The ideas behind Space 1939 have been brewing for some time.
The concept is quite simple, take the Space 1889 universe complete with inter-planetary travel and transpose it to 1939 and the Second World War.
Why 1939?
Well it’s in the main because it sounds like 1889.
In this alternate world we have the same kinds of political machinations that we had prior to World War Two, but in this world you have æther flyers and liftwood armoured fighting vehicles.
As with any alternate history, once you have deviated from the history we know, it is highly improbable that the events that happen in our world also happening in the alternate world. In our world, World War Two was in many ways a direct result of World War One. Would World War One have resulted in trench warfare and the defeat of Germany if either side had liftwood based steam powered flyers.
Well the benefit of an imaginary alternate world, is that you don’t need to worry too much about deviation from the timeline due to the use of liftwood or æther flyers, but to just say that the alternate timeline followed a similar path to our own. If anything 19th Century space travel has increased the rate of technological change.
So it’s 1939 and the great nations of Earth are readying for war. Liftwood is in great demand and as a result shortages mean that only a small proportion of each nation’s war machines are liftwood based.
As well as tanks, armoured cars, cavalry, giant land fortresses and low level liftwood platforms will decide who wins the ground. In the air, liftwood flyers are supplemented with fighters and bombers.
So what about rules?
Well I could write my own rules, but why not use a rules set that people are familiar with. So you could use any rule set you like, but I will be looking at using Flames of War (and possibly Warhammer Historical for skirmish style games).
More soon…