The main battle rifles for every country in WWII aside from the US M1 Garand were bolt action. It doesn’t seem that the WWII game market exactly suffers for it. See also, the Lee-Enfield “mad minute” as suggested.
I would think there would be great scope for a “Battle of Jutland” style Naval conflict.
For land war, a Verdun would be great- similarly Tannenburg. I think the key would be having smaller actions.
I’d think independent commerce-raider/cruiser actions would be more exciting than Jutland. Both dreadnought fleets turned out to be pretty torpid. As exciting as Tirpitz’s Risk Theory must have sounded over beer and brats in the officers’ mess, the German High Seas Fleet proved risk-averse in the event of war, to the point of disutility. They drilled in a “simultaneous turn away” maneuver specifically to flee battle that didn’t even exist in the British signal books. Meanwhile, despite a lot of talk about Nelson, the British were haunted by awareness of the strategic vulnerability later pithily summed up by Winston Churchill: that Jellicoe “was the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon.”
I admit to not being familiar with the details of Verdun, but my reading about it to date leads me to believe it was basically a German ploy to force the French to defend (an exposed) fixed position under intense artillery bombardment and thus “bleed the French Army white.” I’m doubtful whether it really breaks out of the grim mold of trench warfare on the Western Front.
Sailboat, you are missing the point. The idea is to create a game with the similar characteristics such as units available.
The idea is not to recreate the battle so that it is identical- to do that all the decisions would be made for you.
In Jutland it could all be so different if some decisions and/ or variables were changed or came together in a different pattern. You as Beatty could keep the 5th Battle Squadron closer. The use of zeppelins and u boats could have been more effective. Perhaps you could force a night action as Jellicoe.
Oh, I know…I’m not really missing the point. I understand wargaming. I’m a longtime fan of wargames.
But I’m also an amateur student of history. I guess I was trying to make the counterpoint that the dreadnought fleets, so expensive and so central to national identity, were under more political control than most wargamers realize.
In much the same way that American Cold War doctrine absolutely forbade the release of nuclear weapons without authorization from the National Command Authority, the dreadnought fleets could not be risked and were used conservatively as a matter of doctrine, personal preference, and national survival. I see this as such a burden that it limited their operational use. Wargame scenarios which would drive the combatant fleets toward a more decisive outcome – the naval Götterdämmerung expected before the war – are (in my opinion) ignoring the overriding factors that dominated the minds of their funding bodies, their creators, and the men who sailed them.
Discussing how Jellicoe and Scheer could have altered the outcome by different tactics is analogous to discussing how different orders could have changed the outcome of the stagnant trench battles – a matter of incremental changes causing small differences in the outcome. I believe (from my reading) – even though the romantic in me would prefer to believe otherwise – that both sides were dragged toward a mediocre, indecisive outcome by strong chains of fear, habit, and promises to their government.
I don’t think truly revolutionary tactical change was possible for them, and I don’t think either side was prepared to take the risks inherent in pressing the battle home in Nelsonian style.
The control still lay with Jellicoe and Scheer- for instance the decision to deploy port or starboard was Jellico’s alone- not some distant central figure.
Instead of following me around these boards disagreeing with what I have to say, why not come up with some ideas of your own?
Toy Soldiers, for the XBox 360, is WWI themed.