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Miniatures Adventure => Interwar => Topic started by: warrenpeace on November 22, 2018, 01:29:30 PM
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I have been amazed by this phenomenon of VBCW. Seems as if there's quite a crowd of daft British nutters afflicted by SCW envy. Reading in an effort to discover the source of the phenomenon I come across references to the 1995 movie Richard III, which ties this interwar alt-history to the War of the Roses. (Need to watch that one.) I wonder if there has ever been a more widely successful imagi-nation or alt-history in the world of miniature wargaming.
One thing that puzzles me, however, is the lack of reference to the global scale of a war that would impact the entire global British Empire. Dominions could take care of themselves. But what would happen in Jamaica, Gibraltar, Malta, Nigeria, Egypt, Palestine, East Africa, India, Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.?
Would some of these be seized by other nations in the power vacuum created by a civil war in Britain in the 1930's? Would some go independent? Would others collapse into local civil wars? Would some of these places send forces to fight in Britain? Would the USA intervene if, for example, Japan grabbed Hong Kong and Singapore?
And what happens to Britain's Royal Navy? Does it divide into factions and sink itself? Does it fight to retain Britain's colonies? Does it get sold off to pay for the civil war or get mothballed due to the economic collapse? And what happens to Britain's massive merchant marine?
The global implications of VBCW are mind boggling!
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I think that Germany would possibly put aside any invasion plans for Europe and focus on trying to influence a fascist Britain to form as a vital ally for a later invasion.
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Parts of The Empire are covered in this book
http://www.northstarfigures.com/prod.php?prod=5524
I really like the VBCW setting, you could let your imagination run riot with the forces involved.
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Ah, that booklet is a good indication that there has been some consideration of the global implications of a VBCW. I can imagine a major civil war taking place in India. Also can imagine a brigade of Nigerian troops landing in England.
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There was quite a lot of discussion at the time the project was kicked off and a series of sourcebooks were developed. It was a fun light hearted and collaborative project and I wrote some of the early background material for part of Scotland. I seem to recall side projects kicked off in Australia, Canada and Norway! It was a great little project with some lovely folk involved. (My own take evolved to be a good deal darker before I moved onto other things!)
Have a root about here and on the web. Solway Crafts and Miniatures (still) publish the material and there used to be a forum as well.
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The VBCW forum still seems active here https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/vbcf/index.php?sid=f50b0a8a2e2fa0c2918293be74bcadad
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Like the Emir, I was involved in the first run of sourcebooks. The idea was not to get too detailed, but to create outlines that players would fill in themselves. If a situation for a civil war didn't actually exist within parts of the Empire, one could be created by the player.
In a wargamer's view of the universe strange things happen, not least to history itself. Surprisingly perhaps, historical wargamers also don't typically have a grasp of history, or in some cases actually go to great lengths to avoid any. In such an environment it is possible to make almost anything happen and seem likely.
An example is the then-ongoing Arab Revolt in Palestine, which was a major drain on the British Army in the UK, with the potential to unite the entire Middle East against Britain. It is mostly kicked to the curb in VBCW World.
Instead rather than a situation where there weren't enough troops available to police the Mandate, a scratch force is available to form the core of "Wynd-Grator's Gideon Force", which is promptly expanded by units from the ME and India.
The BUF is another thing VBCW shaped to fill a need. There wasn't even a BUF in 1937, it was just the 'British Union'. Mosley was just a talking head trotted out by the media, who lacked any actual political power; a '30s Farage if you like. Once the Public Order Act of 1936 banned political uniforms, the 'spectacle' the BUF had relied on was gone.
The idea of a "King's Party" and an "Anglican League" is far more valid, but you might as well just call them Royalists and Parliamentarians, albeit Edward VIII represented the 'new' in this case.
Short answer for the Empire, not much would happen. Indian and other nationalists might get feisty, but when civil wars erupt in the 'home country', colonies et al very quickly go one way or the other with little upset; they already have their own power structures and rivalries. Actual British influence is slight and hard to enforce; look to Rhodesia and its UDI.
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I think broadly speaking the major 'sides' might send small volunteer forces t shift the balance, whether one end of the spectrum or the other, having the resources and especially navy of Britain on side is a game changer.
I would imagine the navy would realise this and parts would work with the offer that suits them.
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Well we up here in sunny Shetland have been in it from the beginning, I wrote the background for the Shetland setting and also run a Horn of Africa game or two. People here find the game fun, quirky and a nice change to the more usual options at the club.
I was impressed by the amount of research a lot of people did into their local areas when this all kicked off and it's still active after what is now a decade, or is it nine years it's been going, getting old I forget things now lol.
One of the newer members is talking about starting in on the situation in Belgium.
With the launch of warlords cruel seas, there might even be some small scale navel actions around our wonderful bunch of islands.
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It doesn't really matter about might've, could've and all that. Any reasoning for the hows and whys of whatever you choose to add to, or do in, your scenario, is going to be infinitely more reasoned and sensible than martial morris men, cricket pads as defensive armour... or even that Edward VIII's refusal to reconsider his forthcoming marriage to 'that woman' could really spark a civil war.
There are no limits and certainly real history does at times do the ridiculous. I wouldn't over-think things and just get stuck in. As mental exercises go it's good fun too; I also looked at Belgium and its potential to cause a war between France and Britain.
:)
In a real comparison however, the Spanish Civil War didn't erupt overnight, it took near enough ten years for it to come to a boil and the left and right had been gunning-down each other in the streets since 1930. The military coup of 1936 was supposed to stop all that and restore common (and traditionalist) sense.
Foreign powers unloaded all their old surplus arms and equipment and worn out tanks, in return for, or the promise of, Spanish gold, yet still paid lip-service to international opinion and the Non-Intervention Committee.
Only the 'Emperor of the Med', cast adrift from the League of Nations, actually sent a formal military body there and even then had to excuse them as just 'enthusiastic volunteers'... they also all signed-up with the Spanish Foreign Legion (as did the Condor Legion) when they got off the boat, thus becoming actual 'Spanish' soldiers in the eyes of the law. Internationalists on the other hand risked arrest by the French for attempting to cross into Spain illegally and quite often were arrested in Spain for actually doing so and having no papers.
All things to consider before you boot volunteers and your best kit onto a boat and then send them off to a sovereign country at war.
;)
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I would think that some of the colonial territories would use the "distraction" as an opportunity to break free. Most likely contenders for wars of liberation would be India and the territories comprising Iraq, Jordan and Palestine.
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It doesn't really matter about might've, could've and all that. Any reasoning for the hows and whys of whatever you choose to add to, or do in, your scenario, is going to be infinitely more reasoned and sensible than martial morris men, cricket pads as defensive armour... or even that Edward VIII's refusal to reconsider his forthcoming marriage to 'that woman' could really spark a civil war.
There are no limits and certainly real history does at times do the ridiculous. I wouldn't over-think things and just get stuck in. As mental exercises go it's good fun too; I also looked at Belgium and its potential to cause a war between France and Britain.
:)
In a real comparison however, the Spanish Civil War didn't erupt overnight, it took near enough ten years for it to come to a boil and the left and right had been gunning-down each other in the streets since 1930. The military coup of 1936 was supposed to stop all that and restore common (and traditionalist) sense.
Foreign powers unloaded all their old surplus arms and equipment and worn out tanks, in return for, or the promise of, Spanish gold, yet still paid lip-service to international opinion and the Non-Intervention Committee.
Only the 'Emperor of the Med', cast adrift from the League of Nations, actually sent a formal military body there and even then had to excuse them as just 'enthusiastic volunteers'... they also all signed-up with the Spanish Foreign Legion (as did the Condor Legion) when they got off the boat, thus becoming actual 'Spanish' soldiers in the eyes of the law. Internationalists on the other hand risked arrest by the French for attempting to cross into Spain illegally and quite often were arrested in Spain for actually doing so and having no papers.
All things to consider before you boot volunteers and your best kit onto a boat and then send them off to a sovereign country at war.
;)
I might add that the combination of nostalgia and ridiculousness of VBCW is precisely what has led to it's becoming "the most successful imagi-nation or alt-history in the world of miniature wargaming".
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What surprises me is that I've not come across any American game that applies this rule set to America. I would have thought this would be an Ideal 'what if 'template given you have the Mine Wars as a starting point.
Mark.
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What surprises me is that I've not come across any American game that applies this rule set to America. I would have thought this would be an Ideal 'what if 'template given you have the Mine Wars as a starting point.
Mark.
There was a Kickstarter a couple of years ago called 1933: A Nation Divided, which was essentially the 2nd ACW 1933-1939 but it failed to take off.
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I might add that the combination of nostalgia and ridiculousness of VBCW is precisely what has led to it's becoming "the most successful imagi-nation or alt-history in the world of miniature wargaming".
I think you'll find 'Sea Lion' holds that position.
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What surprises me is that I've not come across any American game that applies this rule set to America. I would have thought this would be an Ideal 'what if 'template given you have the Mine Wars as a starting point.
Mark.
Seen two or three threads on here by players aiming to do a US version.
What's interesting is that a potential conflict of some sort was far more likely in the US, where large violent labour actions (some involving tens of thousands of combatants!) had been a regular feature of American life for decades. It's also especially true if you believe the Business Plot was real.
I think you'll find 'Sea Lion' holds that position.
Just quoting the OP, mate. :)
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In Pembrokeshire we neither know, nor care what Johnny Foreigner does... And that includes those buggers from Carmarthen...
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There was a Kickstarter a couple of years ago called 1933: A Nation Divided, which was essentially the 2nd ACW 1933-1939 but it failed to take off.
I am sure there was an SPI board game (many years ago) based on the ACW ending in a stalemate,
in other words the Confederate States survived, only for war to break out again in the 1930s.
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There was a Kickstarter a couple of years ago called 1933: A Nation Divided, which was essentially the 2nd ACW 1933-1939 but it failed to take off.
I am sure there was an SPI board game (many years ago) based on the ACW ending in a stalemate,
in other words the Confederate States survived, only for war to break out again in the 1930s.
There's a whole Harry Turtledove series based on that, so I'm not surprised that people have tried to wargame this.
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I don't really see an alternative continuation of the ACW as much of a game.As there's so much room to play similar games with the civil war itself. So why a civil war 2. If you take it to the nuts and bolts its simply the same thing with better weaponry.
The mine wars and the business plot have the larger than life characters, bad guy's , under dogs, and the meat on the bone that VBCV genre game's need.
Matt.
I know it's a rather crude generalization but wouldn't work in your part of the globe with french speaking.Russians from Alaska, the native peoples.and American annex conspiracy?
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french speaking.Russians from Alaska, the native peoples.and American annex conspiracy?
lol
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I thoroughly enjoyed the whole Turtledove ACW series, but not much else he wrote. It got a bit weak and predictable towards the end in any case too.
The chief difficulty you would face turning it into a wargame would be vehicles. U.S. tanks in the real world were part of a linked design sequence. I suppose you could go the Hollywood route and have the South with M24, M41, M47 and M48, while the North has the M1-M4 series, or vice versa (Stuarts and Lees after all). In the real world, had things turned out differently, French S-35s were going to be made in Savannah from Late 1940, as French Industry could not meet its nation's needs.
Aircraft are easier as there were lots of design lines, albeit few aircraft companies in the Southern States.
The VACW scenario was more like VBCW though and didn't have the same problems as Turtledove's scenario.
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I don't know about the 2nd American Civil War playing out the way the first did. The South was still trying to get over the devastation of the Civil War (the numbers of farm animals in the South did not reach pre-war levels until the 1890s). It took WWII for the South to really recover. If playing the real 1930s you have to deal with the Democratic party in which conservative Southerners and Northern liberals worked together. The great sort that has happened with the two party system is a recent occurrence and the political world of the time is very different (machine politics for example). I am sure that there would be a few Neo-Confederates, but most of the South would stand by FDR!!!
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My view is less geopolitical, and more geographical. Roads, railways,river's, cities ,and so and so . They're all bottles necks and choke points That are pretty much the same . Wet feet are wet feet no matter whether your carrying a musket or machine gun.
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Would some of these be seized by other nations in the power vacuum created by a civil war in Britain in the 1930's? Would some go independent? Would others collapse into local civil wars? Would some of these places send forces to fight in Britain? Would the USA intervene if, for example, Japan grabbed Hong Kong and Singapore?
Funny you should bring this up. I spent the better part of the last two weeks reading up about British colonies in Central and South America. I was trying to write a background for my American Legion Volunteer force for VBCW, but ran into a few issues. First the U.S. govt passed some legislation that makes creating such a force difficult. The Firearms act of 1934, and the Neutrality act of 1935. So, not being able to raise and arm such a force and US soil, it would have to be done elsewhere. Though I suspect FDR would have been supportive of such a cause, it would have to have been done in such a way to circumvent US law. This is where the United Fruit Company comes in. They basically own several Central American governments and would make it possible for the U.S. to transfer arms to Hondurus. Honduras then transfers weapons to the ALV. The ALV in turn helps to quell a growing communist threat in former British colonies that have just declared independence. Of course after British Honduras, Jamaica, and Suriname were secure from communist threat, the United Fruit Company would be happy to administer these countries with their own appointed puppets. So, sometime in late 1940 or early 1941 some ALV would make it to England.
The problem with the VACW is that there is no agreement on when it would start, the cause, the core groups etc. The Bonus March could work, but then you would have to kill off President Hoover and have MacArthur make a grab for power. The Court Packing controversy with FDR could also work, but it's a little boring. At any rate, any background needs to have factions, but not a defined map where this faction controls these states and that faction controls these states etc. Instead it needs to end where people are taking up arms and skirmish at the local level.
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The problem with the VACW is that there is no agreement on when it would start, the cause, the core groups etc. The Bonus March could work, but then you would have to kill off President Hoover and have MacArthur make a grab for power. The Court Packing controversy with FDR could also work, but it's a little boring. At any rate, any background needs to have factions, but not a defined map where this faction controls these states and that faction controls these states etc. Instead it needs to end where people are taking up arms and skirmish at the local level.
I'd go with the Business Plot. That way there's no assassination of Hoover required and you can have FDR as president.
Plus we're talking about an actual-real-life potential coup of the United States government to be replaced by a military dictatorship backed by a slew of wealthy families - you don't get a much stronger springboard for another American civil war than that.
From there it's easy to add outright fascism to the mix if you have say, Henry Ford join in on the Business side.
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While Ford makes a good boogie man, he was no longer head of Ford motor company then. To many bad decisions. Of course that didn't stop him from writing or being vocal.
I backed that kick starter when I came out. Sad to say their hasn't been much steam since then.
I painted up some Silver Legion to represent my fascist militia useing brigade games Caribbean Banana Wars USMC. The Hondurans and Haitians in that line work pretty well to.
I as yet not found any inter war U.S. Army and currently most great war lines of U.S. Dough Boy's/Devil dogs are garbage. So haven't built much else since.
Of course I did do a write up, that got lost in a move for the Seattle Soviet, and was going to use international brigade for the Union Anarcho-Syndicalist and Soviet other Soviet supplied militias.
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I think VBCW captured a chunk of 'popular imagination' and the bandwagon variants could not really offer anything fresh and new in the same way it had.
I actually thought the U.S. one had some legs, but as noted 'big business vs the people' was probably a better hook than pure political factions. You've got guys like Huey Long in the mix, what could go wrong?
Most people can imagine the 'political' violence escalating to all-out war in the U.S. I think, not to mention it was the era of Gangsters and Pulp heroes; so there was a historical flat line of violence in any case. Imagining Bertie Wooster and chums biffing up the BUF, or giving those Bolshies a damn good thrashing, creates far more cognitive dissonance, which is perhaps part of the appeal.
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I think VBCW captured a chunk of 'popular imagination' and the bandwagon variants could not really offer anything fresh and new in the same way it had.
I actually thought the U.S. one had some legs, but as noted 'big business vs the people' was probably a better hook than pure political factions. You've got guys like Huey Long in the mix, what could go wrong?
Most people can imagine the 'political' violence escalating to all-out war in the U.S. I think, not to mention it was the era of Gangsters and Pulp heroes; so there was a historical flat line of violence in any case. Imagining Bertie Wooster and chums biffing up the BUF, or giving those Bolshies a damn good thrashing, creates far more cognitive dissonance, which is perhaps part of the appeal.
And don't forget the whimsy! Got to have that. lol
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Foreign powers unloaded all their old surplus arms and equipment and worn out tanks, in return for, or the promise of, Spanish gold, yet still paid lip-service to international opinion and the Non-Intervention Committee.
Only the 'Emperor of the Med', cast adrift from the League of Nations, actually sent a formal military body there and even then had to excuse them as just 'enthusiastic volunteers'... they also all signed-up with the Spanish Foreign Legion (as did the Condor Legion) when they got off the boat, thus becoming actual 'Spanish' soldiers in the eyes of the law. Internationalists on the other hand risked arrest by the French for attempting to cross into Spain illegally and quite often were arrested in Spain for actually doing so and having no papers.
All things to consider before you boot volunteers and your best kit onto a boat and then send them off to a sovereign country at war.
;)
In fact, it was just France who sold worn-out equipment to the republican side (at outrageously high prices). The equipment russians, germans and italians brought with them was in fact top of the line at the time: the T-26 was considered one of the best tanks of its time, the BT-5 was a test-bed for a fast attack tank, the Polikarpov I-16 and the Me-109 were some of the (if not the) best fighters around, the 8.8 flak cannons were first used as antitank weapons (which later led to the development of the Tiger tank) in this war... the german and italian tanks were laughable, but they were the very best both countries could offer at the time. There was even a stuka squadron active in the later stages of the war (although those planes came back to Germany by its end). And the only country asking for gold was the Soviet Union - the "nationalist" side was able to get whatever it needed because they were expected to repay it after the war (which surprisingly included an unlimited supply of Texaco's oil...)
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I beg to differ. There has been a fair amount of research done on the what's, when's and how many's of arms deliveries in the SCW.
Just talking Panzer I, the initial vehicles came from 1st Panzer Division and were surplus 'A' models, which were to due to be replaced by new 'B' models. Likewise the final deliveries to Spain in the last year of the war were the first 'B' models supplied, which themselved had been replaced in their former units by new Panzer II.
From 1936 the T-26 was built with a welded hull and from 1938 with a new turret type. Neither of these feature on vehicles supplied to Spain, so the vehicles sent cannot have been made later than 1935. The BT-5 was produced from 1933-35, when it was replaced in production by the BT-7. The BT-5 didn't appear in Spain until Autumn 1937.
The Soviets supplied thousands of Lewis Guns, Hotchkiss, Colt, CSRG, Maxim and other machine guns, dating from the RCW, but very few DP light machine guns, which were the 'in-service' type of the Red Army. McClean Guns and even guns supplied by France to Russia in the Great War (e.g. 155mm mle 1877 & 1877/16) were sent to Spain. The Germans supplied MG13 and MG15Na light machine guns to the Rebels, but no MG 34s. The Czechs sold the Republic war reparation Austro-Hungarian machine guns and artillery.
Many of the 'Mexicanski' rifles were stamped 'Made in Connecticut', or with Czarist Imperial Eagles, so clearly not new.
Aircraft and anti-tank guns apart, hardly anything that was actually brand new made it to Spain.
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I think you'll find 'Sea Lion' holds that position.
See i'd disagree with this, Sealion gets little mention due to it descending into a Dad's Army spin off or a "you've run out of supplies, lose" or "Oh the British state can never survive". In short a bit dull, samey and deserves remaining at Staff Colleges.
VBCW on the other hand has kept going from strength to strength, I'm always seeing new factions, plot or armies. Let alone that at least 5 different figure companies making figures for it, and far more indirectly.
I might be coming across as a bit heavy but I do feel VBCW to have really captured something.
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I never said Sealion was the most interesting and dynamic scenario, just that it was the most sucessful.
Given that there are at least ten mass-market 'serious' history books I can think of off the top of my head, one quite popular and one not so popular supplement for the current most popular WWII skirmish game, and it is rare for other rule sets not to delve into it in addition, would support that assertion.
Google 'Wargaming Operation Sealion' and you get a mass of content, 'VBCW' not so much. That's not in any way a dig at VBCW, which is certainly the most successful created setting; if you exclude Middle Earth and probably Westeros.
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I do wonder if Warlord would have made a "Sealion" rule book if not for VBCW however. Given the number of "hints" towards it, Sealion as a historical exercise always strikes me more as a "very well alone" coffee table subject which you often find in the second run book shops rather than a serious wargame material.
But then nor is VBCW quite... Thankfully
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But then nor is VBCW quite... Thankfully
IMO, that's rather the point. Someone who takes VBCW dead seriously is rather the sort who probably shouldn't be playing it. ;)
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... or writing it. While I wouldn't consider myself 'dead serious' about anything much, warlike cricketers and the other silliness people injected into the setting, ruined it for me and quite a few others, including at least one of the creators I believe.
The slant Muttonchop and Footsore put onto their VBCW figures was fine with me, beyond that was a parody too far.
Certainly Warlord tried to set a foot in each camp with its Sealion supplements. 'Hints' at VBCW is a politer way than I would have put it and I think that it was a mistake to go down that road and quite clumsy in its execution to boot.
There was enough whimsy and farce in the real thing to go around, without trying to capitalise on a perceived VBCW Underground looking for something new to pitch their Morrismen at.
One man's meat and all that, but there is a vast gulf between 'counterfactual' and 'alien space bats' sectors in the realm of alternate history. I'm very much in favour of the former and spontaneous humour in my games... if that wasn't obvious to anyone.
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Well, part of the appeal is that there's room for players to choose their own level of silliness.
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IMO, that's rather the point. Someone who takes VBCW dead seriously is rather the sort who probably shouldn't be playing it. ;)
Spot on.
For my part, I enjoyed coming up with the fluff for the Yorkist Front - the attraction of VBCW was researching the state of affairs locally in the late 1930s and seeing what could have been out to use in a civil war....where were the key resources, road junctions, railway lines, barracks....what could be pressed into service, and who were likely to be the moan protagonists.
Personally, the spirit of VBCW was about the “fatal flaw”....by all means strap a great big cannon onto a chassis, but it’s more fun if it only carries a couple of shells, or there is a chance the gun will fly off the first time you fire it....
:D
I took part in some mass games, which were great fun - the seaborne invasion of Hull, where players were trying to sink the Argus training carrier with Swordfish was hilarious, but later on when some people started to field mass armies of panzers “loaned” from Germany from table edge to table edge, it began to take some of the enjoyment out of it for me, and I drifted onto other projects.
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You must have invade d form the east.They're all bit weird that side of the river.
Hull is such a belligerent hive of indifference that the rest of the country is hard pushed to find it on a map.
It's black humoured character's( once you get past the devastation of the fishing industry). Going back to the civil war when the city told both sides to go away (actually he used a phrase that started with an f and ended with an f. ((To both the king and parliament))Which was partly why when the war ended the winner's chose a sticky end for him rather than a custodial sentence.)
Everything from the Hull pals battalions loathing each other. To the fire brigades fighting in the street and letting White fryer gate burn as far as the land of Green Ginger. Because it's old town and each company thought they exclusively covered the street.The city centre was punctuated by working docks.with art galleries department stores and banks jostling for space with dock cranes and ship yards(before the input of the German town planning committee in the 40's)
Even the telephone boxes are a different colour to the rest of the country( great way of representing the east riding just add cream colouered phone boxes)
And it's that kind of tapestry of local history thats woven into a VBCW game that feeds it's popularity.
I agree that once you move away from the Heath Robinson approach to your forces . You might as well pick up any set of ww2 rules instead.
( still slowly plodding away on enough buildings for a propper east riding game with water towers and dodgy narrow winding roads.)
Mark.
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You must have invade d form the east.They're all bit weird that side of the river.
lol
If memory serves me, it was Yorkists driving eastwards, BUF making an amphibious assault from the south, and the dock workers fighting everyone (including amongst themselves).
It did give me the opportunity to build a ten foot long aircraft carrier plus a four foot destroyer escort though...to illustrate the point about “fatal flaw”, the Argus was a training Carrier, and by this point it’s only air defences were machine guns, making it a very large sitting duck.
(http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh72/AKULADEEP/A%20Very%20British%20Civil%20War/P1040302-1.jpg)
(http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh72/AKULADEEP/A%20Very%20British%20Civil%20War/P1040091-1.jpg)
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The carrier is longer than my gaming board. lol
(Only room to store a 3x3 board. Plus I never have time for bigger games. Admittedly I could just walk across the road to North Hull but they're more 20mm chaps.)
Did you use Q ships ? As you could get in land easily as far as Beverley with one.
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Well, part of the appeal is that there's room for players to choose their own level of silliness.
Sure, I'm all for not spoiling anybody else's fun, but you have to have some guidelines all the same. Wayback when it was 'no panzers', then from what Akula has said, that line was crossed.
There's a cycle. I was once able to point a finger at who I thought was taking it all a bit too seriously, being a bit anal about stuff and seemingly out to spoil my fun.
When they drifted away I was suddenly in their place and to the guy who might want to field the Bicycling Bavarian Oompah Band mit panzers und lederhosen, I was the curmugeon with no sense of humour out to spoil their fun.
VBCW did and does capture something special and unique, but unfortunately that thing is not necessarily the same thing to everyone that plays VBCW.
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You must have invade d form the east.They're all bit weird that side of the river.
Hull is such a belligerent hive of indifference that the rest of the country is hard pushed to find it on a map.
It's black humoured character's( once you get past the devastation of the fishing industry). Going back to the civil war when the city told both sides to go away (actually he used a phrase that started with an f and ended with an f. ((To both the king and parliament))Which was partly why when the war ended the winner's chose a sticky end for him rather than a custodial sentence.)
Everything from the Hull pals battalions loathing each other. To the fire brigades fighting in the street and letting White fryer gate burn as far as the land of Green Ginger. Because it's old town and each company thought they exclusively covered the street.The city centre was punctuated by working docks.with art galleries department stores and banks jostling for space with dock cranes and ship yards(before the input of the German town planning committee in the 40's)
Even the telephone boxes are a different colour to the rest of the country( great way of representing the east riding just add cream colouered phone boxes)
And it's that kind of tapestry of local history thats woven into a VBCW game that feeds it's popularity.
I agree that once you move away from the Heath Robinson approach to your forces . You might as well pick up any set of ww2 rules instead.
( still slowly plodding away on enough buildings for a propper east riding game with water towers and dodgy narrow winding roads.)
Mark.
lol
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What surprises me is that I've not come across any American game that applies this rule set to America. I would have thought this would be an Ideal 'what if 'template given you have the Mine Wars as a starting point.
Mark.
Several reasons I suspect.
The last Civil War is still fresh in the US mind, the last Veteran of it dying in the 50s. Its knock on effects are still being dealt with via the warped politics and racial issues evident in their society. Even today there is the odd rumbling of "Violent right wing uprising" if they dont get their way, that makes such a thing as a 'Civil War 2.0' less fun as a subject matter.
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Well, perhaps some people will apply that local focus of VBCW, as in the Hull example, to such far flung bits of the Empire as Jamaica, British East Africa, Singapore, and Hong Kong...
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Wouldn't those places mentioned just descend into attempts to remove the yoke of colonial oppression? There's no mass of white working class to divide between Socialism and Fascism. I also imagine Champagne Socialists to be thin on the ground there too. Conservative expats a plenty for sure, but little else.
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Agree that India was ready for independence.
Jamaica is interesting. Marcus Garvey, Alexander Bustamente, and Norman Manley are interesting figures of the time. There was a labor union movement. Maybe Jamaica would also have seized the moment to declare independence.
Malaysia doesn't seem very unified in the late 1930's. There are several small states, along with ethnic and religious divisions. And there's Thailand looking for a chance to regain control of some of the small states in northern Malaysia.
Reading further, Egypt was already independent from 1922, and Iraq from 1932, though both continued to host British military garrisons. I can see those garrisons, along with the garrisons of India, returning to Britain to fight in the civil war.