All Hell Let Loose: Great War FAQs

Now that we have announced that we are in the final stages of drafting and publishing a new version of All Hell Let Loose covering the First World War there has been great interest from wargamers and lots of questions. We’ve collated the most frequently asked questions and answer them here. This post will be periodically updated as additional questions and answers are added. If you are interested in gaming the Great War then please consider registering your interest by completed a short survey here which will allow us to keep you updated on publication dates.

Now on to the FAQs.

What figure scale do I need to use?

    The rules have been designed primarily with 6mm figures in mind, however they will easily work with 3mm or 10/12mm figures without any needing any changes. 15mm or 28mm figures on large bases can still be used for the game but will require some tweaks to ranges, move distances and area of effects. If, however, these figures are based individually then the game should work just fine as it is.

What base size is used? Do I need to rebase my figures?

    The default assumption is that figures are based on bases 30mm wide by 25mm deep, or 1 1/4” by 1”. However, as long as both sides are based using a similar sized base and some thought about the size of area of effects and zones of control any base size will work.

What does each base represent? What scale of game is being played?

    The game works by using manoeuvre groups, called formations, that consist of units, a stand with figures on it. There is no specific ground distance or duration specified for a turn. Therefore, a formation can represent a brigade, a battalion, a company, a platoon or even a section, with each unit representing, respectively, a company, a platoon, a section or even individual men. The game works at all these levels because of the flexibility of the activation system. Although the game is designed for 6mm figures with a formation as a brigade sized element we’ve played games using 28mm figures at a 1-2-1 scale and had tremendous fun.

How long does a game take? How big a table and how many formations or units do I need?

    As a rule of thumb, players controlling between 3 and 5 formations comprising between 60-80 units can finish a game of 6-10 turns in 3-4 hours. Multiplayer games can take a little longer. Really large, complex battles can be fought over a day or weekend. Games can be fought on small tables of 3' by 4', or on multiple tables of 8' by 6'.

    At Partizan, as a participation game, I guided 4 players who had never played the game before through the battle of Neuve Chapelle, with 5 formations and 83 units on the British side against 6 rising to 9 formations and 58 units on the German side, lasting 9 turns before we called it, in about 5 hours.

How similar are the rules to the WW2 edition of All Hell Let Loose?

    The Great War version uses the same key mechanics and concepts as the WW2 version. Players familiar with the original edition will find that most of the game is very similar. However, the Great War version has a number of expanded mechanics that bolt on to the core rules - specific rules for preliminary bombardment, barrages, fortifications, gas, mines and trenches have been developed. Some elements have also been adjusted to reflect the limited capabilities of a WW1 army. 

How much bookkeeping is required? Do I need detailed maps and written orders?

    We have worked very hard to keep any bookkeeping to an absolute minimum. You just need to know how many units a formation had when it started the game, and how many it has lost. A couple of minor choices such as the location of mines and target points for future barrages may need to be noted but that’s about it. The rules work with an activation roll that determines how well, or badly, a formation performs and consequently there is no need for written orders, command line arrows or detailed maps.

Is it I go, You go?

    No, the game uses a dice out of the bag activation system, although there are specific rules for ‘Going over the Top’ that allow one army to activate a number of formations in sequence.

How complicated are the rules to learn? 

    We have deliberately tried to keep the game as straightforward as possible. There are just 3 main mechanics with additional mechanics that plug in for specific elements that may, or may not, be present at a particular battle. Playtesters usually picked up the basics in their first game and players with a bit of support can often play most of the game after a couple of hours.

Is the game suitable for solo play?

Yes. The dice draw system and the variable activation results mean the game is very suitable for solo play. Players are often forced to react to unfolding events rather than perfectly execute a plan, which helps preserve uncertainty even when controlling both sides.

Does it feel like the Great War? Can the rules handle early war and late war battles?

    The rules support rapid movement and fog of war - perfect for the battles of manoeuvre of 1914 or the Eastern and Mesopotamian theatres. With plugin rules for preliminary bombardment, barrages, trenches and fortifications the western front and other trench battles can be simulated. There are also options that vary the effectiveness of trenches and artillery fire that provide the flexibility to simulate the differences in capability of armies by theatre and year of the war. This allows the same key mechanisms to be used in every battle but for each battle to feel different. Trench battles in the game in 1915 play out very differently from battles in 1918. The game is designed to help you recreate the drama, uncertainty and brutal spectacle of the First world War on the tabletop but without requiring you to go to staff college first.

Is it just about trench warfare?

No. Although trench warfare is an important part of the Great War, the rules are designed to represent the entire conflict. Early war manoeuvre battles, cavalry actions, mobile warfare in the East and Middle East, and the more fluid battles of 1918 are all possible using the same core system. 

Do you provide army lists? Can the rules be used for other periods?

    Yes, absolutely. Whilst we provide some guidance and army lists we have limited this to the main actors in the Great War, and provide only outline information on force composition. There were so many changes and developments and reorganisation of the various nations armies that it’s probable that several books would be required to cover it and consequently we do not have the space to detail it in the rules. 

    The stats for all the different units are very straightforward and easy to adapt or clone. This makes adapting these rules for the other conflicts very possible. These rules should support players wishing to refight the Balkan wars, Greek-Turkish war, the Russian Civil War, the Polish-Russian and Polish-Lithuanian wars. It may also possible to adapt these rules for the Spanish Civil War.

Do you include any scenarios? 

    Yes, the rules include 3 starter scenarios. There is an early war encounter battle, an early war trench battle and a 1917 battle including tanks. All are intended to be played by one player a side and completed in an evening. Each introduces more and more of the rule elements and present a challenge for both sides. We expect to publish a number of additional scenarios to further support players with these rules.

    Once players are familiar with the rules adapting existing scenarios, or developing your own, should be  fairly straightforward.

Is wargaming World War I fun?

    Yes, it absolutely can be fun and rewarding. Whether you are recreating the uncertainty of manoeuvre warfare of the industrial carnage of trench warfare these battles were fought by generals and soldiers with skill and expertise. This game presents you with tactical challenges, dilemmas, decisions and usually pressure and uncertainty.  This game, like the Great War, is a lot more than throwing your soldiers into no-man's-land and hoping some of them survive.

When, and where will they be available to buy?

    We expect to finish drafting and laying out the rules by the end of May 2026. They will then go to the publisher’s for approval. We hope to have them published and available by the Joy of 6, on 28th June 2026. They will be available in hard cover, soft cover and PDF from Wargames Vault.

I will add additional questions and answers to this FAQ as they come in, so it may be worth bookmarking this page.

If this sounds like the game for you then please register your interest here or join our Facebook group.

As always, keep your dice rolling!

Charles Rowntree 

All Hell Let Loose: Great War - coming soon!

I am pleased to announce that after a long period or development and rules writing that a WW1 version of All Hell Let Loose will shortly be published. David and I are in the last stages of tidying things up before we hand over a version to the publisher. We will be running participation games at wargames shows across the UK over the next few months starting with Partizan at Newark on May 17th.

I will be posting more information about the rules over the coming weeks. Today I will limit my post to a very quick summary and high level overview and some pictures of games in action.

We have a very short form to enable those players interested in these rules to register their interest that will enable us to keep you informed on progress and publication. It only takes 30 seconds to fill in and can be found here.

The First World War presents a unique challenge for tabletop wargaming. It was a conflict of enormous scale, industrial firepower, confused command structures, and rapidly evolving tactics. Many rules struggle to capture this without becoming either overwhelmingly complicated or losing the distinctive feel of the Great War altogether.

All Hell Let Loose: Great War has been designed from the outset to balance historical atmosphere with practical tabletop playability.

The rules cover the entire land war from 1914 to 1918, allowing players to fight everything from the open manoeuvre battles of the early war to the heavily fortified offensives of the Western Front, as well as the more fluid campaigns fought elsewhere. Infantry assaults, creeping barrages, tanks, cavalry, gas, fortifications and aircraft all have their place within the system.

At the heart of the game are three core mechanics;

• Activation
• Firing
• Assaults

There are no written orders and bookkeeping is kept deliberately light, allowing players to focus on battlefield decisions rather than paperwork. The activation system creates the uncertainty and disruption so characteristic of Great War command, while remaining straightforward to use.

The rules are intentionally flexible. Players may use a wide variety of figure scales and basing systems, making it easy to adapt existing collections.

Optional “plug-in” mechanics allow groups to decide how detailed they wish the game to become, including expanded rules for preliminary bombardments, artillery barrages, and fortifications.

To help players get started quickly, the book includes sample army lists for the major powers, three introductory scenarios, photocopy-ready counter sheets, and quick reference sheets. The system is equally suited to solo play, smaller friendly games, or large multiplayer club battles.

Ultimately, All Hell Let Loose: Great War is designed to help players recreate the drama, uncertainty, and brutal spectacle of the First World War on the tabletop — without requiring a staff college course to play it.

If that sounds like your kind of game then please register your interest here.

Keep those dice rolling!

Charles Rowntree

Battle of Scarif - All Finished

So in my last post I said my next blogpost would be on building the citadel tower. Well I am so far behind in posting updates on my blog that not only have I finished Scarif, I’ve finished the model project after Scarif. I’ve therefore decided to shake things up a bit. I’ll now post pictures of the finished model first and then follow it up with posts on how I built individual elements of it. Therefore here are the pictures of the fully finished model. Hopefully shortly, I’ll post on how I made the tower.

That’s me on the left umpiring with two wonderful chaps
 who had so enjoyed my Imjin game they wanted to play Scarif too.

One of the earliest shots of the finished board in my work room

Test rig of the star destroyers colliding

Star destroyers colliding above the shield gate

Brutal game in progress shot

Full tower and base

Plenty to think about in this game!

AT-ACT’s gang up on some unfortunate rebels!

All set up and ready to play!

I was very lucky and delighted to win two prizes at The Other Partizan 2023.
I was awarded Best Participation game and Best Small game. 
Here I am receiving one of the awards from Henry Hyde.

So that will do for now. I still envisage putting up posts on the tower, the aerial and space battles, the miniatures and the construction of the game itself. Those who can’t wait for my snail like posting pace may be interested to listen to my interviews on the excellent Hobby Support Group podcast where, over two episodes, I talk about the build and the battle. 

Episode 123 - building scarif

Episode 124 - designing the battle

As always, keep your dice rolling!

Charles the Modeller 

Battle of Scarif - adding all the bushes and trees

In previous posts I’ve covered the building of the boards, the seas, the islands and the transit systems for my battle of Scarif board. In this post I’ll talk about how I added the foliage required for the distinctive look of the planet.

So my starting point were images from the movie. I concentrated on the images we see when looking at the ground from either Rogue One itself or from the x-wings of blue squadron. I was building the battlefield at a small scale and so it was very clear that I would not be moving figures through foliage, instead I would be moving them over foliage. This meant that the trees would need to be robust enough for stands of troops to rest on top of them and numerous enough to not be significantly uneven.

As the trees would be the last pieces of foliage inserted I started with the grass. This was very straightforward as I began with the woodland scenics fine turf grass products, these are my standard go to product for grass. I mapped out some trails and other routes and places that I wanted to clear as there are sections of the battle that take place in the open and then just scattered a thin covering of multiple grass shades. This was secured in place with diluted PVA.

The next steps were adding the underbrush, bushes and foliage beneath the tree canopy. As its a tropical forest it needed to be densely covered. You can see from the aerial images that basically most of the land of Scarif is covered with foliage. I then went to my accumulated collection of tufts to create this. 

I have some crop strips, some held over from my Brécourt Manor build, these were cut lengthwise into thin strips which were then glued up against the side of the transit lines helping to hide the base and joins. I interspersed different bushes and tufts to break everything up. 

In the more open sections I randomly placed bushes and tufts, including things like bulrushes that were designed for bigger scales but look suitably sci-fi at a smaller scale. The key was to have about ten or fifteen different options and to mix them up. I didn’t need to place them tightly next to each other as the trees would provide most of the coverage, I just needed enough for it to be obvious there were bushes underneath.

The trees proved to be quite tricky, not so much in production, but in identifying a suitable way forward. I knew I needed a lot of them so I needed a solution that was scalable and easy to make. My starting point was a Facebook post I’d seen some years ago by Trev of Trev’s Workshop. He was creating palm trees for a desert game. He stuck 25mm nails into polystyrene, used texture paint on the nail make the truck and placed some PVA on the head and sprinkled static grass over them and was able to quickly and simply make several hundred trees in a couple of hours. A brilliant solution but wasn’t quite the look I needed as the trees on Scarif have much more foliage. However the use of nails as trunks seemed like the way to go as it would definitely support my figures with no problems.

Next I looked at using paper leaves but this was swiftly discarded. I used the green stuff leaves product but cut them much smaller. The end result was fairly pleasing but the prototype took me quite some time to produce. The pieces struggled to stay glued on and I could make only a few trees from each packet which came at quite a cost. I also tried buying a plastic fern and cutting pieces off it but this had the same time issues as the paper leaves.

I scoured the internet for options and came across a post on The Miniatures Page message boards from Mark, aka Mark I, suggesting using lengths of pine tree garlands most commonly used at Christmas. These are lengths of wire with strands of paper wrapped around it made to look like pine tree branches. I snipped the wire roughly every 25 or 30mm and the used scissors to shape the paper forms and teased them to make a suitably tree shaped canopy. It took me a few minutes to create each tree. However they were a uniform colour and would need painting and the appearance was OK, not bad, but not great. I left these on the back burner while I did more work on the model.

With only about a month left before my first show I still had the problem of my trees. However, necessity is the mother of invention. I returned to the method used by Trev but, instead of using static grass I used woodland scenics foliage. This stuff is their standard foam but on a nylon net. I cut very small pieces and then superglued it onto the top of a 25mm nail. This worked well. 

Then I tried mixing things up. I cut a small piece from the light green foliage and crimp it flat. I used superglue to stick on the top of the nail and pressed it flat. The superglue melted the nylon and stuck it admirably to the nail. I then cut another piece of a darker foliage, slightly bigger than the first and squashed it into a kind of pyramid shape and the glued this on top of the first. This then produced a palm tree shape I was really pleased with. At this point I should add a warning regarding the use of superglue in large amounts or repeatedly over a period of time particularly in enclosed spaces - don’t do it this way, proceed with caution, do your own research and stop if it is affecting you.

I was then able to put this into production. I made 100 trees at a time. I stuck the nails into polystyrene and painted them with texture paint. Once dry I cut ten pieces of light green foliage and glued them to the top of the nails and repeated this until all the trees had light green foliage on top. Then I cut the darker foliage, half mid green, half dark green and then glued those onto the first layer. It took about 90 minutes to make 100 trees.

I figured I would need about a thousand trees. So once I had 400 trees I took them to place on my board. I began close to the tower and started to work outwards. Once I had the first areas done I was delighted with how they looked but it became clear that a thousand trees wasn’t going to be enough and it would be 1200 or so. This underestimating became a regular feature. Once I placed 800 I realised I needed 1600. Once I placed 1200 I realised I needed 2000. In the last week I was making trees every night and I finally added the last of my 2163 trees the day before the show.

The trees really finished the board and gave me a result that looked like Scarif.

In the next post I will look at how I built the tower itself.

Until then, keep your dice rolling!

Charles the Modeller 

Plans for 2024

 

So in my last post I reviewed 2023, this post outlines my plans and hopes for 2024.

As with last year I’ve created an Ovelist. An Ovelist is a simple collage of images, each one representing a task, job or activity I intend to do. It is named after its creator Andy Ovel from the Hobby Support Group podcast and is an excellent way of tracking progress and focussing activity. 

It’s intended to be a living document and can be added to, removed from or amended throughout the year. I don’t intend that it should become a mill stone around my neck. As you progress, ticks can be added to tasks completed and it should help visualise the progress and achievements that can get all too easily lost in the ether.

Omaha Beach Board

Each year I try to make one big build. My big build for 2024 is going to be Omaha Beach to refight the landings on D-Day. I intend to recreate the whole of the main beach from Fox Green through to Charlie sector covering about 6km of beach. 

The full board will be 4900mm by 900mm. Yeah, you read that correctly it’ll be 16ft long. I’m going to make it using 8 boards each 600mm by 900mm. The key terrain challenges will be storing and transporting the boards and the enormous number of landing craft and troops required for the battle. I intend to have the board ready for the Partizan wargame show in May.

Refighting Omaha

The intention is to run a massive co-operative refight of the landings. All the players will control the various US forces and will oversee the landings on a particular sector or area of the board. Each player will move their own troops and roll for the effects of German firing. Each player will have objectives to capture and will have a number of obstacles to overcome to reach them. I intend to incorporate a number of different elements that I have seen from board games to help manage and track things but will still be using the All Hell Let Loose rules to manage the game. I think it will make for an incredible co-operative multiplayer solo wargame experience.

Omaha figures

I intend to use Adler’s 6mm miniatures for the US forces and his trench range for the German defenders. I’ll be changing the base sizes, going to a smaller base with fewer figures on it because it will look much better on the table. Vehicles will be by GHQ. Landing craft are probably going to be 3D printed. The larger ships may also be 3D printed as well. At this stage all I can say is I am going to need an awful lot of them!

3D printer

So now that I have a 3D printer I want to make the most of it. I’m taking part in a role playing game of Deadlands using Savage Worlds so I’ll be printing some stuff for that. My eldest son is running a D&D game so he’ll have a list of things he wants. Omaha will require lots of things printed and so will WW1. I’d also like to do some more creation of custom items using blender to create unique or bespoke prints.

WW1 Figures 

I own the files from Henry Turners Europe Asunder: The Great War ranges. I have printed a British and Commonwealth army and painted substantial amounts of it. I’d like to expand that into a complete force with artillery and cavalry. However my main goal is to print and paint the forces of another nationality to expand my options for the game.

WW1 Rules

David and I managed a small amount of progress on the rules for All Hell Let Loose: Great War. With luck this year should see the development complete and then it’s just about distilling it into something coherent.

Big Game Weekends

Last year I was able to run some big battle weekend games. I loved every minute of them and want to run more this year, hopefully being able to invite and involve more of my friends and acquaintances in the battles.

Scatter Terrain

So now I have a wargaming table I need some scatter terrain to go on it. So I will be creating streams, rivers, villages, fields, woods and more for my table.

Mystery Item 

I don’t know what this is yet, it’s still a mystery, but I am sure I’ll find something extra to do.

Well that’s about it, it feels like it’s quite a lot, so I’d better go off and start doing it.

Keep your dice rolling!

Charles the Modeller