Before the award-winning World War I designs Paths of Glory and The Great War In Europe, Deluxe Edition, designer Ted S. Raicer had revived interest in gaming the Great War with a series of WWI campaign games for the late lamented Command magazine. GMT is proud to present a set of revised boxed editions of these classic “players-games”.

In August 1914, Imperial Germany gambled its future on a rapid conquest of France, designed to free up the German army within six weeks to face the Russian steamroller of France’s Tsarist ally on the eastern front. Seven German armies deployed opposite five French armies, the army of “plucky little Belgium”, and the “Old Contemptibles” of the British Expeditionary Force in a series of battles that turned August and September 1914 into the bloodiest months of the entire war. 

The campaign opened with the French launching their infamous Plan XVII offensive to regain the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, an offensive that ended in disaster against the massed machine guns and artillery of the German defenders. Yet even as Plan XVII came to grief, the real threat came from the north, where three German armies wheeled through Belgium and northern France on their way to Paris.

The Germans used the war’s first secret weapon (the giant howitzers of Krupp and the Austrian Skoda works) to smash the Belgian forts at Liege and Namur and send the Belgian army to seek the safety of the fortress of Antwerp. Marching south from Brussels, the advancing Germans suffered a bloody nose as they stumbled into guns of the professional British soldiers of the BEF at Mons and Le Cateau. But the British and French failed to coordinate their actions, and vastly outnumbered, were soon retreating to the gates of Paris. There, the Germans, exhausted from weeks of forced marching in the brutal summer sun, met freshly arriving French reinforcements in the Miracle of the Marne.

The threat to Paris was ended until 1918, but the campaign was not yet decided, as both sides tried to outflank one another in the Race to the Sea (actually the English Channel). As the beginnings of the trench warfare took hold, the Germans launched one last attack to breakthrough the Allied lines at Ypres in early November. The BEF was bled dry, but the Allied line narrowly held. Mobile warfare was replaced by the deadlock of the Western Front, a deadlock that wouldn’t be broken for over three years. 



1914: Glory’s End covers the first three months of the Great War on the western front, from the Guns of August to First Ypres. This oft-gamed campaign receives a unique treatment, emphasizing playability without compromising on historical feel. Units are mostly corps of four steps (two counters per unit), along with a few especially strong (or weak) brigades and divisions, along with counters for the feared German Krupp and Skoda guns. The corps level Order of Battle accurately reflects the operational doctrine of the campaign, while also limiting the number of counters on the map to an easy-to-manage level.

The game scale is 9.5 miles per hex and three days per turn. The campaign game runs a full 30 turns, but the new edition will include not only a previously published mini-scenario on the Battle of the Marne, but a short ten turn campaign scenario covering the decisive opening weeks of the war. In addition the campaign games can be played in historical or free set-up versions.

1914: Glory’s End uses an Igo-Hugo system with two types of combat to demonstrate the tactical realities of the campaign: Prepared Combat and March Combat. Prepared Combat allows you to bring all your adjacent units to bear against a defending hex, but only with units that don’t move. This gives the defender time to reinforce, retreat, or pre-empt your combat with his own attack. To avoid this, you can “attack off the march” during your movement, but March Combat may only be delivered by a single stack at a time, limiting the force you can bring to bear. Furthermore, March Combat cannot be used against entrenched enemy units.

The coming of trench warfare is reflected by a unique Entrenchment rule: starting on turn 10 players may entrench one or two hexes per turn, PLUS any hexes adjacent to enemy trenches. The result is that trenches appear first as a tactical consideration, but then turn into a strategic problem as they spread with ever-increasing rapidity along the front. 

1914: Glory’s End manages to cover all the important characteristics of the campaign (with rules for forts, cavalry, command and control breakdowns, supply, strategic rail movement, Allied sea movement, German forced marching, Plan XVII, Paris in Danger! and more) while remaining easy to play. The new GMT version will of course incorporate all errata from the original edition, but adds updated artwork, a corrected historical campaign Order of Battle, additional scenarios, and a tweaked set of rules.

A truly elegant design, a nominee for a Charles S. Roberts award (Best pre-WWII game) it remains popular and played almost twenty years after its first publication. With this new boxed edition, GMT is pleased to bring 1914: Glory’s End back in a new improved form. Can you prevent the bloody stalemate of the Western Front? The trumpets call you to Victory in 1914-or Glory’s End!

• Two 176 counter 5/8th countersheets
• One standard large hex mapsheet
• Two player aids cards
• Two Mobilization Roster cards
• One rulebook
• Two standard dice