In the beginning...

As a prelude to space, humanity will start out on planet earth. Adding three centuries on to the date, I will begin in 2309AD. Before reaching for the stars, I want to have a few straightforward conventional battles in order to determine the character of the ultimate earth-based power. Only a single global force capable of uniting the entire planet to a single task can hope to enter into space, so the character of the winning side will have long-term implications for the newborn Human Empire.

The first faction is the Western-type powers, representing the industrialised nations of Europe and North America that dominated the 18th to 23rd centuries. They are effectively the United Nations in future-form, generally liberal and democratic, if somewhat vulnerable to corruption. Their armies are relatively small, but of high-quality volunteers, largely like a more technologically advanced present-day army. These are backed by vast amounts of firepower and air-support, giving them a technical edge which has kept them at the forefront for so long.

The second faction is the Asiatic bloc, consisting of Russia and much of Europe. This faction is the standard totalitarian archetype, with a Neo-Tsar dictator controlling all with a rod of iron. The military is modelled very closely on the Red Army, favouring teeming hordes of near-worthless conscripts. Bite is added by lavish amounts of artillery, plus swarms of medium-to-extremely-heavy tanks.

The third and final faction is the Pacific-Rim nations of S.E. Asia, Japan, China and such. They are largely democratic in style, conservative socially and extremely keen on the high-tech provisions for warfare. They tread the middle-line between the other two, harnessing the masses of troops available from China and adding a decent strengthening of elite hi-tech troopers to bear the weight of the struggle.

I plan to play each faction off against each other, probably using the Hordes Of The Things (HOTT) rules set. The logic being that if I game a single 'decisive' battle, this can stand in for years of warfare which would ultimately confirm the result - similar to playing a tabletop game of Stalingrad in order to represent all of WW2: the years of fighting either side of the critical battle are not portrayed, but they are assumed to happen to confirm the result of the game.

So, long before humanity can reach for the stars, the resource-starved earth must become a bloody battlefield for a series of global wars, until one faction emerges as dominant and can turn outwards to new worlds.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my new wargaming blog to keep track of my efforts to wargame the course of the human empire in space. I suppose that at this early point, a basic statement of intent is best, just to set out what I'll be trying to achieve here. This is:

1) The blog will cover the progress of mankind in a future sci-fi setting, as he expands out from earth into a randomly generated universe. The idea of the campaign game will be to have an innate problem between an outward drive for expansion from earth, plus a growing problem with holding the empire together as it grows and expands across the universe. The result should hopefully be a constant growth, fracturing, stagnation, collapse and rebirth of various sub-empires and factions within the overall area of 'human space.'

2) I want this to be effectively a demonstration of what can be achieved with a bit of imagination, rather than a lot of hard work buying and painting models, so I will be doing this largely with inspiration from the internet, some sheets of paper and some pens, plus whatever models or counters I can rustle up myself for tabletop battles.

3) There's got to be conflict - not just global-scale, but inter-global-scale! The best sci-fi worlds are dystopias, so life, frankly, will be cheap in my 'paper empire.' Just be glad it's not real! The setting will be generic sci-fi of the near-future initially, but I hope to see the game evolve in any number of surprising ways over time, hopefully with it's own distinct character beginning to form. Narrative development will be a big part of it all, with random dice-rolls and the outcomes of various space & land battles deciding the course taken.

4) Combat will be with spaceships (naturally) but also with large ground-based armies, as I have a liking for exotic technology and even more exotic environments where the protagonists can compete.

That's about all I want to list at this early stage, until a bit more has been done to give things a 'lead'. In any case, I hope for now that you enjoy a browse, and maybe get inspired yourself!