A Very British Civil War, Some alternative history wargaming...

One of my Warhammer buddies is also involved in historical wargames, and at the weekend I had a go at one of them.

"A Very British Civil War" is a "What If?" scenario based on the idea that King Edward VII refused to abdicate after marrying American divorcee Wallis Simpson in 1936, causing a constitutional crisis in Britain and leading to Civil War.

The battles are fought out between proper trained forces, like Royalist members of the British Army, or the British Union of Fascists, and all sorts of other local militia forces of rebels, Socialists, and wotnot. We had lady factory workers, morris dancers, Canadian mounties, Ethiopians , football fans and all sorts of other things taking part, which sounds silly but everyone's armies are based (at least loosely) on historical research.

You can learn more about AVBCW HERE

And here are a few pictures I took. Here, my BUF forces assault a manor house which is housing snipers, causing a bit of a fire, leading to the lady of the manor coming out to complain to the Royalist film crew!





My Royalist ally then produced a fire engine, putting the fire out and allowing my Battalion Command to set up in the building.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, forces of the Anglican League gathered to drive the Fascists out of Ledbury...



And here's the whole table to give you an idea of how big the game was...

Been reading about it in WI several times. I totally dig the premise.

It's on my long list of awesome stuff I'd do if I had the time, resources and a steady group to play with. Always strikes me that a local (non UK/English) version would also rock. There's a small window after independence where a similar premise would work.

Just like snowblizz I've read a bit about it (but on Warseer) and think it sounds fun. Hm, maybe a version where Åland is liberated by the Swedes?

They would be one of the factions yes.
Swedish expeditionary force (to ensure neutrality and protect the civilian Swedish speaking population)
German expeditionary force (can't let anyone else have the most strategic naval base in the Baltic)
Russian garrison (I think there was some)
White Finns
Red Finns
People for joining Sweden
People against joining Sweden
-all actual factions present (not all concurrent), the latter two not in arms though

Royal Marines (or a BEF)
Whatever the French would call 'em
-both obliged by treaty to ensure neutrality of the Islands, WW1 got in the way though a wee bit

And that's not even alternate fiction yet!
Stretch it a bit more and one could sub-faction quite a bit.
Tsarist faction (officers and former officials and other Russian bourgeois stranded on the Islands)
Local Reds (pick one *viks)
Local Whites
Monarchists
Republicans
City (well it's only a town, but the only one) militia
Random country village defense force
Nationalists

I could probably invent more, but I'm running out of populace!

For added fun, stretch this into the "constitutional crisis" period when the League of Nations "intervened" and add peace keepers from Ethiopia or something!

Excuse my ignorance of Scandinavian history after the Vikings (!) but when is this all going on? Sounds fascinating! What can I Google to find out more?

On a related note, what's happening in Scandinavia in 1937? What do you think the reaction to Civil War in Britain would have been?

Shadespyre, Finland was ruled by Tsarist Russia but broke away after the first world war. A year or two after they had a very bloody civil war between the communists (reds) and the "whites" (the colour, nothing to do with race ). Chaos, executions, prison camps. Almost all the Swedes (8% of the population in total in Finland, or something like that) joined the white side.
Snowblizz live in Åland which is a Swedish-speaking part of Finland with weird semi-neutral rules thanks to what happened after WWI.

Not bad for a Swede. We could even let you visit and you wouldn't make a fool out of yourself. Technically the Crimean war is the root "cause" of demilitarization.
And independence was declared during the war still, 6 December 1917, civil war started January 1918, so like the month after.

Not all. Naturally you couldn't be versed in what is somewhat local history. I'm glad I've sparked an interest.
We are talking late stages of WW1 after the Russian revolution, 1917-1918.

Here's the wiki page for the fabulous Åland Isles. They must be great, I'm not even a "native" and I still think they rock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85land_Islands
Particularly the History section. And also a summary of the situation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85land_crisis
I think that should give you links enough to get started to the major events in the region at the time.

I'm not sure if the battle of Godby shows up in searches, when a rather surprised telephone exchange girl found herself the forward observer for White artillery. That's a story I heard from my teacher in gradeschool, so caveat emptor.

In 1937, not so much on the surface. Rising tensions in Europe are of course a concern, particularly Finland was ever more conscious that the eastern neighbor was as always planning for expansion. And thus rearming as best they could. I guess people would follow it like we do today similar conflicts, horrified fascination. I'd think direct involvement would be out, Finland would be recovering from the Civil War still and and be preoccupied with the growing Soviet menace.
Interestingly, this is the time when one of the local shipping magnates is still shipping wheat to Great Britain from Australia so it would probably be a great concern here. And a potential for great profit! (They used to be very good at that)
Namely this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_race
One of the ships listed there (Pommern) is still lying at anchor down in the harbour, in nearly mint(*) condition.

(*) I'm given to understand it's the only one in "original" condition, ie not converted for other use.

So there's even a connection between the islands and AVBCW if one wants, hadn't thought about that actually.

This post has been edited by snowblizz on Feb 21 2012, 08:44 AM

Thanks for that, very interesting stuff.

I think " A Very Scandinavian Civil War" might be a goer!

I've still not played that much AVBCW but I've been having an input into modelling. My mate is collecting large armies for this game, including a lot of wacky period tank models, such as this latest one:



This is the Mark XI from Copplestone Castings. Apparently based on a real Mark VIII prototype... and the tank from the chase scene in Indiana Jones!

Known as The Beast, you can see from the 1" squares that this is a massive model for a 25mm scale historical game. There's lots more equipment to add to it, my job with this (and all the other tanks) has been to drill and pin the metal gun barrels to the basic resin structure. I also magnetised the turret on this one (most of the previous ones rotate on pins).

If you ever wondered where the inspiration for the multi-turreted Warhammer 40k Imperial Tanks came from, check out the crazy Interwar period tank designs, like this Vickers Independent Heavy Tank:



Yes, that was an actual real world tank design!

This post has been edited by Shadespyre on Jan 9 2013, 12:18 AM

Thats not a wacky tank,this is a wacky tank


http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=4693

Ah yes, that seems very practical.

Wow! I stand corrected!!

Yeah I read about that land battleship, and a bunch of other articles while stuck on the boat.

Prototype 1, shot it's own turrets, blew up.

Prototype 2, drove in rough terrain, broke up, exploded.

Prototype 3, same as above really IIRC.

And they finally got that it wasn't a smart idea.

I do love those whacky ideas though. It's a bit like Warhammer armylisting. We start out with all these ideas but then we get to the format that actually works and tends to get a bit streamlined and boring.

It's tank assembly time again! Another box of goodies to assemble for my mate's interwar games, here is a completed Rolls Royce Armoured Car c. 1920:



It's another nice model from Copplestone, pretty easy to assemble apart from those front wheel arches.

Next up are some bigger Mark V tanks from 1918:



That's one each of the hybrid, male and female versions of the tank, along with the metal bits that need to be added to the male tank, which I shall tackle first.

These may be a little old to serve in Britain in AVBCW games (though you can imagine them being brought out of reserve or stolen from museums!) but were used by both sides in the Russian civil war of 1917-22, which yes, there is also an obscure wargame rule set for.... yes, this is the same White Russians vs Red Russians war that had a big impact on Scandinavia as mentioned above.

This post has been edited by Shadespyre on Jan 9 2013, 12:37 AM

Nice stuff. What makes the tanks female? The ability to give birth to ten space marines?