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While the Great War wasn’t the first to involve dedicated snipers (that dubious honour goes to the English Civil War, somehow… Imagine trying to get a clear shot using a musket without rifling…) this was the first war in which dedicated sniper units and tactics were formalised. The Germans were the first side to realise the benefit of scoped lenses, and their snipers were one of many new terrors of the first few years of the war. Britain and France slowly came to understand t

With the release of our fully modular 28mm WW1 trench terrain system, James is here to explain how he went about painting his set for the Warfulcrum Games battlefield. If you like what you see, you can buy yours from the Warfulcrum webstore right now, including individual sections (with lots more sections planned and coming soon!) One of my favorite aspects of historical wargaming is the research that goes into a project. So when I got my own set of WW1 trenches, I went strai

Join us at Leicester De Montfort University on the 8th and 9th of August We will be bringing 1918 to Britcon 2026 this August - so come and say hi if you’re attending. We’ll be bringing a ton of stock, particularly British and German forces, so if there are gaps in your forces, let us know and we’ll try and make sure it’s reserved for you. We’re also in the process of putting together a massive display and demo board, showcasing loads of cool (and freshly painted) 1918 miniat

Today we've got a quick interview with WFG co-founder Sam Kelly, who sculpted the British Rifle Platoon, to understand that process and what goes into it. This article originally appeared as part of our Patreon, and we're sharing it here to give people a sense of our processes at Warfulcrum Games. James: Where do you start with sculpting a new line of historical figures? Sam: Research. Lots of it. Fortunately we'd already done a lot of research into the platoon structure and

France and America are about to join the fight! Our next Kickstarter project opens on the 27th of May, bringing hundreds of incredible new miniatures to the battlefields of 1918. Entitled Allies on the Aisne, this new supplement for 1918 introduces two complete nations to the Western Front: the French Republic (“les Poilus”) and the United States (“the Doughboys”). The release will include more than 120 new infantry and support weapon miniatures and at least five new vehicles

Human warfare notched another grim milestone on this day in 1918. For the first time ever, tanks met on the field of battle - opposing squadrons of German and British vehicles clashing near the village of Villers-Bretonneux in northern France, in a battle you can now recreate on the tabletop with this free downloadable scenario PDF. The Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux itself might otherwise have been a footnote - another senseless engagement in the Spring Offensive, a las

Known as the Sturmpanzerwagen, the A7V was the only German-designed tank to see combat during the Great War. Introduced in 1918, it weighed a massive 30 tons with a crew of at least 18. Its armour was 30mm thick at the front, with 15mm at the sides and rear - much thicker than even the British Mk IV, and effectively impregnable to small arms fire. It could move at a sprightly 6mph, and sported six MG08 medium machine guns and a 5.7cm Maxim-Nordenfelt Gun. Despite its fearsom

On this date in 1918, the German army began its final offensive of the First World War, the Spring Offensive, which our first release covers. In this article, we give an overview of the Spring Offensive, how the German Army fought it and how you can recreate the German tactics used in 1918: A First World War Miniatures Game. By 1918, the war had stretched both Allied and Central powers to the breaking point. The morale of the allied powers had dropped significantly after the

Introduced in 1904, the Ordnance QF 18-pound Field Gun was rapidly installed as the standard field gun of the British army. This impressive piece of kit could lob a variety of ammunition types with an 84mm calibre to ranges of up to 10,000 metres. By the time of the Armistice, over 3,000 18pdrs were in service on the Western Front, and between them they had used nearly 100 million rounds of ammunition, mostly shrapnel and HE. The 18pdr would remain in service through the int

We’ve released enough miniatures over the last few months to build up a complete army of British or German troops - and we’ve got an entire game system to play with them. But your games of 1918: Spring Offensive have been missing one crucial component: trenches. Until now. We’re incredibly proud to open the pre-orders for the first wave of our massive new system of modular trenches. Each piece is designed to fit together with every other piece, with the potential to build a h

The battlefields of the Great War were largely the backdrop to indiscriminate killing, men killed in their dozens by explosive shells fired from distant artillery batteries miles behind the front lines, or cut down by relentless bursts of machine gun fire. But these were far from the only menace on the Western Front. The German Army were early adopters of sniping techniques, quickly recognising the value of sharpshooters in trench warfare - useful for killing off junior offic

The latest incredible set-piece miniature for 1918: Spring Offensive has arrived - and it’s huge. The German Army entered the war with the Feldkanone 96, an effective, fast-firing 7.7cm field gun unleashed in 1896. This weapon fired on a largely flat trajectory and, though ill-suited to the siege warfare of the trenches, proved very effective against troops in the open. By 1918, many of these weapons had been replaced or upgraded with the 1916 version, which swapped the field

The German Army was the first to develop and test the flammenwerfer - the flamethrower - for combat during the great war. First employed near Verdun in 1915 to help clear trenches, the results were spectacular; no enemy soldier would willingly hold their ground with liquid flames spilling over the parapet. Those who were caught in the blast would die an agonising death. By 1918, the 3rd Guard Pioneer Battalion specialised in the use of flamethrowers, while most Stormtrooper b

The First World War truly was a global conflict - what began as an argument between decaying European empires slowly but surely dragged most of the rest of the world into the fighting, with action in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and even Asia. The classic, anglo-centric idea of the Great War, however, is the Western Front - which cut right across the entirety of Europe in a jagged line of muddy trenches stretching from the English Channel to Switzerland. This is the focus

When most people think of the Great War, they picture the endless, churned fields of France and Belgium, of beleaguered infantrymen desperately charging into a wall of lethal machine gun fire, and of endless lines of trenches pounded by distant artillery. All of that is accurate, but it’s not the whole picture. Cavalry - so deadly in earlier ages - were still deployed right to the very end of the conflict, albeit in a much reduced capacity. Tanks, meanwhile, started to see ac

"Artillery Conquers, Infantry Occupies. " Maj. Gen. J.F.C Fuller. Although cannons, mortars and other big guns had been in heavy use across European battlefields since the 15th century at least, it wasn’t until the Great War that the terrible dominance of indirect fire really came to be felt. No game about the horrors of this conflict would be honest without the relentless thud of distant guns - and the very real threat they posed to life and limb - but the trick is to make

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen how 1918: A Miniatures Game works, from selecting forces and issuing orders to combat and morale . But, as more than a few old-fashioned generals discovered during the Great War, pitched battles can only get you so far… 1918 focuses on the Spring Offensive and the dying days of the war for several reasons, but one of the main ones is simple: by this point, military technology and tactics had evolved enough to make battles more fluid, mor

By 1918, morale was terrible for every soldier on every front in each nation. After four long, grinding years of war and death, no man was immune to despair. And yet, the great powers still battled. Morale is a key element in most tabletop wargames, but it comes to the fore especially in a simulation of the First World War. And it need not even take much death before a side begins to waver - horrific innovations like the tank, the machine gun and mustard gas reaped a heavy ps

So far in our round-up of how to play 1918, we’ve taken an overall look at the game , seen how to pick a platoon and worked out how to issue orders . Today, the rubber meets what’s left of the road after four years of sustained artillery bombardment: we’re looking at the Tactical Phase. You enter the Tactical Phase after every unit has been issued an order. Players now take it in turns to activate their units, starting with the ones which have successfully received Orders an

Each game of 1918 simulates a tiny snapshot of a much larger battle - two companies doing battle over a small section of trench during a wider engagement stretching on perhaps for miles in either direction off the tabletop, but it can also represent the smaller platoon actions - from cutting the barbed wire at midnight, to capturing enemy prisoners and raiding supplies. As we saw in our overview of the game , there are usually five or six turns in 1918, each split into three