Stripped Down for Parts: World War 1 Dual Pack: 1914 Glory’s End / When Eagles Fight

  

 

 

Like a lot of wargamers, the Great War held little interest for me when I took my first steps into the hobby. It’s probably fair to say that the hobby didn’t take a big interest in World War I either, until it had partaken of the then more recent Second World War, and the perennial favourites of the Age of Napoleon and the American Civil War.

In the last five or so years, I’ve developed an interest in World War I games (more than a decade longer than that if you count my deep obsession with Wings of Glory (Ares Games, 2012) when it was still called Wings of War (Nexus Editrice, 2004). I own maybe half a dozen games covering the either aspects of the war or the whole European theatre, and I’ve just started reading Barbera Tuchman’s The Guns of August, so it seemed like a good time to take a look at this recent acquisition, a hitherto unpunched copy of 1914: Glory's End / When Eagles Fight (GMT Games, 2014).

The two games featured in originally appeared roughly a year apart in Command magazine (When Eagles Fight in 1993, and 1914: Glory’s End in 1994). These were well received, and the rerelease of the two games as a boxed set for the centennial year of the beginning of the Great War made for a popular release.

At the moment of annihilation. Twenty years later, photographer Robert Capa
would capture a similar moment during the Spanish Civil War
in his famous photograph, The Fallen Man.

The cover illustration presents a young French soldier at the moment of his death, an allegory for the nation’s dual loss of youth and innocence It was by French artist Léon Réni-Mel, who is better known as a late Impressionist painter, but created a fairly substantial body of military art. Réni-Mel also served as an infantryman in the French army and painted this watercolour sometime during the Great War, and it was donated to the Musée de l'Armée – probably by the artist, and first exhibited in 1918. It remains a part of the museum’s collection to this day.

The work is referenced by a couple of varying titles, but the intended title is most likely Fantassin français chargeant des positions allemandes (French infantryman charging German positions). It was dedicated by the artist to his comrades-at-arms who killed or wounded during the First Battle of the Marne.

Mind the gap: box technology has come a long way in the last ten years.

The box-back is set out in the classic GMT style of the time, with cut-outs featuring the two game maps and some sample counters (a little larger than actual size), with a two-paragraph description of the background and parameters of each game; it’s worth mentioning here that while both games primarily field units at the corps level, the two games play over different periods of the war: Glory’s End covers only the first three months of campaigning on the Western Front (the time before the theatre settled into an entrenched meat-grind), but When Eagles Fight covers the whole term of the Eastern Front conflict.

The Difficulty-meter puts the games at a 4 out of 9 (the low end of Medium) and the solitaire suitability at 7 out of 9. Looking over the rules, I don’t think there’s going to be anything terribly fiddly to deal with, and I think the higher solitaire rating fits the game as well. I’ll probably be taking these out for a turn on my own before I get to play them with an opponent, so I’ll get to test that hypothesis.

Glory's End Rulebook. The World War 1 logo was a branding motif that
carried through several GMT titles.

Each game comes with its own rulebook. These are printed on matte paper (this feels like about 90 gsm) and are full-colour throughout, though not profusely illustrated; don’t expect graphic-rich examples of play here.

GE rulebook sample page. Clear and readable. No index,
but at twenty pages you barely need one.

The Glory’s End rulebook runs to twenty pages, of which the first four pages are given over to a cover page (incorporating a Table of Contents), a brief Introduction, and an explanation of the game’s components and abbreviations used in the rules. The Core Rules take up just twelve pages, and the last three pages cover the optional Dummy Counters rule, the Battle of the Marne mini-scenario (more on this later) and the short “historical” scenario covering just the first month of the war on the Western Front (ten turns), with a Turn Sequence Outline helpfully printed on the back cover page. The rules look pretty straight forward and understandable for anyone with some experience with operational level hex and counter wargames.

Glory's End map-sheet. It will be flatter under a sheet of plexi.

The two maps strike a good balance between playable area and useful charts and tracks. I prefer game boards that at least build Action or Resource Point tracks into the play surface, as this means less time spent away from the actual board. This is, of course not always achievable, but here it works nicely. The map is situated in the middle of the sheet, an imperfect square taking in Belgium, Luxembourg, northern France and potions of Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. National boundaries are marked with a dashed red line along hex borders, so no arguing between players over “accidental” invasions of neutral countries. The Turn Record Track and dual-purpose Victory Points and Replacement Track are located on the western end of the map, while the Terrain Effects Chart, Combat Results Table (duplicated to face each player, and the Siege Gun Table (German player side only) are placed along the Eastern edge of the map-sheet. Three-quarter inch hexes accommodate the 5/8^th counters comfortably (I will be clipping the counters before I get the game to the table anyway).

The map itself is clear and easy to read, with forest, mountains major and minor rivers and major towns/cities clearly indicated, and the scale is nine miles to a hex. It’s a boon to have the TEC printed on the map for ease of checking movement and combat effects on the fly, though these usually become second nature after three or four turns. There is enough territory covered to meet the historical parameters of the Western Front’s opening months without feeling confined; this is the stage of the war when the Front was dynamic and subject to fairly rapid change, before any illusions of a quick victory for either side gave way to the molasses-creep of a static frontline.

The Marne Mini-Map, for those times when you want a little less gratuitous bloodshed.

Also included is a Marne Mini-Map. This is printed on the same weight cardstock as the Player Aids (which we will get to shortly). The map is a letter-sized (roughly 11 ½” by 8 ½”) and is provided for the smallest scenario in the game (just five turns). The map is an abstract of the larger campaign map, covering from Paris on the western edge to about fifteen miles short of Verdun (just off-map). Both the primary map-sheet and the Marne mini-map are scaled at 9½ miles to a hex.

The Marne map allows players to play out just the First Battle of the Marne without having to resort to the full map. This scenario should be a great introductory game, as nearly all the rules for the full game are still at play here, but the space and time requirement has been truncated to a manageable level – the battle game should be playable on a school night.

Interestingly, this seems to be a battle of particular interest to the designer, Ted Raicer. His earlier Western Front game, Grand Illusion: Mirage of Glory, 1914 (GMT Games, 2004) also includes a First Battle of the Marne scenario, though this is played over a restricted number of hexes on the game’s map-sheet.

Glory's End counter-sheets.

The counters for both games are ⅝” and clearly presented with big numerals in bold, rolling serif font and slightly smaller NATO symbols, making them quite readable, even without reading glasses. Set up is eased with a tiny four-digit hex-number on the top-left corner of the unit counters that begin the game on the map, or a shorter number for the unit’s entry turn (if you’re like me, you’ll almost certainly need your reading glasses for the location or turn numbers, set at about two-point).

There are a few issues with counter registration. I’m quick to point out this doesn’t affect the units; in both games some of the administrative markers are vertically unaligned, not to the point of being unplayable, by any means. I’m not angry; I’m just disappointed. (Though, to be fair, it really hasn’t been that long that we’ve seen consistently good counter registration from most publishers – how quickly we forget).

The units run from one-step to four steps, the three- and four-step units having two counters. Higher step units are marked with a small number in a coloured circle left of the NATO symbol. There is nothing provided to help manage the multi-counter units or those that enter play in later turns, but as one might expect, fans have stepped up with organisation mats for each game downloadable from the Files section of the Boardgamegeek game page (link from the title above).

Glory's End PAC.

The Players’ Aid cards (PACs) for both games are printed on a decent weight of cardstock and are duplicate pairs for each of the games. The Glory’s End PAC is single-sided, and features the Combat Results Table and the Siege Gun Table (a belt-and-braces approach given this information’s availability on the map-sheet), as well as the Victory Point values of various locations for each side.

Roster sheets are used in the free set-up scenario (no peeking during set-up, please).

Glory’s End also comes with a Roster Sheet Pad. This is for the use of players choosing the Free Set Up Scenario, rather than the historical set-up. The guidelines for the free set up advise one player, then the other to set up their units’ free placement starting positions and then record each unit and its placement hex-number on a piece of paper (each while the other is looking away). I haven’t counted off the number of sheets, but it feels like abo fifteen or so with a light cardboard backing.

The I get the impression that the pad may have been a lasty minute addition and the rules were never updated to mention it. It would speed up the process somewhat, as it lists the antagonists’ forces, grouped by formation, with a space to write down the hex-location. I’m broadly less interested in counterfactual games, but this could be an interesting exercise, though I’ll probably need to play with the historical placement for or five times, before I’d be tempted to try something different.

WEF rulebook.

Like its sister game, the rulebook for When Eagles fight runs to 20 pages, and follows roughly the same format. The actual rules run to about twelve pages, with the last two internal pages given over to two scenario variations, “Russian Plan 19” and “Schlieffen East Variant,” Players’ and Designer’s notes, and a perfunctory Turn Sequence on the back cover. Again, this has been addressed on BGG with a player-created Extended Sequence of Play prepared by Gary (Ardwulf) Mengle, from when he did a multi-part play-through on his YouTube channel.

When Eagles Fight map.

The map for When Eagles fight is printed on the verso of the Glory’s End map, and benefits from the same style of treatment. At 24 miles to a hex, the scale of the map is larger, befitting the sprawling range of the conflict. Again, the CRT is built right into the play area, along with a Random Events Table (German side), Ammunition Shortage Table (Russian side), Strategic Movement constraints table (both), and a shared Accumulated Replacements track, as well as a Terrain Effects Chart and, at the other end of the map, the Turn Track, which incorporates information like Victory Check turns. The turns in WEF are one to two months (over the months of November through April, covering winter and the spring thaw, or Rasputitsa, the turns cover two months each).

WEF Counter-sheets. I do like a low-density game.

As previously mentioned, the counters are five-eighths of an inch and quite readable. WEF has just one and a half sheets of counters, The same stipulation applies for the poor registration on the lowest rows of the counter-sheets, but the units are all quite fine. I’ve been punching out and clipping the counters, starting with the When Eagles Fight sheets while I write this post. The cardstock is a tad thinner than what you mostly get from a GMT game these days, and they’ve been a joy to clip – no careful easing the counters into the slot so you accidently delaminate them (this has happened once or twice – these days I test-clip the corners of each sheet before I embark on the actual counters).

When Eagles Fight PAC.

The PAC for When Eagles Fight is arguably more useful than its Glory’s End counterpart. It’s double-sided, with the charts and tables on the front and a list of initialled Random Events (that correspond to the red lettered chits on the left side of the full counter-sheet)., explaining the game effects and clauses for each random event. The Tables replicate those found on the map-sheet, but the CRT here includes all the relevant modifier notes left off the map table.

Box, dice and baggies.

I’m always a little surprised when an unpunched second-hand game crosses my path, but really surprised when it still has all its bits. I don’t resent replacing a pair of dice or something – this comes under the heading of general wear and tear – but Glory’s End/When Eagles fight still had its dice (in their own zip-loc baggie), and its original roll of storage bags. This is a rare find, and it makes me wonder if the previous owner did anything more with the game than tear the shrink off and have a gander at the components.