Flames of War: Great War "The Big Push"

When "The Great War" came out for Flames of War, I really had my doubts about it being a viable game system. From my experience with Flames of War for WWII, I just didn't think it would work for WWI; boy, was I wrong.  Battlefront did a great job in balancing the scenarios and special rules to make the games challenging; I haven't seen a "bad" game (one-sided without it being fun for one of the players) for this era yet using this system.  After being pushed to play by Robert, I have gone full in with a large 15mm German force and a decent sized 15mm French force now in my inventory.  I have even invested in the great trench line and a few of the other terrain pieces; I still have to get a set of the regular craters.

Yesterday, Robert, Tim, Randy and I got together for a 3000 point per side game; Randy and I ran 1500 points of Germans each while Robert and Tim ran 1500 points of British each.  We played the Big Push scenario where one side defends a trench line and the other has to seize the communication trench junctions. We have played this scenario several times and it always seems like the attacker makes it to the trench, but never has enough to hold on against the counter-attack.  To switch things up, I took a Stosskompanie with 2 platoons of Stoss, 2 Stoss MG platoons and 2 regular (trained) Infantrie platoons. The Stosskompanie is an always attack force, but the Brits had tanks making them always attack as well, so luckily after a dice off the Brits decided to defend.  This allowed the Germans to night attack.  This certainly helped us survive the initial rounds of defensive fire, and though I had to recycle one Stoss platoon (using the "Overwhelming Force" rule for this scenario; Randy on the left flank also had to recycle one platoon), I was able to break the platoon defending the trench in front of me, take out several pits and nests, decimate the reinforcing infantry platoon and capture a bogged MKIV tank!  Great victory for the Germans!  So, here are some pictures:

View down the table length (with a WWII game just past our game)

 Stosskompanie hits the wire 

 View from the left flank of the attack.  Randy also got to the trenches stopping Tim from reinforcing Robert.

 2nd Stoss platoon (left) making it through the wire while the regular Infantrie stall.

 Whittling down the defenders with some good shooting and assaults.

 Randy is pushing things on the left flank.

 Wire finally cleared as is the trench line, but reinforcements are trying to outrace the new wave of Stoss on the right flank.

 Better hurry because here comes the British Armour!

 Devastating fire (and poor saving by Robert) has his reinforcing platoon at half-strength and pinned while the only British team left in the trench on my front is the Company commander who can't last for long.

 And the 2nd Stoss platoon is disputing the other trench junction, which will end shortly....

 As Randy kills off the 18-pounder in the gun pit and Robert's last hurrah bogs down...

This was a great, fun game.  I hope we play again soon.  I also hope to get my French on the table soon.

In the meantime, I've got some 10mm ancients ready to paint and just spent some time prepping 40 early war Soviet tanks...T26's, T28's and KV's...still lots of work to do on them, but it's a start.