"Can "Black Powder" do early WWI battles?" Topic

Since the release of BP we have seen its relatives Hail Caesar and Pike & Shotte cover vertually all land warfare types from Chariots up through Colonials.

What I ask you is, can another (not too radical) variant of BP be made to cover the early manuever warfare period of both fronts during 1914?

Hmmm, I suppose so…if you have a lot of figures. I think.

I've always thought it could.Awhile back,when Zvezda released their early war Germans and Russians,I thought about Tannenberg.

It probably could with modifications. If you reduced the attack value of units or increased the relative fire power then there is no reason why it would work. You could probably stand to do both.

I'd guess that if you used stats of four shots and four attacks with stamina 3 and save 4+ for the average unit it may work.

Depending on the scale you wanted you would have to seriously rework artillery as it would need to be much more powerful than it is.

The other thing that I think would be useful is to increase the initiative distance to 18". With rifles shooting 36" that would probably make the game work the way you want it to for the early period.

Machine guns are already in there.

Good points Pictors. Maybe reduced movement rates as well?

look at
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I've been wondering about this for the Russian Civil War.
I'd use my own mod to change the turn sequence so that firing comes before movement (plus some more bits – it was discussed a while back on the yahoo group). This is needed to stop units rushing across no-man's land in one turn then blazing away at short range; it also allows the firing/moving side to use suppressing fire to in its own turn.

IMO machine guns are in there but the rules are fairly clunky: they would need to be reworked to allow for many more to be present – I haven't an answer for that.

I'd consider a 'gone to ground' formation that gives a benefit to morale saves from fire but can't move (so the first action for any such unit would have to be 'get up'. Possibly pinned units should automatically go-to-ground as well…
And that's without taking account of armoured vehicles and aircraft: I'm beginning to remember why I didn't take this much further.

A friend if mine did a game based on Mons which worked pretty well.

All the above written before seeing BrownBear's link. I liked the suggestion made later on about magazine rifles giving an extra die in closing fire – that would make charging more problematic.

Thanks for the link Brownbear. Has me very encouraged!

Yes – but it would benefit from some adaptations.

The same thought applies to many game systems (the core can be adapted to cover things outside the original remit: I'm sure there is a WWI version of DBA out there! I have played DBA Ironclads with Barker himself!) … and the core mechanism in BP is of course the activations and commands idea. There are reasons why that might work quite well for WWI.

As for using it 'by the book', I'm tempted to ask who plays rules as written? OK, I know a lot of people like to … but BP by the book? The book itself does not recommend this but recommends you add special rules of your own as you get familiar with your chosen period.

Phil

"I'm sure there is a WWI version of DBA out there!"

There certainly is, also a HoTT one. There is also a 1914 V&B variant.

As with all these things, it depends on how much of a simulation you want. Ideally, you need to mod the game so frontal attacks are literally impossible regardless of numbers unless you have overwhelming artillery support. This might be stretching BP a bit far, but to be fair, many/most 'proper' WW1 rules are somewhat overly generous to frontal assaulting as it makes for a really depressing game otherwise.

Rapid fire weapons with smokeless ammmo do however make warfare in 1914 very, very different to that of 1812 or even of 1870, as magazine rifle armed infantry cen essentially kill or pin everything that they can see unless they are suppressed. Throwing more men at them just produces more targets.

Having said all that, it is usually easy enough to stretch ninetenth century sets to cover 1914. I did an F&F variant for 1914 which was frankly almost unchanged from the original and it seemed to produce a satisfactory game. I just beefed up the firepwoer of artillery and defensive firepower of infantry.

Martin Rapier wrote:

Rapid fire weapons with smokeless ammmo do however make warfare in 1914 very, very different to that of 1812 or even of 1870

Well, yes. Indeed Trevor Dupuy identified the introduction of the magazine rifle as the biggest leap in firepower ever to occur in military history, at least until nukes came along. Add in HE from indirectly-laid weapons and you have a real technological revolution in military affairs, probably bigger than any before or since.

All the best,

John.

I would almost leave artillery out in these scale games, except for maybe direct fire or pre-bombardments.