How to play 1918: Part 6: Missions and Terrain

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, more kinetic and less about trench warfare and endless charges into the teeth of enemy machine guns.

Accordingly, the core rulebook includes eight different missions with a wide variety of objectives and special rules. You might be capturing objectives out in no-man’s land, flanking with cavalry units or fighting at night. Pitched battles are perfectly playable of course, but we definitely feel like it’s more fun to be raiding a fortified trench or trying to break through enemy lines.

Scenarios might use rules for heavily fortified bunkers, capturing prisoners and keeping troops in reserve - each new element changing the game for a fresh experience.

Mission One is relatively simple. Entitled Between the Wire, one side’s goal is to capture and fortify a massive new shell-hole somewhere in no-man’s land, which has been earmarked as a new forward base. The other has to put a stop to such silliness. It features standard deployment zones 12” deep, with a 12” crater in the middle, 6” from either zone. 

Both sides must secure the crater by getting bodies into it; the defender must then secure it with wire, while the attacker is rewarded for killing enemy units. Of course, the scenario is fought at night, limiting Command Range to just 6” and firing range to 24” (with a -1 penalty to hit). Matters are compounded by eagle-eyed gunners keeping watch from afar: the more a unit fires, the more flash markers it acquires. Then, every Command Phase, the unit with the most markers gets shot at by an enemy Heavy Machine Gun! It’s not a mission for volunteers…

Mission Three represents a small part of a wider engagement. The attacker is preparing to go Over the Top, advancing into enemy territory and attempting to capture strongpoints and perhaps even the next trenchline. The defender is caught on the hop, half their forces in reserve at the start of the battle and softened up by a heavy-hitting preliminary barrage. An additional barrage may be secretly scheduled at a particular time and target. 

Mission VIII, meanwhile, is the closest thing to more modern warfare - the two sides have entered The Green Fields Beyond. They’re free of trenches and the wire, fighting a dizzying dance in the open. Using farm buildings, copses and allied tanks as cover, players try to score a series of objectives under changing parameters - battlefield conditions can change with the roll of a dice, and you never know what’s coming next…

Terrain

Speaking of farm buildings, copses and trenches, terrain is a meaningful addition to a 1918 battlefield. Units can take cover in buildings, for instance, taking protected shots at the foe… right until someone zeroes in a field gun and blows their improvised fortress to smithereens.

Trenches are probably the most heavily featured terrain in the game - and Warfulcrum will be releasing some gorgeous modular trenches in the near future. Trenches provide cover and a modicum of protection from artillery, as well as boosting movement for sections hurrying from one side of the battlefield to the next. Proper fortifications will also be available, allowing yet more survivability to a desperate defender.

Trees, meanwhile, also make for great improvised firing positions, but woe betide anyone nearby when an explosive shell goes off, turning trunks into killing shrapnel. Roads are great for vehicles, which may otherwise get stuck in the mud, while your rifle sections can dash from wall to wall as they advance. Nowhere is truly safe, though.

Safe from what, you may ask? The main menace of the Great War: artillery. We’ll be exploring how artillery works in great detail in our next article, looking at the mortars and field guns you may bring to the field, as well as the more distant batteries pounding this miserable section of trench from off stage. We are quite proud of our rules for bracketing, and soon you’ll be zeroing in on soft targets like a true artilleryman. 

Great War Miniatures @ North Star Military Figures

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