Matrix Games Forums

It funny how I give out complex ideas but never attempt to make them......oh well



I played Redlegs excellent Assault on havcourt this morning which got me thinking id love to see some more work done on WW1


Granted this game isnt based on WW1 so that may throw some off right off the bate but nevertheless WW1 can easily be modled.


Going with the French to the Battle of the Frontiers with bayonettes attached and a good dose of cran

Or with the English at the Somme or at the battle of Mons

Fighting in a Belgium fort at Liege.



It opens up another war for us.

I think it is entertaining to try to find appropriate weapons, etc for WW1 battles.

Thanks for playing the Haucourt scenario and for your comments.

Have you tried my Gallipoli battle?

I think I made about 6 WWI altogether.

I have two Italian alps scenarios finished that are tested but not posted - I guess I should do something with them. Heck, I'll attach one of them here in case someone wants to try it.

"Battle in the Clouds" 6-levels snow-capped mountains depicting the debut of the Italian Arditia special forces in 1915.

Again, thanks for the comment.

For about 6 months straight Ive read about WW1 and have been entralled by it.
Here in America it doesnt seem to have quite the "glamour" WW2 has achived.

In Europe its different.
When I visited their musems and cities its seemed to be right next to WW2 in the minds.
They have streets, buildings, plaques and statues(Europeans have a statue for everything) dedicated to the leaders, battles, and soldier groups.
In London they had a cool statue dedicated to the machine gun corps. It had a quote from the bible on it that I cant remember does anyone know what it is? Im sure someone on here from the UK knows what Im talking about.


Id love to see something about Mons or Liege.

I read barbara tuchmans account Liege and it was hilarious.

The Germans marched across the Belgium border not knowing about their neutral status and literaly marched right up to the forts at Liege. The Belgiums already had their answer and sent it by way of machine gun bullets.
The Germans has ample reserves so they sent wave after wave into the forts to crack them to no avail they lost 20,000 in a matter of days.
She writes that the 'German General Ludendorff remembered for the rest of his life "The peculiar thud of bullets striking German flesh".


Btw redleg does that file go in scenario or campaign?

It is a scenario.

I made two versions of the same battle - this was the first version which I believe is a bit more difficult than the second.

As a Canadian, I believe it's my duty to ask if anyone has done a scenario for Vimy Ridge!

If I had sufficient information, I would make a Vimy Ridge scenario.

I haven't seen a scenario on this but that does not mean it doesn't exist.

I made eleven maps and a campaign for Vimy Ridge for Close Combat 3 Great War mod....it can be found here:

http://www.greatwargames.com/

....if you have CC3 you can try it out and maybe it will give you some ideas......I dedicated it to my grandfather who fought there in the First Division...the Maple Leaf Forever!

I don't have the C/C games installed any longer so maybe I will stumble across some documentation about Vimy Ridge somewhere else.

If it is done, Redleg is the man to do it

The Colonel

I'm working on a map of WW1 to the South of St. Digner. It has basically a small village (I'll add the name when I re-consult the map I found) to the northwest, and a few streams, a railroad in the far north. And then the famous trenches. Where can I get the links for those WW1 scenarios my man?

I´ve excellent details on the battle of Verdun 1916/17 including an excellent 1:25000 topo map that I bought in Verdun as I spent 2 holidays there (1981/82). Would love to use the stuff on SPWAW some day.
Good work Redleg!:) You proofed it´s possible to make WW1 scenarios in SPWAW.

_________
Harry

Excellent...Excellent

All this sounds good.

But....A liege map would be quite nice...

Those German Siege guns were about as big and battleship guns (14 inch), so that could be easily modled.

Yes, WW1 is very. . .interesting. Too bad you can't see pickelhaubes w/ SP:WAW graphics. Redleg, your Arditi scenario, it was interesting but didn't quite fit with my idea of "WW1," it was far too skirmish level, but it was Arditi, so no doubt it was modeled accurately, I just think the AH should have had much more. Also, a big mistake people make when doing WW1 - leaving in SMGs and HMGs in squads. Anyone have any links to where I can download some other WW1 scenarios?

I posted 3-4 at WarfareHq (www.warfarehq.com) and I think there is one or two at the
Dirty Dozen

But these are all relatively small actions taken from Geo C. Marshall's book, "Infantry in Battle". No regiments lined up in trenches across no-man's land. No massive artillery bombardments. Tactical battles.

MG sections are problematic. Survivability issues arise when troops are moving.

BTW, according to the description I have, the Arditi captured 500 prisoners in their first engagement and 3,000 in their second. No data on body-counts that I could find.

As far as I could tell, the Arditi scenarios were somewhere near half-scale.

Well, MGs should not advance with troops. I have not found MGs to be quite as effective as they should though, so I bumped up HE to 75. The scenario I'm working on, as a platoon was boosted up in number of men to be a company, will end up being about a small division per side.

Another thing is SPWAW doesn't like to fire MG at long range for fire support.

I cannot imagine playing a battle of that size. Should be an experience.

Yea, would you like it? It looks like it'll have about 3-4 Infantry Regiments + Arty + 1 btn of Legionnaires for the Frenchies. Probably 4-5 Regiments of Germans (15 btns). Well I don't think that MGs should fire past 5 hexes, kind of loses effectiveness, plus with all the debris from other attacks in the way. . . I just took a look at Gallipoli and Oise River scenarios. Quite good chap, but shouldn't the Turks at Gallipoli be in trenches? And such a large area would be quite hard for a batallion to cover, I would consider decreasing height by half, and entrenching turks and concentrating them.

Originally posted by Fallschirmjager
Excellent...Excellent

All this sounds good.

But....A liege map would be quite nice...

Those German Siege guns were about as big and battleship guns (14 inch), so that could be easily modled.

Yes...there´s already one of the monster guns the germans used at the eastern front (crimea) in the czech OOB available and can probably used for WW1 stuff like Liege, Verdun, Maubeuge ect., buuuuut...let me tell that they wouldn´t work as you would expect them to work in a SPWAW battle! You would hardly hit any point targets (forts, bunkers, redoubts) with them due to their low accuracy and in general these monster guns appear to me quite outside of SPWAW tactical scope. What you can do with these weapons is to remove infantry on the battlefield quickly, but with low rate of fire. There´s other artillery in the game that does the job much better though! (155,..)

Same goes for the fortifications. How would you model an appropriate WW1 fort with it´s multi levels and complex intereiors?? I visited Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux (Verdun) in the early 80íes and in fact I was in a team helping to make the cellrars and other interiors free of rubble/mud so later the tourists can enter them. This way I had pretty good insights in how this big forts were built and structured. I also saw many of the effects the "42cm Dicke Berthas" and als french 40cm rail guns had on them.

Maybe if I find time I´ll try to experiment a little bit with SPWAW possibilities in modelling such things, but I don´t expect to get it into fun games. We´ll see.

There are enough other tools and workarounds in SPWAW to generate accurate WW1 battles. Redleg already proofed that.

Even the heavily devastated WW1 frontlines like Verdun, Somme, Ypern ect. with miles of cratered terrain and multiple trench lines are possible. That´s what I proofed with my custom trenchlines and the possibility to avoid the shellhole limit in SPWAW by usage of dedicated tile sets.

Panzer Leo has also some nicely working "dugout" units in his excellent H2H mod set.

As one can see, all tools and knowledge necessary to make good and credible WW1 scenarios is there!

___________
Harry

Do you have a screenshot of your custom trenchlines?