A Week Over the Front - standalone game & campaign scenario generator for WGF

[JBParkland]

Here is a campaign game which started life as a scenario generator for WGF (or Wings of War as it was at the time), but ended up also becoming a standalone WWI tactical board game called “A Week Over the Front”. My local group played two full campaigns with this in 2011, which went very well, so I thought I’d share it with the Aerodrome. The aircraft stats are based on available aircraft in 2011 (Series 1-5), but if anyone is interested in how any of the Series 6-9 aircraft would be treated in game terms, please let me know and I can convert them into WOTF points. Also, if there's any interest it should be relatively easy for me to convert the game system to work with Andrea's 2013 aircraft points system instead of the points system currently included.

Game rules and components are attached here: A Week over the Front v1.3.doc, and a summary is below.



Game Summary
A Week over the Front is a board game of tactical WWI air operations inspired by Wings of Glory First World War (WGF). It was primarily designed as a campaign scenario generator for WGF but can also be played as a standalone game.

The game takes places over a period of up to 2 weeks in game time. At game start, each player secretly purchases aircraft (usually up to c.12 good-quality aircraft). Players can choose from scouts, two-seaters and giants, and can choose between higher volumes of lower-quality aircraft, or fewer, better ones. Players secretly draw their Stance for the game, which gives them extra points for either successfully undertaking missions in enemy territory, preventing enemy missions, or destroying enemy aircraft. Each Player’s Stance is kept secret until game end, and can make a significant difference to overall victory points.

Each game day, players secretly allocate their available aircraft to either defend one of their 3 friendly zones or to fly specific missions in one of the 3 enemy zones, and decide whether their aircraft will be at high, medium or low altitude. Players also decide where to concentrate their AA in their friendly zones. Victory Points are doubled in the central 2 Zones, so players have to choose whether to mass their resources in the obvious centre, or focus on the probably weaker wings.

There are 6 mission types that can be flown (Bombing, Artillery Co-operation, Recon, Photo Recon, Trench Strafing and Balloon Busting). Not all mission types will be available each day – available mission types are set by headquarters for each player and the players can choose from their available missions.

Where both players have aircraft in a Zone, the mission can be played as a WGF scenario or resolved using the game’s “Battle Board”, where the attacker decides which aircraft will attempt the mission and which will act as escorts, and the defender decides which defending aircraft will take on the escorts or and which will intercept the mission aircraft. If played in WGF, the defender sets up with targets, trenches and a balloon without knowing the attacker’s objective, which is recorded on the Zone Map only revealed at the engagement ‘s end. Players can also secretly decide to have some of their aircraft arriving late onto the WGF board, so players can try to lure their opponent to attack a weaker force, only to be bounced later by overwhelming odds.

Example Zone Map (shows Zone B as revealed with other Zones yet to be played):


The WGF scenario set-up is shown below (Central Powers are attacking and Entente are defending in this example):
WGF scenario setup.png  Views: 82  Size: 12.3 KB  ID: 192896" class="thumbnail" style="float:CONFIG" />


Aircraft can only fly 2 out of every 3 days, so players need to wisely use their resources if they are not to run out of serviceable aircraft every 3rd day. Players get daily replacement points for purchasing new aircraft, and replacement points are increased for the side behind in points, which represents local commanders prioritising resources to where failures are occurring and helps keep the game interesting and balanced until the end.

Each game lasts up to 14 game days (actual game length is variable to stop “last turn syndrome”). Each game day can have a maximum of 6 battles, but there will usually be 2-3 battles for each game day, so a full campaign would be around 35 battles, which could either be played in WGF over many weeks or months, or use the battle board to complete the entire campaign game in a few hours.

Highlights & Examples
Particular highlights from our local group campaigns were:
1) Central Powers decided to invest in a Zeppelin Staaken, and sent it on a trench bombing run into an Entente zone defended by only two Bristol fighters. The Zeppelin started carpet bombing everything in sight and looked unstoppable until a very brave Bristol flew head on towards the bomber, Immelmanned in front of it and (once the rear gunner had recovered) let fly with its dual rear guns. The Staaken drew an explosion, much to Central dismay. This turned the whole campaign for several days and resulted in a lot of medals for the Bristol crew.

2) Entente tried to be sneaky, and sent an lone RE8 on a pretend low level recon against 3 Fokker DVIIs, while the real mission would be 2 B-firing DH4s flying a high-level photo recon. The DH4’s arrival was delayed until turn 10, with the idea being that the DVIIs wouldn’t be able to climb back up to intercept the fast DH4s in time. Sadly, the Centrals were highly suspicious and kept 2 DVIIs flying top cover while only one DVII went low to take out the RE8. The DVII made short work of the Harry Tate, leaving the DH4s to humiliatingly withdraw.

3) The Centrals were narrowly ahead for the whole game, despite the Zeppelin debacle, and the eventual winner all hinged on the Stance reveal at game end. The envelope was opened, revealing the Entente had a “Defensive” stance, so got extra points for avoiding successful Central missions, which was enough to win the campaign.

For our local group games, I printed the zone map, battle board, hanger, flight grid and counters on coloured A4 card from a local art shop (blue for Entente, Grey for Central Powers). Sample photos are below (apologies for poor photo quality - actual print-ready versions of all components are in the Rules doc):

Entente Hanger & Flight Grid:


Example Battle Board, showing 2x DH4s escorted by 2 Spad XIIIs being intercepted by 2xAlbatros DVs, 1 x Fokker DVII and a Fokker Dr1.

[Stumptonian]

Very interesting concept.
I think I will bookmark this for later use.