A month on the western front

As mentioned earlier, I had set up the S&T game Reinforce the Right during a quiet spot, and today, during Pask sa Pilipinas, I played a few turns. I think it is quite a good game as the rules are quite straightforward - you are only needing to reference the rules for the VP table as units were eliminated.

Unlike most games, it does not have advance after combat. What it does have is a second move and second attack for any units near an HQ. This means that in the first turn everyone clusters around the HQ and then exploits in the second turn. It also means that HQs are casualites as they get to close to give as many units as possible a second move. In 4 turns, the Germans lost 2 and the French 1, but probably will lose a couple more next turn.

It started in early August with the German's infiltrating the Ardennes. The French and Belgians were caught flat footed. The Germans cleverly did not attack the Belgian fortesses, which left the French in the dark as to their intentions (game rule - French activiate when a fortress is attacked).

Unfortunately, the German Fifth Army commander had not followed the script. He attacked between the French 2nd and 3rd armies making good inroads and destroying the French 3rd army HQ.

The French 1st Army tried to create a front to the south, but the Gremans managed to quickly replace losses via their rail network.

While the Belgians crumbled, the French could do nothing (perhaps the Germans cleverly left the telegraph lines so the Belgian fortresses only reported skirmishing). The German 5th Army launched a major attack on the French right flank and rolled a blood bath and were decimated. So the French 6th army, being slow to mobilise (remember historically they saved Paris) chose to mobilise in Verdun and hit the German right flank and made good progress.

The German Right Wing annihilated the Belgian army and swung down for the decisive battle. With fortresses failing, the French left woke up and smelled the nitrite.

A brave German counter attack by the 6th army saw the French 6th badly handled and the 2nd Army almost annihilated. The French countered by mobiling their 9th army in Verdun and with the extra troops, encircled the Germans wiping out the 5th and6th Army HQ.

The French 1st Army realised the fun was happening elsewhere and retreated to exploit the huge gap where the German 6th army once stood. The German 7th Army will obviously be racing them there.

I stopped the game here as many lessons had been learned and too many mistakes had been made. Victory points showed a slight edge to the Entente 123-111, but the game was still anyone's.

Overall, well done to S&T for yet another fine, playable and interesting simulation.

Comments

[PythonMagus]

The game runs from August 1914 to December 1914. There were no Australian formations on the Western Front until much later (1916?).

[Paul]

Are there any separate counters for Australian troops?

[PythonMagus]

No so much fluid as very little chance of recovering from a stuff up. In actuality, the French stuffed up big time by attacking Germany at the beginning, and the German's stuffed up in going for Paris a month later. You can't stop the bad die rolls, by you can choose not to be too greedy. I failed with the latter with the German Fifth Army as described above. However, perhaps tying down the French 2md, 3rd, 4th, 6th and 9th Armies will turn out to be brilliant when the right wing crashes down from Belgium.

[Thygocanberra]

sounds like it was very fluid