failing to go to their certain death. We laugh about it when it happens with an Imperial Guard Commissar in 40k, but I don't think really like to imagine that these things happened. There was a reason that WW1 created such a high volume of mentally damaged and shell-shocked survivors, so many of the 'war poets' who tried to put into words something that could not have been imagined.

Perhaps Stalin's troops and commissars, ordering their troops onto the machine guns of the invading Germans until they ran out of ammunition, and the absolute sheer scale of death would be comparable in WW2. Perhaps I would feel the same about WW2 if I were a Russian, but the 'nature' was similar, of an elite within society herding their own kin to their deaths.

To be fair, I don't think it's reasonable to reduce this topic to a few paragraphs talking about a wargame. My opinion of WW1 isn't a fanciful one, just an opinion that after reading extensively on different periods of warfare, I find the 'Great War' to be most distasteful. Not just in terms of the casualty figures, but in terms of the nature of how human beings can claim ownership over their own people and so flippantly order them to their deaths. And, it's perhaps because those deaths are specific to people that I recognise as being part of my own culture (as I said, it's subjective), rather than something that could well have come from a work of fiction if one is reading about battles in the Dark Ages or ancient Greece. It's much easier to distance ones self from the conception of these battles.

I remember my grandfather, the most dyed-in-the-wool Conservative (a portrait of the Queen above the mantelpiece) telling me that had the British public seen even an instant of the misery and suffering taking place on the continent, that the ruling powers would not have lasted a single night here in Britain. I'm inclined to believe him, and extremely thankful that in the modern age even a few thousand soldier deaths can turn public opinion against a war, and question the reasons behind it.

Anyway, sorry this is a bit of a de-rail about the topic! But, I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling this way, and that perhaps is represented by the relatively few number of WW1 games when compared to other eras. Would much rather BF tackled the Cold War period (perhaps some kind of 'what if' scenario)?

I just wanted to know, I hear a lot of people pretty much go WW1 = Bad, WW2 = good. At least you know what you are talking about I think WW1 had a huge toll on people because it was a "first" but yea anyways moving on.

Anyone think they'll have tunnelers as a unit?