In the late 70s I got a board game which I can only vaguely remember the goal and almost none of the rules.
The board consisted of two land areas – the New World and the Old World. However, unlike Earth, the Old World was a large island-continent in the center of the board, surrounded by a large ocean. At the edges of the board were the islands and continents of the New World.
Every player controlled a nation/country in the Old World and if I recall correctly the goal was to colonize/take over the New World. I vaguely remember things like pirates, navies, armies, plagues, mutinies, different terrain types depending on the country you were trying to colonize, etc. But all remembered very vaguely since it was over 30 years ago.
The game was probably ahead of my time since I was only around 7 years old, and in retrospect the rules seemed to be one of those incomprehensibly-written Avalon Hill tomes where there are a lot of disjointed rules with a lot of gaps in the way they interact with each other, but I managed to comprehend most of it. For awhile ago I partly blamed my youth for probably misunderstanding the rules, but if they were as poorly written as some AH games, it was not entirely my fault!
Your sure it’s Avalon Hill. What did the game look like? How many could play? What were it’s mechanics (hexes, roll and move, area control, dice or cards, Commodity Speculation)?
Not sure that it’s AH, in fact it was probably not. I simply mean that the rules were organized and written similar to an AH game.
– What did the game look like? A board with the Old World as an island in the middle, surrounded by ocean, with the New World on the outskirts, sometimes represented by islands, other times by peninsulas that touched the board edge.
– hexes, area control? Areas rather than hexes. For instance, a section could be Desert and you’d move your forces into that area and operate under the Desert rules.
– dice or cards. I do not believe there were cards you drew although I could be wrong. I do not believe you used dice to move although I could be wrong. I believe you did use dice to fight combats although again I could be wrong!
– Commodity Speculation. I don’t remember if there were or were not commidities!
I was only seven when I got this game and have not remembered much about it in the intervening 30 years. What I’ve wrote is pretty much all I remember. The only distinguishing thing that I remember for certain is the odd geography where the Old World was in the center as an island with the New World on the outskirts.
You could try to do an advanced search at boardgamegeek.com. You can search on all sorts of parameters including period, game type, and game mechanics.
Thanks, I already did try that with no luck. There were a lot of games similar to what I am describing, but they all used a real world map. It was very odd that the “Old World” was an island in the middle but the “New World” was on the edges!
I think I’m going to post on BGG to see if my vague recollection rings a bell with anyone there. I’ll post here again if I do find it.
I posted a question on BGG and it turns out it was Grand Imperialism. I had even seen that I a BGG search but had never zoomed in on the map in their photos because I had assumed that because the map was no earth, the Imperial powers would not be Earth powers, either, rather than Britain, France, Spain, and Germany.
Glad you found it. I don’t think I could have guessed from the cover image alone, though. Additionally it looks like a “real world” game and the subtitle is even “A game of discovery in the Victorian Era”. I think I tried to exclude historical games early on to make the search task easier.
If you ever get a chance to play it again, let us know if it is any good.