Kevin Nikolai’s
Byzantine Panzer Corps

Every so often, we get requests for Daily Content. Not very often; the website stats show that many thousands of you read these things, but very few tell us anything about them. One of the stranger requests we receive is for “alternate history” variants for our historical boardgames.

An assault rifle completes the ensemble.

It’s been our take ever since we started the company that ALL wargames are alternate history. We present the situation, but the players make the choices. The moment a player makes a choice different than the historical actor, the game no longer reflects “history.” Instead, it’s our job in designing the games to follow these alternate paths and make sure the game’s underlying model remains workable. Given that players have the benefit of hindsight, it’s not surprising that they often make better choices than their historical counterparts.

When gamers speak of “alternate history,” they’re usually using the science-fictional sense of the term. And in the wargame field, they’re usually speaking of a particular genre, one dominated by formulaic potboiler wish-fulfillment-fantasies long on battlefield action and short on characterization, with male heroes capable of prodigious sexual feats well into their 60’s. An “alternate history” game under that definition is actually a fantasy one, where conditions are considerably altered from those of reality.

We get two basic requests along these lines:

• What if the South won the American Civil War and fought the Union again in the 20th Century?

and

• What if the Byzantine Empire survived into modern times?

The first of those is, well, insane. The Confederate States had no chance to defeat the Union short of direct intervention by ray-gun-wielding space aliens.

The second of those is, well, insane. When the Byzantine Empire fell in 1453, it had already survived well beyond any reasonable limit. It was doomed the moment the first Turkish soldier crossed into Europe 70 years earlier. Survival would have required holding the line against the Islamic world several centuries earlier – not an impossible task, but one that completely alters the subsequent course of human history. Western civilization developed in large part due to the “Turkish threat.” Removing that part of the equation alters things completely.

But gamers, they want their bizarre variants. And at least these are only weird, not disturbing like the neo-Nazi wetdreams that actually got published at the end of the last century.

Long live weirdness! We’ll add the Byzantine Empire to the 1939 scenario of John Prados’ Third Reich. Byzantium’s capital is Istanbul (Constantinople) and its territory consists of all hexes of Greece and Bulgaria, plus European Turkey, Rhodes and Cyprus. The Empire is worth 50 BRP’s. Turkey’s forces and BRP value are unaltered.

Remove all Bulgarian and Greek forces. Replace them with initial forces of 12 x 3-3 INF, 2 x 4-5 ARM, 6 x 9 fleets and 2 x 5-4 TAC. Byzantium cannot be influenced by Major Powers, and like other minor neutrals without diplomacy tracks only enters the war if attacked.

You can download these pieces here.