The intention is - hopefully in July or August - to have a bash at WW1 using the Spearhead rules. This apparently is a blast - with barrages, railway guns, gas, primitive tanks and aircraft - not to mention trenches, machine guns and massed charges.
Russ has got a load of Germans, Ian the French so I've put in a bid on eBay for some WW1 British to get the ball rolling.
To get into the mood I'm reading 'Over the Top' - the great battles of WW1. In it are some great nuggets of information regarding the conflict :-
The Angel of Mons (or rather the Angels of Mons) - where British troops were supposed to have seen English bowmen from Agincourt - was a complete myth made up by a newspaper writer.
The whole 9 yards is not (as some think) anything to do with American Football but references the ammunition for a Vickers machine gun. These came in ribbon strips that - when laid out - covered 9 yards. So 'give them the full 9 yards' meant shooting the full box of ammo at the enemy.
The famous Lewis gun (later the staple of the RFC airplanes) was developed as a direct consequence of early battles where the British troops would often outrun their MG support as the Vickers required 6 men to carry it - let alone the ammo. Kitchener therefore demanded a light portable MG that could be carried by one man and keep up with the troops.
There was no 'race for the sea'. Simply French (then British) forces and German forces kept trying to outflank each other on the only 'open' flank available - which happened to mean each leapfrogging each other until the coast intervened.
The great shell shortage 'scandal' of 1914 / 15 was caused by two factors. Planners thought the main conflict would take place at sea so stockpiled hundreds of thousands of large naval shells - but only 30,000 of these were used in 4 years of war. Field artillery was considered a secondary requirement as the battles were expected to be highly mobile affairs so there was no great need for large stocks of shells. However, as trench warfare began to dominate, artillery was seen as the only way to find holes in the oposition lines and to destroy enemy forces as they formed up to attack. Artillery became the dominant feature of the war.
As a consequence, domestic supplies were soon exhausted and suppliers got very rich (and governments nearly bankrupted themselves) providing millions of shells which - in most cases - inflicted minimal damage compared to the cost of provision.
The term barrage wasn't coined for some time in the war. Barrage means 'barrier' and the French were amongst the first to use artillery to 'block' enemy advances where the line was weak or threatened. It was only later that the term was used for any concentration of artillery shooting.
Russ has got a load of Germans, Ian the French so I've put in a bid on eBay for some WW1 British to get the ball rolling.
To get into the mood I'm reading 'Over the Top' - the great battles of WW1. In it are some great nuggets of information regarding the conflict :-
The Angel of Mons (or rather the Angels of Mons) - where British troops were supposed to have seen English bowmen from Agincourt - was a complete myth made up by a newspaper writer.
The whole 9 yards is not (as some think) anything to do with American Football but references the ammunition for a Vickers machine gun. These came in ribbon strips that - when laid out - covered 9 yards. So 'give them the full 9 yards' meant shooting the full box of ammo at the enemy.
The famous Lewis gun (later the staple of the RFC airplanes) was developed as a direct consequence of early battles where the British troops would often outrun their MG support as the Vickers required 6 men to carry it - let alone the ammo. Kitchener therefore demanded a light portable MG that could be carried by one man and keep up with the troops.
There was no 'race for the sea'. Simply French (then British) forces and German forces kept trying to outflank each other on the only 'open' flank available - which happened to mean each leapfrogging each other until the coast intervened.
The great shell shortage 'scandal' of 1914 / 15 was caused by two factors. Planners thought the main conflict would take place at sea so stockpiled hundreds of thousands of large naval shells - but only 30,000 of these were used in 4 years of war. Field artillery was considered a secondary requirement as the battles were expected to be highly mobile affairs so there was no great need for large stocks of shells. However, as trench warfare began to dominate, artillery was seen as the only way to find holes in the oposition lines and to destroy enemy forces as they formed up to attack. Artillery became the dominant feature of the war.
As a consequence, domestic supplies were soon exhausted and suppliers got very rich (and governments nearly bankrupted themselves) providing millions of shells which - in most cases - inflicted minimal damage compared to the cost of provision.
The term barrage wasn't coined for some time in the war. Barrage means 'barrier' and the French were amongst the first to use artillery to 'block' enemy advances where the line was weak or threatened. It was only later that the term was used for any concentration of artillery shooting.