A&A 1899?

[CWO Marc]

Here’s a historical oddity I ran across while I was checking on another subject.  From 1899 to 1901, there was an armed conflict involving on one side China and on the other side a multi-power alliance that will seem utterly improbable to players of the A&A WWI and WWII games: the United States, Great Britain, Russia, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Japan (with Australia, to top it all off, contributing troops and ships to the alliance without being a formal part of it).  The conflict was the Boxer Rebellion, and the contemporary illustration I’ve posted below practically looks like a concept sketch for an A&A game box.  It’s too bad the A&A 1914 game map doesn’t extend all the way to China because this little war could be the basis for a truly bizarre set of A&A house rules.

[barney]

Good find CWO and nice atrwork. It’s really no wonder that the Chinese hate the “Imperialists”, that and everyone else too. :)
The novel “Sand Pebbles” is enlightening in this area as well.

[Black_Elk]

That’s funny, a few years back I made a tripleA map and scenario with this exact era in mind. It was called Domination 1900, and aimed to capture the period of the Spanish American war/Boer War/Boxer rebellion up through WW1. Had an anachronous but rough start date of 1899.

I think the map has since been re-purposed as a WW1 map, but the idea was always to have a multiple Alliance game or a 3 man, that could then “devolve” into the Great War hahah. Your post and illustration just reminded me of it.

The original map was too large to attach, but here is one of the early working keys… I remember learning the names of all those damn islands! Took me forever. Might be something you’d appreciate though CWO
:-D

Ps. You know it must be history if Heston was in a movie about it lol

[Flashman]

Nice; a few comments:

Ireland not partitioned until 1922.

Some Russian tt names are anachronistic; e.g. “Volgograd” should be Tzaritsyn.

Rwanda was part of German East Africa.

[CWO Marc]

Nice map, Black Elk, and interesting concept for a pre-WWI conflicts game – thanks for sharing!

[amanntai]

This would be a very interesting game… 1900 imperialism. I like it. A lot.

[General Veers]

Excellent map, I love the level of detail. Little thing but since I’ve been there I feel the need to point out Zanzibar should be added as a British island group right off the coast of Dar es Salaam.

[toblerone77]

Don’t remember what it’s called but there is a hex and tile war game based upon this as well as miniature games.

[Black_Elk]

Haha good eyes! I honestly can’t recall where I put my other map keys, but this one is sure to have some errors In the names and ownership. There is a working version in TripleA that might have some more accurate names and territory ownership, if anyone wants to mess around with it. There were a few tricky challenges in the map design since there was an idea initially to make a map that might work for WW2 too, so some of the territory divisions probably reflect that weirdness. Another thing that I regretted later was putting in all the city circles on the baseline map, especially the Shanghai square lol. But at the time it seemed like a novel idea. Zanzibar! totally necessary!
:-D

I think there is a version called 1901 and another called 1914 that use my same basic Domination map. The original idea was to make a game with a very limited unit roster and universal production. The thought there was that the map was probably too complex for a game with lots of different units, but I think most mods use a roster similar to the WW2 games now. I pretty much abandoned work on the project when Empire Total War came out, back round like 2007/8, and just left it for others to mod if they wanted. Can’t speak to the playability, but I always liked the idea of a late 19th century map that could take you up through WW1. Something covering the Morocco crisis, playing with ideas and different ways that WW1 might have started earlier than it did haha

[knp7765]

Hey guys, let’s not forget the two Balkan wars that happened between 1900 and 1914. I think it was about 1911 or 1912.
The first Balkan war was Balkan states fighting to get rid of Ottoman (Turkish) influence in the region, which was successful and left Turkey holding a little tiny bit of territory across the Dardanelles.
The second Balkan war came about when Bulgaria, who gained the least from the first Balkan war, decided they were tough and wanted more territory. Bulgaria attacked Greece and Serbia. Then Romania and Turkey both attacked Bulgaria. Forced to fight a four front war, Bulgaria sued for peace pretty quickly.
Anyway, a little more fun for what sounds like it might be an interesting game.
I do remember hearing about the Chinese Boxer rebellion. I did not know that there were so many nations allied against them.

[toblerone77]

Well I’ve well expanded out of the A&A universe though it is still a first love. There is a HUGE world of games that we especially as US gamers have overlooked outside of A&A. WWII has a plethora of games out there if you’re willing to explore.

However, in the UK market especially, there are many, many, many games covering even the smallest and largest battles of history varying on complexity.

I would encourage anyone to take a dip in this pool. I actually got my wife to not only play but ask for more of Memoir '44. Sure it’s not A&A but it’s WWII and some day A&A may be “go to” game.

So, while A&A is a favorite, a smaller, weirder, not necessarily A&A game can be the gateway to WWII without “overwhelming” potential a “war game junkie” with the likes of G40 or even AA41.

It seems backwards but more “complicated” games with a smaller scope can really convert people to the thought “well this is really fun, what else have you got?”.