Pax Brittanica

 Back in the mid 1980s, Victory Games were an innovative challenger to the dominance of Avalon Hill and SPI in the boardgames world, and published a number of excellent titles. I had quite a few VG games, but never owned Pax Brittanica. It was one which we had a look at, but never thought we'd have enough players to do it justice.

Anyway, nearly 40 years after it was published, I finally got to play it, thanks to Tim and Russell. 

It is a point-point movement game of Empire Building at the end of the long nineteenth century, and it ends when The Great War breaks out. The players take various Great Powers, and vie for dominance and influence, while trying to do down the other players without provoking the Big One. For this game, I was Britain, John A the USA, Tim was Italy, Lloyd was Prussia, Bish was Austria, Russell was France, Andrew was Russia and Jerry was Japan.

Jerry is busy setting out counters in the photo above. We all had stacks of stuff, representing Army and Navy units, merchant fleets and various types of 'control' markers ranging from economic interests to outright annexation. 

The map covers the entire world (!) and turns are two years long, so units can go a pretty long way, particularly if you control the international shipping lanes like Britain with a vast merchant fleet. The game starts in the 1880s, so well after the ACW, APW, FPW, Crimea, Risorgimiento and all those other unpleasantnesses. Just like VGs 'Vietnam', the victory conditions are sprawling and opaque, and each player has quite enough to be managing each turn in terms of income and expenditure without trying to minmax what other players are doing. The game just sort of emerges from the flow of play chart each turn, and the non player nations are represented by a very wide range of variable events.

Fundamentally it is a resource management game. Territories generate revenue, how much depends on their basic worth and how much influence you have in them, and territories also cost money to maintain, the most expensive being Dominions (like Canada). Military units also cost money to buy, and to maintain as well, as do the various types of influence. It costs a lot of money to go for a Protectorate or Annexation. VPs are determined by your gross national income at game end, plus lots and lots of other VPS for various county specific objectives eg you get 15VP for being first to build the Panama Canal, Britain loses 50 VPs if it controls less than five provinces in India etc etc

For me the game didn't open brilliantly. There was unrest in New Zealand and Kuwait. I thought the Kuwait rebellion was a brilliant opportunity to get a foothold in the Gulf region, so despatched a task force to establish a protectorate (the big black triangle) there and deal with the rebels. It turned our later that I should have paid more attention to the colour purple in the box. More on that later. 

Each area has a combat rating, which is used in a CRT type combat system, unless it is occupied by actual enemy units. Kuwait had a defence value of 2, so my two seaborne brigades with a total strength of 6 handily defeated them at 3:1.

New Zealand was another story. The NZ garrison was a mere brigade with 1SP and a 1SP naval unit, neither being much use against the Maoris, who had a combat value of 5. Fortunately I had shipping in  the South China Sea and a whole 10SP Corps in Australia, which I hurriedly despatched to NZ.

If you don't defeat a rebellion in a controlled area, you lose it and get kicked out, and it is a very, very expensive business to get it back again. It would have taken two entire years worth of British budget surplus to buy another 'Possession' marker.

Anyway, the Ozzies got 2:1 on the rebels, managed to avoid rolling a 1, and we beat them. Hurrah! That was a really bad start to the game for me, I should have been going full steam ahead in the Race for Africa and building railways in South America, not pratting about fighting wars everywhere.

India and Indochina late in the game. Japan starts small but now has taken over Korea, while France has taken Vietnam and the Dutch (an NPC) have busily taken over Indonesia. My main job here is to hang on to India. I need to keep control (as in, keep a 'Possession' marker) on at least five provinces AND maintain an Indian Army with at least three full strength 10SP Corps.

So it was just fabulous when rebellions broke out in both Baluchistan and Afghanistan. 

I can safely ignore Afghanistan unless the Russians are there, and it has a combat value of 10, with an income of only 2. Baluchistan however is part of the Indian Empire and I need to keep that, so another maximum effort is needed.

To keep a controlled area, you need to garrison it, so I shifted some units from South Africa to India, while one of the Indian Army Corps rolled into Baluchistan. With a combat value of 3, my 10SP Indians plus a 3SP Division of South Africans, rolled over the Baluchis and firmly took it over.

The Russians took advantage of the confusion to establish a Protectorate in Central Asia, and also set up trading posts (the purple circle) in the coast.

I had endless trouble in Africa. The South Africans kept rebelling, and in the end I had to grant them Dominion status which both cost a fortune and reduced their net worth. it was that or keep bleeding VPs. This rather distracted me from the rest of Africa, although we established a Possession in Kenya and a few trading posts, it was Italy and France who pushed their traders hard into the interior. All those orange stripes are Italians, and the blue ones are French. The Italians also managed to take control of Egypt! Another one of those mysterious purple boxes.

Back in the Pacific, although the Japanese were spreading around the rim, the Russians now had a lot of influence in northern China.

Still lots of space in Africa though.

South America was curiously untouched. Mexico had a combat value of 20(!), the US contented itself with taking over Hawaii. I had a major presence in Brazil, next stop Argentina and Chile, and I also had trading posts in Panama. My plan was to build the Panama Canal next turn and expand the rail network further, as the South American provinces were very profitable although they were existing states so we couldn't invade them without good cause.

It was at this point that Tim realised the 'purple boxes' at Kuwait and Egypt were actually the Ottoman Empire! Britain and Italy had inadvertently invaded the Ottoman Empire, by both putting down unrest in the relevant provinces. The Ottomans declared war on Italy and Britain, and Russian and France both weighed in on the side of the Turks. The Great War duly erupted, and the game ended at that point, in 1896. France was penalised 50 VP for starting the war so early.

Then it was VP totting up time. When the smoke cleared, France was last, with 1VP. Third was Germany with 84 (they had been busy taking over the Balkans and building a huge battle fleet), Britain had a mighty 100, and Italy scraped in with a win at 103, bolstered by all those traders in Africa. If I'd not had the South African revolt, I would have had 105, and won. I think the lesson is that Britain is going to win (as the Empire is so huge at the start) unless the others take some considerable time to build up Empires of their own, and don't start WW1 in the 1890s!

That was loads of fun, and now we've all played it once, we will have a better idea of what to do and not to do next time. Although the game has a daunting rulebook, in fact it flew along quickly, and the various flowcharts and aid sheets covered much of what we needed to do.