The Impossible Games: The COIN Series

I'm not going to explain the title right off the bat, since I do want speculation to build up as you read the reviews of the three games (and one on the horizon) that currently make up the COIN series of 'war games'. It could be a variety of different reasons: maybe they are hard to play, maybe they have unclear rules, maybe they are just a bit too long! As per usual, I won't explain myself until the very last paragraph, but no cheating! I don't want you to skip ahead just in order to see what I'm driving towards: just a bit of patience and it will all come clear. With that in mind, let us proceed with the review!

Before I truly begin, one thing needs to be kept in mind when dealing with these games: unlike most wargames, the COIN games deal with conflicts that are likely to have been lived through by a large part of the population, especially for the insurgency in Afghanistan and Colombia. The subject matter also is filled with breaches of human rights and indeed these breaches of human rights are mechanisms within the games themselves (through the use of Terror operations to sway popular opinion). As such, many people will rightly find these games problematic. Having had friends go to Afghanistan as part of the coalition forces, I found that particular game problematic and it was a real worry for me that the games would be careless or reckless in the way that it portrayed these rightfully very emotional conflicts. I was happy to see that all of them had a degree of tact when dealing with the conflicts and this is the reason why I don't have issues playing them, but I fully understand why some people might. I would thus be honoured to hear the opinions of anyone that finds the games too objectionable to play, just to hear their views on these controversial subjects.

The COIN series of games is a series made primarily by Volko Ruhnke in collaboration with other designers (Jeff Grossman in the case of Cuba Libre and Brian Train for A Distant Plain). Volko previously designed fairly standard, although interesting, card-driven games: the standard yet tactically interesting Wilderness War, which uses a fairly standard CDG base as its main mechanism, although it does add interesting elements in the way in which the seasons and terrain is used within the context of the French-Indian War: the design is very evocative of how the major avenues of invasion for both sides (mostly the rivers of the region).

The other design by Volko is the rather controversial Labyrinth: The War on Terror, 2001-?. I won't go in-depth on the reasons why I found this game deeply flawed, both in terms of the political aspects that it tried to portray as well as the mechanisms present in the game, but here are a few points that stood out to me in terms of game design.

One thing that will tie in with my reviews of the COIN series games is how Labyrinth attempts to portray the asymmetrical aspect of warfare in the context of the war on terror. The basis of it is that the terrorists need to roll dice in order to perform pretty much anything within the game, while the Americans only need to roll dice when attempting to stabilize governments. This is problematic in game terms for a couple of reasons: as the terrorists, rolling for even the most mundane tasks means that you can feel like you have wasted entire turns. There are ways to mitigate the luck but since there are so many dice involved throughout the game, the potential for feeling like you have been given a bad hand due to unlucky dice is ever-present (in a game where deck-luck is already a major problem, as befits a game that takes its cues from Twilight Struggle).

Even for the American side, the situation is not ideal, since although most things can be done without a dice roll, the only action that pushes you towards victory is handled by dice rolls. No matter how good your setup is, the dice can still screw you and then you are forced to do exactly the same thing next turn. This is unlike Twilight Struggle, where if you screw up a coup or realignment, there's always the possibility of attempting to find your points elsewhere.

With the above in mind, you would think that any games based on a similar system would inherently suffer from the same problems, but it is clear that after Labyrinth was published, Volko Ruhnke made a deep analysis of what elements of his game he wanted to keep and what he wanted to do away with. Some of the most troubling aspects of Labyrinth were thus removed: although both insurgents and conventional forces would act differently, the excessive dice rolls had to be removed. Some things would be kept, though: especially the active/underground system for guerrillas, that models the difficulty in finding insurgents unless they poke their head up.

One more important change had to be made and I feel it was likely done in order to create a game that would handle more than 2 players.

Now, there are some CDGs out there that already handle more than two players, with Here I Stand and Virgin Queen being at the forefront, but for me those designs never really had the appeal that Twilight Struggle had. Both HIS and VQ do not have enemy events firing if you play a card for ops: this is both a fallback on the original mechanisms for CDGs (For the People and We the People used a similar deck mechanisms) but as well as that, they create less of a headache when a particular event could affect more than one faction. In Twilight Struggle, any enemy event will directly harm you while providing a bonus for your enemy: in a 4-player game, an enemy event could cripple a third player and not affect the player that allowed the event to fire, obviously something that is less than ideal.

So how do you combine a 4 player + experience with the event mechanism of Twilight Struggle? Well, the answer for Ruhnke was to create a completely new system! The system that Ruhnke designed is, if you'll excuse the pun, quite revolutionary.

Instead of each player having a hand of cards, the cards are played in the deck one by one, with the players being able to see the current card and the next one. The order of play is shown on each card using an initiative track, but only two players can play each card. The first eligible player gets a choice to either play the event (with most events being 'double-sided' and thus having a negative or positive effect for a particular faction), or play the cards for operations in as many areas as he wants, either with or without a special action.

Once the first player has made his choice, the second eligible player gets the choice to play the card, with his actions limited by the choices of the first eligible player: if the first player played the event, the second player can play the card for unlimited operations and a special order. If the first player chose to do operation with special orders, the second player can either fire the event or play for operations in a single area, while onn the other hand, if the first player did not play a special order, the second player can only play the card for a limited operation only. Players can also decide to pass (and the reason for doing this will become clear).

The system above is interesting because it allows the first player to block the event if he thinks it will harm him excessively. it also allows him to negotiate with the second eligible player to fire an event that is potentially beneficial to both: this really increases the potential for negotiations and double-dealing within the game.

There appear to be a couple of flaws to this system, however. For a start, luck of the draw seems to be a big factor, with whoever is first having a notable advantage over everyone else. This is handily fixed by another rule: if a player plays on a card, he is not eligible to play on the next card. This leads to interesting cases in which there are two cards, one after the other, that could potentially be good/bad for you: having to decide which you want to play (and which you want to potentially block) is an interesting situation.

The other issue is that being first appears to be explicitly better than being second: this is handily fixed by the fact that each faction has to spend resources for every single area in which they have an operation, thus limiting the number of operations you can do. Skipping, of course, adds additional resources (as well as propaganda cards, explained later), which means that you never get into a situation in which you can never play a card, although obviously it is still a less-than-ideal situation.

The most interesting factor of all the COIN games is the fact that each game features 4 factions that all play completely differently from each other. Although this is present within VQ and HIS as well, COIN goes further. In those two games, usually most sides will have a similar menu of actions, with additional special actions given to certain factions. On the other hand, COIN games both distinguish between COIN forces (which field conventional troops/police) and insurgent factions (which are composed of guerrillas). Analysing deeper, even individual insurgent/COIN factions act in very different ways from each other, with operations being (usually) the same while each faction has its own special orders.

The different factions, as well as acting differently and providing different playing styles, also have vastly different winning conditions. For some factions it might be to build bases, for some to create popular support/opposition to the government, while others just wish to make money. In many cases, the winning conditions are not mutually exclusive, which leads to interesting interactions since your winning condition might be (directly or indirectly) related to someone else's winning condition.

Winning conditions don't automatically win you the game, however. Winning is only assessed when a propaganda card is played. Although this does allow players to prevent someone from winning even if they surpassed their winning condition, it does lead to strange situations in which you can do unstoppable plays on the very last card: this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that propaganda cards are meant to be distributed evenly within the deck, so players know when to expect one, but it still leads to weird last-card plays. Rules are usually in place, however, to restrict the actions on the very last propaganda card, or otherwise the game would be excessively swingy (for a game that is already pretty swingy).

As well as providing a sudden-death victory check, propaganda cards are also used to provide resources to all of the factions (with each faction usually having different ways in which they can  gather resources), as well as providing a convenient 'tidy-up' phase.

The events within the different games tend to be very powerful, although this is truer within Cuba Libre and A Distant Plain in comparison to the first outing of the series, Andean Abyss. As well as regular events, there are also momentum events (which last until the next propaganda) or capabilities, which last until the end of the game (and are pretty much necessary in order to win as certain factions).

Having gone through the common mechanisms in each game, what does each individual game have to offer? Andean Abyss is the first game in the series and centers around the marxist insurgency between the government and FARC militia in the 1990s. I have no great knowledge of this particular conflict so I won't attempt to analyse if the game is true to the conflict, but it does seem to provide a well-researched, even-handed approach to the conflict, although it does not in any way attempt to recreate a completely accurate, historical simulation of the insurgency.

The game does pose some hard choices, however, especially when it comes to the question of the government collaborating with the AUC (the anti-marxist, right-wing terror group). As the government, the AUC are useful to keep the FARC in check, but eventually they have to be dealt with as well, lest they become too powerful. I don't know if this accurately reflects what happened in real life or not, but it certainly creates a powerful faction dynamic. I also have second-hand reports from Colombians that stated they thought the game portrayed the conflict correctly, but since I don't have first-hand accounts of this I can't account for their veracity.

All in all, Andean Abyss is an amazing game, although it has a few issues. The government and FARC factions are very difficult to play, with the former being difficult because it is almost impossible to win using it without reading the strategy tips present in the AA playbook, while the latter just feels like an up-hill struggle. The aim of the government is keeping everyone in check and playing capabilities so that before the last propaganda card they can overpower everyone for the victory, while FARC usually aims to cripple the government economically. Another issue with AA is that many of the events are just not worth firing (although this is largely fixed in Cuba Libre and A Distant Plain).

Cuba Libre is based on Castro’s Cuban Insurgency during the late 50s. When I first heard of this game, the one thing that worries me the most was that it was going to be too similar to Andean Abyss: there would be the government, the marxist militia, the money faction and a control faction against the marxists. Fortunately, the game proved to be anything but a simple copy of AA, Although there are similarities between the marxist and government factions between the two games, the similarities end there.

The Government in Cuba Libre feels like they are fighting a losing battle: getting support is hard, their alliance with the US is eroding (which makes all their operations cost progressively more) and there are plenty of enemies that want to destroy them. Unlike in AA, the government in CL wants to aim for the quick win: crushing the uprising before it can even have a chance to spiral out of control. The government has no capabilities within CL and thus their ability to deal with insurgents just gets worse and worse over time as they run out of the few resources they have.

The Marxist faction in CL, the 26 July Movement, has similar aims to FARC in AA but has much higher popular support, which means that they can rally insurgents to their cause surprisingly easily. On the other hand, it is harder for the 26 July faction to receive resources, thus making it still a challenge to win.

The other two factions are Directorio Revolucionario, which act as a separate insurgency to Castro's one, something that causes it to clash with both the government and Castro's forces. The most interesting faction in the game is, however, the Syndicate, which is like the Cartel but acts in a completely different way. While the Cartel in AA is nominally allied to the FARC faction, in Cuba Libre the Syndicate is more closely aligned with the government, since they can only expand their casinos where either they or the government have control.

On the other hand, for each area controlled by another faction in which they have a casino, the Syndicate has to pay the controlling faction resources as part of the 'skim'. It leads to an interesting symbiotic relationship between the government and the syndicate, in which neither wants to deal the first blow against the other although they both know that ultimately they will have to.

Overall I enjoyed Cuba Libre more than Andean Abyss: it is a tighter, quicker game that has more interesting faction dynamics when compared to Andean Abyss.

A Distant Plain is the third game in the series and centers around the Afghan insurgency during the 2000s. As I've stated before, I had misgivings about this design, both due to personal reasons and the fact that I thought Labyrinth had handled the conflict badly previously, without the same level of care that both Cuba Libre and Andean Abyss seemed of have. When I actually managed to get a game of it, however, I was blown away. This wasn't necessarily due to how the conflict was handled (there are some cards in the game which seem to be less than tactful, although nothing that really stands out as out-and-out bad), but simply due to how playable the game was.

A Distant Plain provides a very different experience when compared to the other games in the series. Instead of having a single COIN faction, there are now two, nominally allied to each other, although each with very different aims and objectives. While the role of the government is still present, ADP also has a coalition faction: they don't have resources themselves (representing the near-limitless resource of the USA), but if they use government forces as part of their action, they have to spend government resource. Another interesting dynamic of the coalition is that their victory condition is having support (something that strangely the government does not need) as well as having the fewest troops on the board as possible while still keeping up the support. For every piece that they have off the board, they gain an additional victory point: this naturally leads to the coalition to surge troops in, create support and then attempting to surge out, which is not an easy task.

The government largely only cares about patronage, which would be described as systematic corruption in the west but really represents the government giving hand-outs to supporters in order to be able to maintain power (something that without these payments they would unlikely to be able to keep). It does sort of tie in with how tribes/ethnicity plays an important role in Afghanistan,

The next faction is of course the Taliban, which is the main insurgent faction in the game. The Taliban faces a number of a challenges: the fact that they are facing both the government and coalition means that they can be found and destroyed easily if the two factions combine together to perform a 1-2 punch. On the other hand, the Taliban can move freely within areas of Pashtun ethnicity as well as create bases of operation in Pakistan from which they can build up their forces and then attack. Overall, however, the Taliban aren't very much different from the other main insurgent factions in the other games.

The last faction is the Warlords, which is where the game starts to break from its adherence with reality. The warlords are represented as a united faction, but really they are a hodgepodge of local bandits, ex-northern alliance members and various other factions, some of which are anti-Taliban, some of which are anti-government. They are similar to other green factions in that they can grow poppy fields, but their victory condition is not only based in gaining money in order to win (since in AA and CL the secondary winning condition, gaining bases, is tied to the profit-making). Instead, they just want to ensure that the provinces of Afghanistan are not controlled by any other faction (which seems to account partially for the fact that it's not a unified faction, although still feels faintly gamey in places).

Overall, A Distant Plain provides a truly different feel and just in terms of playability, it stands as the top offering currently available within the series. This is only surpassed by the next volume, Fire in the Lake, which is based on the Vietnam War and thus features conventional troops and irregulars on both sides (something that I am looking forward trying).

So these are the three games in all of their glory. If I had to give out that truly stood out to me, it would be A Distant Plain simply due to the relationship between the coalition and government: it created such a natural unease mixed with a need to rely of each other I hadn't felt in many other games. I have gone through some of the issues with the game during the review itself, but the biggest problem that I have is that I simply cannot play the game enough, mostly because it is impossible to find people to play it. The game sits dangerously close to the boundary between regular games and wargames: finding one wargame interested in it is easy, but finding 3 others? Almost impossible. Hence the title. I have only managed to play each game in the series once and trying to find other players is truly like pulling teeth. Still, the games are wonderfully playable, although at times they suffer from luck of the draw (especially if suddenly an event appears which disproportionally helps a player right at the end of the game, which has happened to me). Overall I can't help to recommend them and if I had to give a rating to the series as a whole, I would give them 4 out of 5 angry scowling King Philips. The review ends here, but please excuse me while I write a trap paragraph to catch anyone skipping to the end of the review.

The reason why the games are called impossible games is that you are a cheating bastard that can't follow goddamn instructions even when I try to clearly give directions on how the review should be read! Shame on you for skipping right to the end just because you were curious! Aren't you interested in my analysis of the games? Are you just that curious? Shame on you! Now go back and read everything like you are meant to! Zero out of five angry scowling King Phillips for you!