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Author Topic: Global Implications of VBCW?  (Read 7841 times)

Offline FramFramson

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #15 on: November 25, 2018, 12:13:12 AM »
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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Offline Jemima Fawr

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #16 on: November 25, 2018, 01:20:02 PM »
In Pembrokeshire we neither know, nor care what Johnny Foreigner does... And that includes those buggers from Carmarthen...
Suffering from insomnia?  Too much excitement in your life?  Jemima Fawr's Miniature Wargames Blog might be just the solution you've been looking for: www.jemimafawr.co.uk

Offline has.been

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #17 on: November 25, 2018, 02:06:58 PM »
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.

Offline FramFramson

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #18 on: November 25, 2018, 07:00:33 PM »
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.

Offline tin shed gamer

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #19 on: November 25, 2018, 08:36:32 PM »
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?



Offline FramFramson

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #20 on: November 25, 2018, 10:03:05 PM »
french speaking.Russians from Alaska,  the native peoples.and American annex conspiracy?
lol

Offline Arlequín

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #21 on: November 26, 2018, 03:13:08 AM »
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.

Offline mysteriousbill

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #22 on: November 27, 2018, 09:47:24 PM »
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!!!

Offline tin shed gamer

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #23 on: November 27, 2018, 11:10:08 PM »
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.



Offline section 8

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #24 on: November 28, 2018, 12:12:48 AM »


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.
My Imagination is in Ruins. Just like the rest of my life.

Offline FramFramson

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #25 on: November 28, 2018, 01:21:38 AM »
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.

Offline commissarmoody

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #26 on: November 28, 2018, 08:20:08 AM »
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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Offline Arlequín

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #27 on: November 28, 2018, 11:30:58 AM »
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.

Offline commissarmoody

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #28 on: November 28, 2018, 12:18:22 PM »
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

Offline Yuber Okami

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Re: Global Implications of VBCW?
« Reply #29 on: November 28, 2018, 02:06:28 PM »
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...)