"A Very American Civil War" (or something thereabouts) Coming This Year

[voltan]

The Navy, for example, eventually splits between the two groups.

Most of the officers in the fleet, the vast majority of naval aviators, and the carriers, go with the Nationalists. Many of the sailors in the surface fleet, however, choose to align themselves with the Constitutionalists. The Submarine crews each go their own way. As a result, the Nationalists find themselves with a large number of crew and officers, but without enough ships to put them in, so Naval Infantry Brigades are formed.

I forsee one hell of a barney over control of the panama canal

[commissarmoody]

That's for book 3 or 4 "Fall of the American Empire"  About the Panama Canal, Alaska, Hawaii, the philippians and all of her other pacific, caribbean and south american territories. Lots of stuff involving japan, marinas, and the Nat and Con fleets trying to decided if they actually want to kill each other.
See I am thinking big with this project

[Doc Twilight]

And there's nothing wrong with that at all. How convenient that I have Japanese in the appropriate period uniforms out shortly;)

-Alex

[commissarmoody]

And there's nothing wrong with that at all. How convenient that I have Japanese in the appropriate period uniforms out shortly;)

-Alex

Really? I didnt know 

[Christian]

One thing about VBCW that I was drawn to was how much it was like the British comedies I love watching. Totally idiosyncratic e.g. cups of tea before, during and after battle; an obsession with the weather; language like "bounder", "dash it" & "dashed" etc.

How do you think the approach to ACW2 will be? A bit tongue in cheek or is it shaping up to be a serious Turtledove-like affair?

[commissarmoody]

I am thinking a little bit of both.

[Arlequín]

I am thinking a little bit of both.

Which is probably the best way. Humour is subjective (or Humor for you colonials) and when you play something purely for laughs, people tend to take things the same way and refuse to regard 'your period' seriously. Real life has its funny moments and idiosyncrasies and they are all the funnier because of it. Humour will write itself into any game you play, but when you write it in, you are often the only one laughing... everyone else is just rolling their eyes.
 

[commissarmoody]

right you are Jim

[Cory]

How do you think the approach to ACW2 will be? A bit tongue in cheek or is it shaping up to be a serious Turtledove-like affair?

For our games at least at has been both - serious introduction (mitigated with puns and inside jokes) and then the game plays out like the Keystone cops. Tuesday's game had a timed objective but between both players trying to outsmart each other, bad reinforcement rolls and random event cards the first two turns had only an old man and his dog on one side and three deserters trying to get to the local brothel on the other.

[commissarmoody]

Sounds about right to me.

[Christian]

the first two turns had only an old man and his dog on one side and three deserters trying to get to the local brothel on the other

 

That sounds like a great game already!

[SBRPearce]

Pitching the idea for this to my game pals, it fell pretty seriously into Turtledove territory, especially when we started kicking around ideas for a locally based campaign.

In 1930, Cleveland, OH was the 6th largest city in the US, with 1.2 million people in the immediate area. Nearly half of those people were either immigrants or first-generation Americans, while nearby cities had seen the largest Klan marches outside the Deep South a few years earlier. (The Nativist movement was galvinized bythe presence of so many "hyphenated Americans"). Given the city's position as a crucial Great Lakes port, rail hub, steel-making and industrial center, we foresaw a lot of ugly street-fighting pitting the Nativists and the Lindbergher Nationalist-Fascist alliance against the "New American" ethnic groups and labor unions (which overlapped one another strongly) That kind of fighting would periodically paralyze the city. With the Nationalist Government trying to secure the Ohio River Valley, having a restive Cleveland in their rear-area would be intolerable. To secure their line of advance, they'd be forced to "clean house"...

Hmmm. The Seige of Leningrad, re-set on the shores of Lake Erie?

Like I said - ugly. But interesting.

(On a semi-related note, I did a scenario some time ago from the 1889 Turtledove novel "How Few Remain" that involved the Royal Navy Great Lakes squadron attacking the Port of Cleveland in the opening days of the Second Mexican War. [US vs. the Confederacyand her allies Britain and France] We used a set of home-brew pre-dreadnought naval rules. That was a fun afternoon.)

[commissarmoody]

I see more of a lebanon 1970s-1980s switchwashion, with  different factions devideing up the town and careering on  a low intensity campaign against each other with periodic flair ups, block assultes, assanations and bombings as a opposed to a full on bring up the guns and flatten the city. Mostly because of the city being so evenly divided between "natives", "non-natives", political groups and "non-natives" that are trying gain favor with there gov and natives. And as its importance as you said in being and industral hub with port access. that being said, the "Black legion", I think we are using the term "white legion" for them, the militant arm of the KKK at the time was reported to have over 50,000 active members. Not includeing the reguler membership even.

[Doc Twilight]

Pitching the idea for this to my game pals, it fell pretty seriously into Turtledove territory, especially when we started kicking around ideas for a locally based campaign.

In 1930, Cleveland, OH was the 6th largest city in the US, with 1.2 million people in the immediate area. Nearly half of those people were either immigrants or first-generation Americans, while nearby cities had seen the largest Klan marches outside the Deep South a few years earlier. (The Nativist movement was galvinized bythe presence of so many "hyphenated Americans"). Given the city's position as a crucial Great Lakes port, rail hub, steel-making and industrial center, we foresaw a lot of ugly street-fighting pitting the Nativists and the Lindbergher Nationalist-Fascist alliance against the "New American" ethnic groups and labor unions (which overlapped one another strongly) That kind of fighting would periodically paralyze the city. With the Nationalist Government trying to secure the Ohio River Valley, having a restive Cleveland in their rear-area would be intolerable. To secure their line of advance, they'd be forced to "clean house"...

Hmmm. The Seige of Leningrad, re-set on the shores of Lake Erie?

Like I said - ugly. But interesting.

(On a semi-related note, I did a scenario some time ago from the 1889 Turtledove novel "How Few Remain" that involved the Royal Navy Great Lakes squadron attacking the Port of Cleveland in the opening days of the Second Mexican War. [US vs. the Confederacyand her allies Britain and France] We used a set of home-brew pre-dreadnought naval rules. That was a fun afternoon.)

That's good, SBR. Real good. I like it:)

In the drafts of the book I've been working on, Cincinnati has been mentioned several times. This may be of some help to you for background material, but feel free to ignore if you prefer:) Dates are provisional here, but they're roughly correct.

Essentially, Cincinnati was one of the most important "first" targets for the Ohio River Valley Campaign of 1934, as it was controlled by a coalition of various "anti-Nationalist" groups. Socialists, Communists, Farmers Leagues, Anarchists, etc, who had essentially gotten rid of the "establishment" city government and proclaimed Cincinnati a "free city". In early June, the first Nationalist elements of Patton's Army arrived and requested that the city "open its doors" and remove various street barricades to allow the Nationalist forces to cross through the city. The Coalition government "politely" declined. Patton responded by reinforcing the small Nationalist spearhead and essentially requesting, not so nicely this time, that the city open up.

Some time around June 6th, tensions escalated and shots were fired (as so often in these events, nobody knows for certain -who- fired the shot). On the 8th, Patton delivered an ultimatum to the city, demanding that it surrender or face the consequences of "civil unrest". The city refused, and the Battle of Cincinnati officially began. Artillery strikes against a populated city were considered to be in bad taste, at least that early in the war, so there was very little preparatory blasting before the first Nationalist attack on the city, around the 10th, though there was low intensity sniping from both sides as tensions continued to escalate.

On June 10th and 11th, 3rd Naval Infantry Brigade attempted to storm the barricades of the city, and was violently repulsed - so violently repulsed that 3rd Naval Infantry Brigade was actually pulled from the line, and didn't return to service until later in the year.
Unfortunately for the defenders, the coalition government was deadlocked over the proper response to the Nationalist attack, and this significantly weakened the defense in the days to follow. On the 13th of June, Patton stepped up the assault, backing it up with US Army elements and Silvershirts. This was followed by eight days of street fighting, into which the various factions defending the city fell into pointless bickering and actually exchanged shots amongst themselves. Cincinnati finally fell on the 21st, and the door to the rest of the campaign was unlocked.

The international community was horrified by what had happened at Cincinnati, and various foreign aid packages arrived, but the city wouldn't fully recover until after the war. It wouldn't be the last city to suffer during the war, but it was certainly among the most prominent in that phase of the fighting, demonstrating without a doubt that the government was serious about cracking down, and that the various anti-Nationalist movements were equally serious about fighting back.

In essence, while there had certainly been other battles beforehand, this was the "Bull Run" of the Second American Civil War, and demonstrated that the conflict was going to be much more serious, and much more violent, then had been widely anticipated.

-Doc

[commissarmoody]

SBR, if you use this background also you could do lots of resistance type actions against the "occupiers" and have clever banners and posters in Con forces with the battle cry "Remember Cleveland!"