Preview: The British Way, Another Great Coin Flip
By Mitch Reed
I have been a fan of the COIN (Counter Insurgency) games for some time now and I was excited to be able to meet Steve Rangazas and play one of the games from his upcoming 4-pack, The British Way from GMT and should be shipping sometime later this year.
The game harkens back to the days of the old SPI Quad-Games series where you get four games in a single box. The British Way covers the insurgencies as the sunset of the British Empire and covers the conflicts in Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, and Palestine. Before I go into my playtest of Malaya, I think I should talk about the COIN series from GMT, and what makes them so special. The COIN series is about a lot more than basic warfighting, it covers the elements of soft power such as politics, information, and economics.
The game first hit the market with a game called Andean Abyss which focuses on the 1990s in Colombia and was created by the award-winning designer Volko Ruhnke. The series has ten games in its library with many having expansions that cover earlier or later periods of a particular conflict. The series does not focus on just modern conflicts, some titles such as Falling Sky cover the Roman conquest of Gaul.
While Volko did not design every game in the series (PSA: I prefer his titles), the core mechanics he developed are standard thought the series.
The series uses a card mechanic, which injects historical events that the players can choose to play out during a turn. Players can also take actions instead of playing the card and execute actions such as acquiring additional forces, moving them; setting up ambushes, and a host of other actions that are unique to the faction you are playing. The factions in the games are another great aspect of the game.
Most of the series have up to four factions, in the game Cuba Libre, covers the events in Cuba, which lead to the Castro regime. In that game, you can play the Batista government, 26 July movement, the student-led Directorio or the Mafia. Each of these factions has different victory conditions and different actions they can take. The card deck in Cuba Libre, as all the other games have actions that favor one of the factions in the game
With the unique COIN turn system you really have to think ahead and make sure that if you want to play the next card in the deck, which is face up for all to see, you will need to ensure that you are the first player in the next game round.
Secretly mixed in the deck are special cards that when drawn all the players go through a propaganda turn where you check for victory and often reset your forces and gain more in-game resources. Once you draw a certain number of these cards the game ends and a winner is crowned.
The four player games are so much fun, and sometimes the goal of your historical ally are not the same as yours and the two players could work together or go “Left Shark” and try to win the game outright. On New Year ’s Day I had three gamers over and we played a full game of Fire in the Lake, which covers the Vietnam conflict.
The discussions between the assembled group, along with some trash-talking and downright insults made the experience so much fun and we finished the entire game that goes from 1965 to around 1972 in about seven hours.
We all had a blast and plan to play the Fall of Saigon expansion that covers the last few years of the war. Not all of the games require two players; some only have two factions and most of the games (even the four-player titles) have bots that allow you to play solo.
This brings us back to the British Way. It is a bit different in that the other games in this series, which are two-player games that will take less than 2-hours to finish. We interviewed Steve on our podcast and we talked about how the COIN series needs a “gateway drug” for gamers that can get players hooked with a game that flows faster than most of the current titles in the series. Being the heart of the game engine, the card deck in Malaya is smaller than the other games in the series, which results in a shorter playing time.
Like all the other games, the card deck is a history lesson within in itself and shows deep research into the background of its subject matter. That is what struck me about Malaya, Steve did his homework and as I played the game for a second time, I started to feel that I was learning about some of the details of the Malay insurgency. I did not know that a defoliant like Agent Orange was first used in this conflict.
Despite only having two factions in the game, Steve does a great job of weaving the many details of this 12-year conflict into a fun experience for the players.
In checking out the rules of the other three games on the GMT’s website, I see that the rich detail of Malaya is repeated in the other three titles in this release. That means I have three more history lessons to look forward to.
Once you have enjoyed any of the games in The British Way, you can then quickly pick up and play all of the other games in the series, the fact that share the same basic game engine allows players to select games based on their historical interests vice learning a whole new set of rules.
While these games are very popular, I still get many gamers questioning why I love these games so much.
Many board wargamers like straight combat games because they think that the crunchy rules and singular focus on combat lead to a more realistic game.
Not to come off as a ”hater” but no board wargame is realistic.
However, the COIN series, since it focuses on all the instruments of national power gives a fuller view of a conflict when properly researched (all of the COIN games are). Maybe this equates to it being more “realistic” but I would like to think they are more authentic.
While many gamers would not risk the cost of one of the more popular titles in the series, the fact that many are out of stock which drives the price up, to give the series a go can be understandable. The British Way really mitigates this fear, since it is available for its pre-order price and you get four games in one box.
I cannot wait for the final release of The British Way and am even more excited to hear all about the new converts to the COIN series in the future.