Quick Looks: 1914: Fureur a' L'est, Le Choc Des Trois Empires

Sometimes I have got to wargame! So I picked up a few titles recently including this magazine game from Vae Victis, a French language periodical that comes with a game. English rules translations can be downloaded from their website.

It's good, within the expectations of what you get from a magazine game.

1914 depicts the east front of WW1 at Corps scale with two week turns in a small half mapper footprint and 16 pages of A5 rules. Like most magazine games it is fairly simple and most mechanisms are recognisable to hex and counter veterans. The rules translation and clarity is good enough to discern the designer's intent without quite being tight enough to eradicate all doubts and queries. 

Each turn the central powers (Germany & Austria) and Russia will roll off to see who gets initiative (which can be very important and is entirely random). The  acting player will then chose a front to activate, the northern German front or southern Austrian and then they move and attack with their armies. All units can move two hexes with only mountains lowering this and then attacks are one hex against another with supporting units providing +1 per neighbouring hex. Players alternate front activations and doing all their moves and attacks before an admin phase for resolving replacements, reinforcements and some fairly harsh supply rules.

There is no clever mechanical hook in this game, the tension comes from the strategic situation. Both sides have to balance their replacements and HQ activations - more on that later, between the two fronts. How each player handles this will be the main lever they use to influence the result. 

Victory is achieved by capturing the opposing side's fortresses, with each side starting with 7 or 8. For the Russians there are three obvious options, drive into the open ground between the two fronts and threaten the German supply source whilst picking up lightly defended fortresses, try to encircle the Germans, or grind down the Austrians. They won't be able to resource all three. Whilst the burden of action and greatest flexibility lies with the Russians the Central Powers still have choices. There are very legitimate opportunities to go on the counter offensive, particularly when the Russians by poor luck or judgement make an error.

This is a fairly dicey game even by wargame standards. The combat system uses an odds differential with modifiers + a 1d6. Rolling a 6 will almost always bail you out of a disaster. On top of this each side rolls each turn to see how many of their HQs are flipped to their superior active side. This gives a 1-4 point sing in combat effectiveness and has a major influence on offensive success. The Russians in particular can be hosed by the dice in this roll, whereas the two superior German HQs will usually be active. In all the Russians will need to make ground when the dice do go their way and whether the storm when they do not.

The supply rules are reminiscent of the classic Rommel in the Desert in that they encourage conga lines of troops across the map. All units are forced to retreat (or die) if they are not within 2 hexes of a rail line supplied fortress or another unit that is turn in supply. This prevents the Russians just walking between the two fronts and attacking south Prussia unless they can build said conga line. It works quite well but can seem a bit gamey. 

Whilst we are on criticisms the unit turn over seems a bit high for two week turns. A corps can be wiped off the map and reconstituted in a 2 week turn around. I appreciate that the designer may have wanted a more action orientated game rather than just a bumper cars CRT typical of WW1 games but the frequent pulling units off and onto the map instead creates an illusion of progress and lots of simulation questions. In practice most armies will return to near full strength every other turn or so and lines will move back and forth. This creates a fun ebb and flow to the game but breaks any inertia one side may gain.

Overall this gets the thumbs up. It cost £14 which is good value. I preferred it to Clash of Giants Galicia which was cleverer but much longer at 4-5 hours rather than 3.