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The Great War

Game ID: GID0332984
Collection Status
Description

The Great War, the latest adaptation of Richard Borg's Command & Colours system, brings the epic battles of World War 1 to the gaming table, allowing players to portray important engagements throughout WWI history. The battles, included in the scenario booklet, focus on the historical deployment of forces and important terrain features of trench fighting in scale with the game system. The scale of the game is flexible and varies from battle to battle. For some scenarios, a few infantry units may represent an entire wing of a larger battle, while in other scenarios a unit may represent just a few brave soldiers going over the top.

The Command card system drives movement, creates a "fog of war", and presents players with many interesting opportunities, while the battle dice resolve combat quickly and efficiently. The Combat cards add an element of suspense and will challenge players to coordinate their use in a timely manner. Overall, the battlefield tactics players will need to execute to gain victory conform remarkably well to the strengths and limitations of the various types of WWI units, their weapons, battlefield terrain, and written history.

In this core game, the main focus is on a number of WWI trench warfare battles. However, a series of expansions, which will feature early war, Eastern Front scenarios, tanks, airplanes, other national armies, plus more special personnel figures, are already in the planning stage to enhance your WWI gaming experience.

Year Published
2015
Transcript Analysis
Browse transcript mentions, sentiments, pros/cons, mechanics, topics, quotes, and references.
Total mentions: 1
This page: 1
Sentiment: pos 0 · mix 1 · neu 0 · neg 0
Mentions per page
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Video B3jHxEzKxlY The Discriminating Gamer top_10_list at 1:19 sentiment: mixed
video_pk 8314 · mention_pk 24472
Video thumbnail
Click to watch at 1:19
Overall sentiment (raw)
mixed
Pros
  • classic Commands & Colors feel applied to WWI
  • artillery events add dramatic prelude to engagements
Cons
  • plastic components are prone to assembly issues and fragility
  • physical quality disappoints relative to other editions
Thematic elements
  • industrial-era mechanized warfare
  • World War I battlefields
  • historical tactical simulation with modular scenarios
Comparison games
  • Medieval
  • Ancients
  • Napoleonics
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
  • block-based unit representation — Uses the Commands & Colors block system for moves and combats, with offboard artillery elements influencing early turns.
  • offboard artillery at scenario start — Artillery fire is resolved from offboard sources at the opening, creating random carnage before main play begins.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
  • There' s just be some random carnage before the game played out.
  • dragon cards... there were like a whole another deck of cards that can throw monkey wrenches into what you know your opponent's trying to do.
  • it's such a great system and we ended up playing seven or eight games that night.
  • I absolutely love the Napoleonic era, Napoleonic warfare.
  • my number one Commands and Colors game of all time. That is Memoir 44 with the Overlord expansion.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
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