My local wargames club was plunged into pitch darkness last night as we play-tested some new night fighting rules for "Through the Mud and the Blood". I've posted the AAR on my blog here:
link
While the game was really only a play-test at this stage, it seemed (from what I've read about night actions on the Western Front in the Great War) to be getting close to a reasonable recreation of night fighting. By that I mean that it was a fumbling, unpredictable, frustrating stumble though gas drenched craters coupled with a series of incredibly savage close assaults between the two sides in which the opposing sides' bombers were clearly in the ascendance.
I tried to build into the game a lot of random elements with all units, regardless of being British or German, were rolled up randomly (producing between 6 to 8 figures, with varying weapons and ammunition, and with varying amounts of "shock"). Officers on both sides had a variable number of flares for a flare pistol (1D4), with the German Fahnrich being able to launch two large flare rockets at one point in the game. Each of the three British Big Men needed to search for their troops in No Man's Land, the precise location of each section being entirely randomised. Each battlefield crater searched would yield a card (randomly drawn). The cards stated the contents of each crater – these totalled four leaderless British units in various states of "shock", a variety of wounded British and German soldiers, the lightly wounded Captain Limehouse, a variety of abandoned weaponry (some useable – determined randomly), a lingering cloud of phosgene or mustard gas resting in the crater (determined randomly), some very large rats and some hideous corpses (the last two of no effect).
I was hoping what while the players would construct a rough plan of attack, the random element of the game would add a lot of unpredictability.
As I mention in the blog-post, this is the first of a couple of play-tests for night actions, so stay tuned for further instalments.
Sidney
