As I‘m hoping to play "the Guns of August" as a Grand campaign miniature game this year (high hopes, I know), I need to do a lot of test games with folks! This time it was Bart, who likes pick up Gen. v. Hötzendorf's role (Bart gets the Austro-Hungarians) in the greater game, huzzah! Again it was the western front, as still a lot of minis are missing - predominantly the Russians and all of the smaller eastern European states. So I gave him the Germans and myself defended Belgium and Paris with the allied troops.
Bart then decided to change the Schlieffen plan and dig right through the middle. The Belgians decided to defend Antwerpen instead of Liege as it hold more points as an objective city. The German advance was rather slow and stopped prematurely at the Maas. But then the French had to follow their Plan 17 doctrine and "had" to attack in the 1st month - with the expectable high casualty rate and the loss of Nancy, ouch!
Then suddenly in October Bart concentrated the German siege guns and his best troops around Verdun and attacked in one go (no attrition attack, one straight hit!) and blasted the complete garrison away - Verdun was in the hands of the enemy!
Mon dieu! As this is unthinkable, I immediately started a counter offensive, but due to lack of guns, which I lost previously in the plan 17 attacks, I failed disastrously and ripped a gigantic hole right in the middle of the French front. Even the later arriving Tommies and their counter attack south of Antwerpen couldn‘t fix the issue.
We stopped here, as Bart surely wouldn't get the much needed second objective city until December, but in fairness, in a grand campaign, Bart would have secured a fortified western front including Verdun AND the possibility for an early breakthrough! So, if not a tactical, at least a (bigger) strategical victory that would have left the Allies struggle for the next coming year a least! Well done, Bart!