Angus Konstam's Edinburgh Wargames
The Western Front (Verdun), 1916
The ultimate horror...
Well, I started this section by asking who on earth would want to wargame the First World War? Its all trenches, machine guns, poison gas, futile and suicidal assaults... and of course Verdun has it all! The ultimate Great War grudge match, the hellish slog between the French and the Germans during the spring and summer of 1916 made the Somme and Ypres almost look like a walk in the park.
Obviously gaming something like this needed a particularly special commitment. After all, the games are going to be bruising, bloody affairs, with little in the way of tactical subtlety... and therefore should suit my gaming style to a T! The catalyst was a battlefield tour of Verdun in the summer of 2005. Seeing villages like Fleury where there wasn't anything larger than brick dust left, or crawling through the passageways of Fort Douaumont really brought home the sheer ferocity of the fighting, and the appalling loss of life.
One of the most moving parts of the tour was a visit to Hill 304, a spur of Le Morte Homme. It was there on 16th June 1916 that 2nd Lt. Rudi Kohnstamn of the 118th Hesse Rgt. was killed in action. My uncle was only 20 at the time, an extremely bright young man who planned to study medicine. Like hundreds of thousands of others, he became another statistic in the Verdun meat-grinder. Now on the other side of the family I've got British relatives who were killed in the war, and my grandfather fought in the Black Watch during 1915, when he was gassed. However, its Rudi who peaked my interest, and kindled my desire to build up a German army, just as it would have looked during that awful spring.
At first glance the German uniforms of this time look rather dull, especially compared to the French who get to wear those cool "horizon bleu" outfits and blue Adrian helmets. However, for the Germans the pickelhaube was in the process of being replaced by the steel helmet, so my units were a mixture of the two - the pickelhaube troops wearing it with the spike removed, which leaves a very strange looking cloth-covered helmet. Then there's the red trim, which brightens up an otherwise dull uniform. My figures are a mixture of Renegade and Great War Miniatures. Both companies produce excellent (and fully compatible) figures, full of animation and character. However, my favourites are those Great War trench raiders and stormtroopers, who really look tooled up!
The terrain was made using 2 foot by 2 foot TSS terrain tiles. I bought their trench and no-mans land tiles, and found them pretty awful. For a start they were mainly green, the craters were far too regular, and the trenches looked like they'd been cut by a perfectionist archaeologist. Dougie Trail and I set to work, cutting new trench lines, cutting out more shell holes, and generally making the terrain look as kicked over as possible. It was then covered in glue, sand and then spray painted. As you can see, the effect isn't too shabby. Amazingly, we managed to produce eight tiles in just one Sunday afternoon.
Once we take more photos I'll post better pictures, including close-ups of my Germans and Dougie's French. He's going to work on the British next, when the same terrain will turn into the muddy fields of Passchendaele.
This game made an appearance at Targe, the small but perfectly formed Scottish wargame show up in Kirriemuir on Saturday 4th November 2006, and won a prize.
Army Profiles: The German Army The French Army (both still under construction)
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