Central Powers

The joint staffs foresaw an aggressive Triple Alliance, one attempting to seize control of the Mediterranean from the British and French. The book Triple Alliance looked at the first year of such a naval war in a set of 43 new scenarios for the Great War at Sea: Mediterranean boxed game.

Central Powers picks up that story in September 1915, with Italy, Austria-Hungary and Germany still struggling against Britain and France as new warships join the fleets of both sides. The fleets are almost evenly matched, with a slight Allied superiority in numbers matched by the Central Powers' central position. In this war, the fighting on the Mediterranean Sea has been just as bloody and destructive as that on the land fronts.

Central Powers is a book supplement for the Great War at Sea series based on this naval war that never happened, but was probably more likely to have occurred than the actual events. It is not a complete game; ownership of the Mediterranean and Jutland boxed games and Triple Alliance, Dreadnoughts and Zeppelins supplements are required to enjoy all of the scenarios.

The book includes 90 new playing pieces. The French receive their powerful Normandie- and Lyons-class super-dreadnoughts, and a pair of battle cruisers as well. And there's a quartet of French light cruisers proposed before the war but never built, that would have been very useful in fleet actions.

With the Royal Navy unwilling to detach too much strength from the Grand Fleet facing the Germans across the North Sea, it falls on the other Allies to bolster this very active naval front. The Americans enter the Mediterranean naval war with their oldest dreadnoughts and newest pre-dreadnoughts, plus a large squadron of the armored cruisers. The Japanese are present as well with a squadron of battleships and one of cruisers. Plus there are four re-armed Austrian light cruisers (there have to be Austrians) and an Italian seaplane carrier (with seaplanes).