Solidifying a Theme for a Board Game

For my latest assignment in Game Design I, we've been assigned the ambitious task of developing and constructing our own board game in both a physical form and a "Print 'n' Play" form. I knew instantly that I wanted to base my board game off of historical warfare, but wasn't sure what period or era to zone into. After some deliberation and decision making, I chose to develop a turn based tactical combat game based in World War I. In this game, you'd be controlling a fireteam of 4 to 6 soldiers tasked with taking control of a village (either prebuilt or modular). Simply put, my goal is for this game to serve as an easier to approach, historically accurate strategy game that shares elements with turn based titles such as Warhammer 40K Tabletop and real time computer games like Men of War.

That being said, there are a few reasons why I went with World War I as my theme!  One of the main reasons for my choice are the weapons and tech used during that era. All of the guns, except for mounted machine guns, were single shot bolt action rifles. This would ease the process of balancing the most generic units in my game on both sides. Machine guns themselves, however, provided an interesting mechanic on their own. They can be utilized to hold down choke points, or to cordon off possible flanks that an opponent may take. Mortars and snipers were also a possibility I was thinking of including. All of these would serve as "special units" in my board game, good at specific tasks, but limited in other areas.

A title for my game that I have been thinking about is Blood and Iron. The name actually shares the title of a speech given by Otto von Bismarck in 1862, ideas of which remained strong in the hearts of many patriotic Germans up to the years of World War I. While cool though, that is quite an intense title, so I am still looking at other options as well before I go all in. A tagline for my game could be Blood and Iron: A Tactical Battle for Area Supremacy!

I found some photo references to convey the look I may try to capture with my soldiers. I was thinking of playing around with the illustrations a bit for each unit, and possibly making them in the style of a sketch that could be found in a soldiers sketchbook. Shaken, yet intense and powerful.

As for the soldiers themselves, I have gathered a few photo examples to go off of for possible factions I may include.

An Example of French Troops 

An Example of English Troops

An Example of German Troops

For the color scheme, I wanted to settle on something bleak, yet natural. The game would still have to incorporate uniforms of different colors, so that was another thing to take into consideration. For that reason, I will likely be depicting the factions of Germany and France within my game, for their distinct colors and silhouettes.