The two mapboards that make up my "Victory Through Seapower" wargame will be shown below. The graphics are rather large in bandwidth (approx 190+KB), but they will be loading while you read this. I have taken the liberty of "airbrushing out" the "crosshairs" of the divisions of the four small, folding boards that make up each of the 28" x 22" maps.

The board representing Europe, Africa and the Americas was hand-done by me using hand-cut paper cutouts carefully glued to a background. Known as "transmogrification", some countries or continents are distorted so that sea areas are paramount and everything fits onto the two boards. Printing was done on a computer on the same color paper as the mapboard, then glued in place. This board is known as the "War At Sea" board, or "WAS", for in the main it closely follows the board first introduced by the Avalon Hill Game Company in the mid-seventies. The Avalon HiIl board was roughly half the size of my present custom board. I added all the sea areas that were mentioned in "The General" magazine articles, as well as some of my own. Although Avalon Hill later put out an updated companion game called "War at Sea II" that also had an expanded mapboard it is NOT the same as mine. I had made mine PRIOR to the debut of WAS II and have since ammended it many times as well. This board will butt up against either end of the VITP board for a complete world-wide map of the sea areas of the globe with either the Indian Ocean, or the United States, in the middle. Those combinations are shown on a different page and are small for easy viewing and quick loading.

I tried to create a look as a compromise between the "WAS" and "Victory in the Pacific" mapboards. The map is divided into sea areas by thick white bands, and ports are generally designated by either the shape of the country itself, or a rough square. All major ports in the companion VITP game are the same color (magenta) regardless of who they belong to. In my "WAS" board, the Axis powers only are magenta. Bases of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States are in green, and the French are in yellow (the same color as her ship counters). Of course, some bases can trade owners throughout the game, and those bases are designated with a small square of the enemy's color concentric to the base's outline. Axis-aligned Italy, after the Armistice, uses the orange (the same color as her ships) ports on either side of Italy. Grey ports along Africa and South America are designated "neutral" ports, usable by either side. Brown counties are either irrelevant, or very short-term depending on game circumstances. Although Turkey is magenta like an Axis port, she does not become one unless certain criterion are successfully met.

The "Victory In the Pacific" mapboard presented here below is substantially the same as the original Avalon Hill mapboard with a few additions by me. I have included the port of "Siberia", but it is used only in the "Grand Fleet" alternate history scenario. I have the countries of Manchukuo and Thailand labeled, but they are not really used (their ships appear in "Grand Fleet" however). I have put the repair factors in bold numbers adjacent to the ports where they are used. I have included the "Polar Route", by which a few German auxiliary cruisers entered the Pacific (I have a rule that allows ONE Axis ship to use that route early in the game before the Soviet Union joins the war, and in "Grand Fleet" the two Soviet Pacific heavy cruisers can use it, too). Major ports are shown in magenta, and small bases are shown in light green. Brown areas do not normally come into play except for brief moments.

Avalon Hill's "Victory In The Pacific" Mapboard

With minor modifications by me.

To see how these match up to create the Victory Through Seapower mapboard, click here!