A Gentleman's War 1914 Game

 I have been following the online writings of Ross Macfarlane going back to when he started the Little Wars Yahoo Group back in the day. So it was a real thrill for me when we were able to schedule a Zoom remote wargame. We used Howard Whitehouse' "A Gentleman's War" (AGW) rules which I hadn't played for almost two years. Fortunately, Ross, who had been a member of the play test volunteers, offered to take over the GM duties. I decided to pull out my 1900-ish French, who hadn't been on the table since the last time I played AGW and fielded my new, early WW1 Germans. The French are all shiny toy soldiers and the Germans are (almost) all plastics, painted with more realistic detail then the French, and I was concerned about a possible visual discord, but when I got them both on the table, it don't bother me at all. I set up a meeting engagement with exactly equal terrain on both sides. This, with both armies being equal in points led to a very well balanced, though somewhat predictable game. I placed all my infantry on the side opposite Ross' woods while he covered his side of the table more evenly, with his main attack force in the center, opposite the crossroads. As the infantry was generally in skirmish order with columns in support, causalities on both sides were minimal until the forces were close enough to attack. I launched one of my German infantry units against Ross' Alpin Chasseurs holding the woods and was beaten back in disorder. By this time we had both been able to garrison a house adjacent to the crossroads. Ross sent his Zouaves in a column attack on the house I was holding and he was beaten back, also in disorder. The melee system in AGW is somewhat complicated, but seems to make sense and yield an historical outcome. AGW is card driven, using a normal deck of playing cards, with the turn ending on the drawing of the second Joker. As it happened, we were able to go through the whole deck, the last card turned being the second Joker. I think we both learned some lessons, and a good remind of just how powerful magazine rifles are on formed troops, just like they did in 1914. As Ross wrote after the game: They began digging trenches that night.