Trenches of the Great War

Trenches of the Great War is a strategy board game set during the grind of trench warfare in World War One. Two-to-four players are pitted against one another as one of the four main powers on the Western Front. You will command both common and specialist troops from the armies of Britain and France or Germany and Austro-Hungary, including soldiers distinctly unique to each.

Every play-through will be different. Hazards are deployed before the start of each match, including barbed wire and craters. The mechanics for every weapon is distinctly different. The Maxim and Vickers guns will chew an arc across the board. Snipers will pick off single targets daring or foolish enough to step up to the edge of their trench. Riflemen will make their slow, bolt-action attacks or grapple in melee combat with bayonets and hand-to-hand weapons until one comes out the survivor.

Combat outcomes, be they melee or ranged, will be decided with alterable randomness. The default chances to hit are decided between the unit’s skill and cards drawn from the deck. Each player is dealt a new hand of cards at the start of each of the eight turns. First the attacker has the opportunity to influence an event where the random card drawn is not in their favor. The player can choose the card best suited from their hand to turn it in their favor. In return, the defender can then counter, if they so choose, with a better suited card they choose from their own hand. This influencing with cards can go back and forth until one player runs out of cards or decides they have expended enough. It will be a bloody day along the trench. Will it be that of your soldiers or the enemy’s?

Adding to the replay potential are the missions that players will be issued to complete. Players could be tasked to capture and hold locations in the dangerous No Man’s Land, to make hazardous excursions to retrieve pilots and the film from downed biplanes, or even going Over the Top to seize the enemy’s trench. Each of these missions, and others, change the nature of the experience. The tactics to cover a sortie to a biplane won’t work to invade the enemy’s trench. How to place machine guns for maximum effect, when and where to bombard the enemy with poison gas, and where to drive a charge of riflemen towards are all in the player’s power. Wise tactics will mean the difference between success and yet another bloodbath. It will take more than firepower to live through the day. Each commander will need cunning, thoughtfulness, and a patience to time their attacks and defenses to best effect.