Alternate history is one of the staples of gaming.
In the case of this week’s game the era is the American Civil War, an event rich in possibilities in and of itself.
But Ghost Train Games has added my favoured steampunk-theme to the era and came up with Alternative Civil War: 1861 from creative partners Juan Carlos González and César Librán. The game is currently on Kickstarter.com seeking the crowd funding required to launch the game.
Alternative Civil War is a 28mm scale miniature skirmish war game set in an alternate world.
Now most mini skirmish games offer a number of factions to play, and as we know from history class there were only the two sides in the ACW; the eventually victorious north and the south.
But that is where an alternative vision of history comes in.
“In 1818, Spain reclaimed La Florida and started using it as a stronghold for her new territorial claims over the southern North America,” details the Kickstarter page.
“Several years later, the Act of Removal, which forced the natives to leave their lands to accommodate the expanding colonists, failed due to the bloody opposition of the Confederacy of Natives and the Five Civilized Tribes. These were the tribes that most adapted the customs and culture of the colonists, but now have turned against them.
“The French-British siege of Sebastopol in 1855 failed, giving continuity to the Crimean War until the present day. A few years later the first Russian warships landed into Alaskian ports with an unknown agenda, extending the Euro-Russian conflict to the Canadian-North American border.
“Ending a decade of national sociopolitical and religious struggle, Mexico declared itself the New Aztlan Empire in 1859, reviving the Old Gods and dark practices. Aztlan commenced the reconquest of their ancient territories south of México.”
Suddenly, there are a number of options for game play factions.
I’m a big fan of creative settings, and have no issue using something like the ACW as a framework, and then adding fresh layers of imagination.
That said I was curious how the idea came to be for the game, so I asked.
“We’ve been wargamers and RPG’ers for a long time and always found bits to improve or adapt in all the game systems,” González. “This led to dabbling into rule and game creation, which we have made a few times for fun. ACW is a great and interesting setting, with lots of storytelling opportunities and we have developed mechanics with a lot of tactical depth while keeping it simple.
“Kickstarter offered us the chance of turning this into a game for the community out there that we hope like and enjoy playing it as much as we did creating.”
But, did the theme come first? Or did they decide the theme after developing the basic mechanics?
“It was a parallel process really,” offered Librán. “First thing we did was a very basic draft of the setting and theme. As we were developing the background and models, ideas and mechanics came to mind and, after setting the pace, scale and mood we wanted for ACW, we implemented all together coming up to what it is now.”
Having a few models in-hand, I can say Ghost Train is putting some fine detail into the soldiers, many coming with weapons based on the aforementioned ‘steampunk’ overlay in theme.
So I asked the partners which of the factions; north, south, Spain and natives, was his favourite?
Hedging his bets as they say González said, “all of them, honestly.
“Sherman and Stonewall Jackson are vivid representations of the characters, very expressive and awesomely sculpted.
“The Living Totem is a great model also, very original and full of detail.”
The game has taken a lot of time and effort to get to the point that it only needs gamer support to hit tables.
“We are also asked a lot about battle-scale, which exist in a very early draft level and will be part of the game expansion process.”
Check out ACW at www.ghosttraingames.com or through Kickstarter.
