The Great War, Contemptible Little Armies, 28mm 

On 4th November the SESWC put on two games at the small Targe show in Kirriemuir, in Scotland. One was a kids’ participation game involving Cadillacs & Dinosaurs (don’t ask!), and the other one was our Verdun game. We were asked to put it on at the last minute, but the game proved very popular, and even won some sort of award from the show organisers.As we were still short of Frenchmen the Germans had the job of attacking. We set the board up so that the attackers didn’t have far to go to reach the first trench line, but between it and their objective – the reserve trenches – lay some two feet of open ground, swept by French machine guns. Sure enough two Stosstruppen units captured the first French line relatively easily, using flamethrowers and grenades. Then thinks became a little sticky.A French counter-attack was repulsed, but any attempt to infiltrate up the communication trenches ended in disaster for the Germans. At that point the organisers buggered off to the pub, leaving two “volunteers” to man the table. When we came back 1 1/2 hours later we found the Germans had somehow swept the table of Frenchmen!Of course no figures on the table meant it wasn’t much of a “demonstration” game, but the guys seemed to have enjoyed themselves.Once again we used Contemptible Little Armies, and tried out various “house rules” concerning flamethrowers and trench fighting

Tags: Contemptible Little Armies