Mud_amp_Blood.pdf

1 Introduction

Through the Mud and the Blood is a set of wargames rules aimed specifically at large scale skirmish games

in the Great War on the Western Front with between thirty and a hundred or so figures a side. The

mechanisms are designed to produce an enjoyable and playable game which can also faithfully reproduce

the tactics historically used.

This is a conflict that has always interested me; my father was named after his uncle who died in 1918

fighting against the Turks. My Grandfather, William Clarke, was wounded by machine gun fire on the first

day of the Third Battle of Ypres, nearly ending my rule writing career before it had begun. They were two

of eight brothers who served King and Country during that terrible conflict and whose service left an

indelible mark on my childhood as my Grandmother’s home was literally crammed with accounts of the

fighting in magazines and books published either during or soon after the conflict.

Naturally, my experiences at school taught me that to view the Great War as anything other than a huge

man-made tragedy was not only wrong-headed, but somehow immoral. Fed on a diet of poets and dubious

politics we were assured that “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” was not just an old lie, but the most

terrible lie of all. The sacrifices of our forebears were made somehow worse, even futile, by the earnest

assertion that they had been sacrificed on the altar of militarism by uncaring Generals; Generals safe in

their Chateaux, who senselessly, carelessly and repeatedly sent hundreds and thousands of poor bloody

infantrymen to their deaths without any compunction. How could one have any wish to make a game from

such a dreadful conflict, where serried ranks of heroic but misguided men were simply fed into the

mincing machine that was the Western Front?

In fairness it was not a question I asked myself. It was clear that from a wargaming perspective the Great

War was a “non-period” where, apart from anything else, good taste precluded transferring it to the

tabletop. For me this, like the assurances made to us at school, was a simple fact, until it was that I

stumbled across Paddy Griffith’s superb book, Battle Tactics of the Western Front.

I must state here that I am a tremendous respecter of Dr Griffith’s work. He writes courageously, in that

he is prepared to question accepted “truths”, and in doing so obliges the reader to do the same. Whether

you agree with his findings and conclusions or not, you are at least obliged to challenge your own beliefs

and, hopefully, are then inspired to seek out more information with your own research and reading. It is

notable that since that book was published in 1994 we have seen a plethora of historians prepared to take

up the torch and re-examine the Great War. It is thanks to their hard work that we are now able to see

that far from being a war of senseless sacrifice, it was actually a conflict that saw phenomenal advances

in technology and tactics. In 1914 the German Army went to war in the close company columns of the

Franco-Prussian war forty-four years previous; by 1918 all the three main participating armies had

developed their battle-drills into what we would today recognise as modern infantry fire and movement

tactics, with some even able to adopt an all arms approach on a deep battlefield.

To me this fresh research has truly opened up the Great War as a gaming period, where we can use our

tabletop games to trace the development of tactics through this vibrant period. The rules presented here

may be used to game the entire four years of the war; with the years in the trenches represented as well

as the more open fighting of 1914 and 1918. We have chosen the 1:1 figure to man ratio as we believe

that this is where the tactics of the conflict can best be examined and gamed. We recommend between

thirty and one hundred or so figures a side with 15mm, 20mm or 28mm figures. The rules are equally

applicable to other theatres, and we intend to produce supplements to allow the gamer to move their

gaming to those.

To assist the gamer we have provided a guide to each nation that looks specifically at the development of

tactics throughout the conflict and the changes to the unit structures that accompanied that. Using this

will, we hope, allow a game that truly represents the conflict within a tabletop in a game, providing all of

the flavour, tension and heroism of the Great War.

Richard Clarke

Lard Island 2009

To Albert, Arthur, Fred, Herbert, Harold, John, Josiah and William Clarke of Isleham, Cambridgeshire.

Seven of whom lived through the mud and the blood to see the green fields beyond.

Through the Mud and the Blood

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Contents

1 INTRODUCTION....................................................................................1

2 DULL BUT USEFUL STUFF .......................................................................3

Ground scale, time scale, dice and wind.

3 LEADERS & THEIR FORCES ......................................................................3

Forces defined.

4 TURN SEQUENCE..................................................................................4

The Cards, their meaning, Big Men and Initiative, formations, a Group's turn, Action Dice and troop

types.

5 TROOP TYPES .....................................................................................9

Specialist roles, troop types explained.

6 MOVEMENT....................................................................................... 11

Blinds and hidden movement, tabletop movement, effect of terrain, facing, and interpenetration.

7 SPOTTING ........................................................................................ 14

Spotting the enemy, spotting the wire.

8 INFANTRY WEAPONS ........................................................................... 15

Armament for infantry and on table support weapons.

9 FIRING............................................................................................. 20

Who can fire, how to fire, effect of fire, Big Men casualties, target density, shooting at Blinds.

10 OFF-TABLE SUPPORT ....................................................................... 23

Barrages, bombardments, SOS fire, MG Barrages, Sustained Fire MGs, FOOs, Gas.

11 BOTTLE......................................................................................... 27

Loss of bottle, its effect and how to recover it.

12 CLOSE COMBAT ............................................................................... 28

Calculating close combat, its effect, clearing buildings, bunkers and dug-outs, taking prisoners.

13 NIGHT FIGHTING.............................................................................. 30

14 WIRE & ENGINEERING........................................................................ 31

Artillery on the wire, Bangalore torpedoes, engineering works and their effects.

15 ARMOURED VEHICLES........................................................................ 33

Movement, bogging down, breaking down, squashing things, firing, anti-tank fire.

16 AIRCRAFT ...................................................................................... 36

Aerial spotting, aerial attacks, anti-aircraft fire.

Supplementary Section One: Great War Artillery………………………………………………………. 38

Supplementary Section Two: National Guidelines …………………………………………………..… 45

Through the Mud and the Blood

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2 Dull But Useful Stuff

2.1 GroundScale

In constructing these rules we attempted to find a scale that was both aesthetically pleasing and practical

in representing the range of weapons used at this level. In the end we settled on 12” = 40 yards which

looks perfect with 28mm figures, but in fact is closer to 15mm figures, with 15mm being equal to 6’.

2.2 TimeScale

In broad terms the use of the card based turn sequence is designed to represent burst of action and

initiative on the battlefield rather than any specific period of time; as such the time period could be

argued to be variable. That said it seems reasonable to assume that each turn represents less than a

minute of real time.

2.3 Dice

In the rules the following dice are used.

D6: One six sided die numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

D8: One eight sided dice numbered 1 to 8.

D10: One ten sided die numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 with the 0 representing 10.

DAv: An Average die with six sides marked 2, 3, 3, 4, 4 and 5

Deviation Dice: One six sided die with four sides showing and arrow, two a hit symbol.

2.4 Rounding the Dice

Sometimes the rules will ask you to add or subtract dice as a proportion of what is available, in all

situations you should round down for any calculations that are not straightforward.

2.5 WindDirection

This is largely only of importance if gas is being used. At the start of the game roll

1D8 to give the direction in which the wind is blowing using the compass below with 1

being North. Each turn the Wind Direction card is dealt roll 2D6. On an 11 or 12 roll

1D6. One a 1-2 the wind direction changes one point clockwise on the compass. On a

3-4 the wind direction changes one point anti-clockwise on the compass. On a 5 the

wind changes completely, roll again with a D8. On a 6 a strong breeze blows up and

clears all gas or smoke.

3 Leaders & their Forces

Through the Mud and the Blood is a game all about leaders and their initiative; the men on the battlefield

who, in the face of adversity, drive on those around them to achieve victory. To that end there are two

sorts of men in Through the Mud and the Blood, Big Men , the battlefield leaders we have mentioned

above, and ordinary Men . The former are individuals whose role is to lead so that others may follow. The

latter operate in Groups of up to section or squad size in number, or sometimes in larger Formations

made up of a number of groups ; it is they who do the bidding of their leaders and whose sacrifice in blood

will buy the ultimate victory. Left to their own devices these men will stand, fight and take advantage of

whatever cover is nearby, but they will not normally act with any great degree of initiative or take the

battle to the enemy. It is the actions of the Big Men that will drive these men forward by using their

Initiative, as we will see later.

As in reality, the formal military structures of the company, the platoon and the section are there to be

used, but the gamer will find that the formations of the Great War became very fluid, as specialist tasks

emerged, and ad hoc units were formed, balanced for specific battlefield tasks as their commander saw

fit. The rules replicate that by allowing the player to form his men into Groups of his choosing, allowing

him, as in reality, to tailor make his force for the battle ahead. To aid him in this we have included

sections on the four main protagonists on the Western Front, the British, French, Germans and Americans,

which look at historical unit structures and tactics used, but in a conflict where the continuous retraining

of troops and restructuring of units was attempted in an effort to unlock the deadlock of the Western

Front we feel that this system is ideally suited to gaming the small unit tactics that these rules are

designed for, with the flexibility to allow the gamer to structure his forces exactly as he sees fit, in groups

of men with various skills and abilities.

Through the Mud and the Blood

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