Grid-based Machine Age WW1 - or not

This weekend gone I tried a grid-based version of my WW1 house rules (derived from One-Hour Wargames - Machine Age rules) this was a second attempt. The last being a month or two ago. I have come to the conclusion for this period a grid based approach does not work for me. There are certain aspects of the movement rules that work best without using a grid. The proposed changes I mention in a previous blog post played ok, but they had lost part of the flavour and messiness of variable moves. Unable to quite put my finger on why, I will be staying away from grids for this set of house rules.

Barbed wire entanglements

While messing around with rules I revisited the barbed wire rule, around how its deployed and artillery attempts to destroy it. So with some wire and a pencil I set about twirling wire around the pencil, creating a fair number of 3" to 4" lengths of barbed wire for a game to represent the barbed wire entanglements often used and key features in battles.

Bombarding a 12" length of barbed wire - scored a 5

The attacking barrage rule allows a 12" length of wire to be damaged. At the start of play the attacking player identities the 12" section being bombarded, then rolls a dice and removes wire pieces equal the dice score within the 12" length being attacked. Providing a piece of wire is in (or straddles) the 12" section the attacking player choses which individual wire pieces to remove. For every 12 pieces of wire deployed on the table one barrage attack is permitted.

5 pieces of wire removed to create a gap

During the game tanks still destroy pieces of wire they cross. Infantry units take one turn to remove any length of wire they are in contact with. All other units cannot cross a length of wire.