How to play 1918: Spring Offensive: Part 1 - The core concepts

It is 1918. The war of stalemate has ended, and a new mode of warfare is taking shape. The armies that have suffered so long and so brutally during gruelling years of mud, blood and trenches have been thrown into motion with new strategies, advanced technologies and innovative tactics hard won from the long struggle of industrialised warfare.

Despite being close to exhaustion, both the Allied Powers and the Central Powers will conduct ambitious new campaigns that cover more ground, and strike deeper than ever before. These last desperate days will debut tactics and technology that will bring an end to this Great War. They will also irrevocably set the path towards the next.

1918: A First World War Miniatures Game is about that final year. The battlefield has changed, and the armies of the great powers have adapted accordingly. No longer a war of trenches and barbed wire, this is a new war, a war of daring offensives and manoeuvres. 

What do you need?

1918 is a squad-based skirmish-style wargame focusing on historical accuracy without getting bogged down in minutiae. It’s designed for 28mm miniatures - in particular miniatures designed by us (Warfulcrum Games) - but it can be played at other similar scales if you prefer. 

Forces are generally between about 20 and 60 miniatures, representing sections, platoons and even companies of infantry, cavalry, field guns, vehicles and the officers leading them in the field. You are assumed to be playing in a small segment of a much larger battle taking place off stage - small engagements were rare during this period, after all.

The recommended table size is 6’x4’, while terrain can usually be standard woods, trees, buildings and roads - though you’re welcome to model some of the more devastated sites soldiers would have fought around in 1918. Certain scenarios require trenches and strongpoints - we are preparing a fantastic range of modular trenches for sale, replete with period details.

As well as miniatures, you’ll need a fistful of D6 dice, one D8 die, and a tape measure, as well as various markers to connote things like Orders assigned to units and Pins, which represent how badly under fire a unit is.

Core concepts

1918 is based around a structure of alternating turns - players roll for Initiative, applying modifiers as directed - and then take it in turns to issue orders and activate units. The game usually lasts between four and six turns, with each divided into three phases:

• Command Phase: Orders are issued, and certain special gambits and abilities may be activated out of sequence

• Tactical Phase: Players take it in turns to carry out their orders: advancing, running, shooting, bracing for attack and rallying

• End Phase: Players tally their Victory Points, handle morale effects and complete any other book-keeping

Orders are issued by Senior Leaders, who are often in small, mobile units representing officers such as Captains, Lieutenants and their bodyguards and batmen. They can either join squads or race around the back lines urging their men onwards. When a squad becomes isolated or takes too much fire, it might not complete its orders, instead adopting a Stance to rally, regroup or dive for cover.

Doctrines add another tactical layer, representing the composition and battlefield role of a given force, how its officers employ the resources at their disposal, and how its soldiers fight. These determine how you build your force, which in-battle Gambits you can access, and how likely you are to gain the initiative.

Every nation has a Dugout Board which displays the Gambits available to you. Gambits are activated with Command Dice - a pool of dice generated by your officers which you roll at the start of each turn. These reflect historical tactics, the impact of dynamic battlefield leadership and the peculiarities of different nations. There are two types of Gambit: Doctrine Gambits and Leadership Gambits. The former are granted by your chosen Doctrine, while the latter are issued by your senior officer. Gambits have a variety of effects, including letting a unit play out of sequence, unleash a deadly attack, or charge into melee with greater abandon.

How does it play?

1918 will be familiar to miniature wargamers - units have simple profiles with three stats showing how good they are at shooting, brawling and general soldiering. The final stat - Veterency - covers saving throws, morale, recovery from Pins and other battlefield tasks, such as donning gas masks. There are also various simple keywords to connote elite status, unwillingness to die, and other battlefield quirks. There’s not a great variety in stats here - most men are roughly as good at fighting as others, and your officers aren’t battlefield supermen!

Weapons also have profiles, which indicate their range, rate of fire, force, and how good they are at pinning squads down. They also have keywords to demonstrate shrapnel, extra suppression, blast radius and so forth. Vehicles have more complex profiles which we’ll cover in a future article. 

Senior Leaders are key to victory - you need your leaders in range to issue orders when the time comes to attack. The more commanding the leader, the more chance a unit will follow his orders. If they don’t, they adopt a Stance instead, acting later in the Tactical Phase and firing with much less accuracy. 

Gun teams, field guns and off-table artillery batteries all feature heavily, while tanks are a more common sight at this point in the Great War. We’ll cover all these in more depth in the future.

The rulebook contains a number of Scenarios to play through - some of which are simply pitched battles, while in others you might be storming a trench or making a daring counter-attack. Scenarios each have their own victory and scoring conditions, but you can also win by destroying or routing enemy units and killing their officers. Once enough of a force has been removed from the table, morale comes into play - and there’s more chance that the rest will begin to falter or even rout.

We will cover these concepts in greater depth during future articles. Next week we’ll look at force organisation, officers and the basic units available to the four forces in the Spring Offensive book. The rules are available now - you can buy them here, alongside an ever-growing range of finely detailed resin miniatures and STLs. Sign up to the newsletter for a 10% discount on your first order!