"Let me just play your entire turn for you": An Alpha Gamer's Guide to Co-ops

"Hi, my name is Tekopo and I'm an Alpha Gamer"

 Slow claps from the others in the meeting.

"Sometimes I just can't help myself 'helping' other people when they perform their turns in a co-op even though I know I shouldn't. Look, I know everyone here knows those moments when one of your friends is making a move that is OBVIOUSLY less than optimal, and you feel a need to interject and tell them what to do. I know this is a bad thing and I shouldn't do it..."

General nods from the audience.

"...but I feel this isn't a problem with me. It's a problem with the game!"

Audible gasps can be heard, people start shouting.

"Now wait, let me explain! Basically, if the game is..."

Before he can finish, Tekopo is dragged away by men in black suits...

Difficult Decisions and Designing History: A Colonial Twilight Review

As shown by the very sporadic updates in this blog, my policy of reviewing games is mostly concerned with finding something interesting about a particular game, something beyond just judging the game based on its merits. Lately, the only game that has truly inspired me to write again has been Colonial Twilight, and the reasons why this game is interesting both in terms of a game and also in terms of analysis are multiple. 

First of all, an introduction: Colonial Twilight is one of the latest offerings in the long-standing GMT COIN series. COIN (standing for COunter-INsurgency) are games that mostly seek to simulate unconventional warfare, with conflicts such as the Colombian FARC insurgency in the 90s, the Cuban Revolution, the war in Afghanistan and even the American Revolution. Overall, I'm a big fan of the series and currently own all volumes apart from one. 

At first, however, I was hesitant to buy Colonial Twilight: after all, I had plenty of other volumes that dealt with 20th century insurgency, so buying another one that fit that genre seemed slightly superfluous. What partially convinced me, though, was the fact that Colonial Twilight was made as a two player, while all other volumes were created as 4 player games (some, I would argue, to the detriment of the game). The other, important factor that finally made me decide to buy the game was that, from a historical aspect, the French-Algerian war could be said to be the birthplace of COIN warfare, and thus the birthplace of the very mechanisms that populate the COIN series of games.

Much like Cold War theories such as the Domino Theory impact and inform the mechanisms within Twilight Struggle, the theories as espoused by David Galula (an officer that took part in the Algerian Insurgency, and then wrote two books about his experiences), underpin ALL of the mechanisms present within the COIN series, specifically concerning the dichotomy between controlling a population and actually having support from that population (even though the actual support could only be present in a small minority of the people in an area). 

The Colonial Twilight playbook (the historical notes and developer diaries within these books are wonderful, and I wish more games produced developer commentaries because it's an interesting insight in the design process that the designers go through) does acknowledge this, providing an entire section on the writings of David Galula and his effect on both COIN theory and the COIN series as a whole.

With the above in mind, what makes Colonial Twilight really stand out to me is its purity in terms of adhering to the historical COIN analysis. Due to the 2 player dynamic, there isn't much for the players to get sidetracked by: you have only one enemy to worry about, and the victory conditions are crafted in such a way that you will have to be pro-active in order to win the conflict. Although I do love the politics and deals involved in other COINs (A Distant Plain is especially good thanks to the Coalition/Government dynamic), there is something to be said about playing a game where the only concern is to run an insurgency or counter-insurgency operation as efficiently as possible. In this regard, Colonial Twilight truly shines.

The mechanism that turns a standard 4 player COIN into a 2 player COIN, while keeping all the flavour, is also truly innovative. Instead of the standard initiative track, you get the following:

The way that it works is that the first eligible player can play in any of the spots, while the second can only place his tracker on a space adjacent to the one that the 1st eligible player placed his. So, for example, if the 1st player places on "Execute Limited Op", the 2nd player can place on "Execute Op only", "Execute Op & Special Activity" or "Pass", but not on "Execute Event". Then, when determining initiative for the next turn, the shade of the spot determines who is first and second. 

Although weird at first, especially if you are used to the standard COIN mechanism, this mechanism is quite elegant and, coupled with the fact that you can't see one card into the future like other COINs, can make players potentially make sub-optimal decisions in order to keep the initiative one more turn. It's clear that in order to make a 2 player COIN work at all, some innovations had to be made, and Colonial Twilight does not disappoint. 

The factions within Colonial Twilight play in a pretty standard way, if you have played COIN games before. The French government has the familiar array of Train/Sweep/Assault, with the only deviation is that, because no Lines of Communication or Economic Centres are present, there is no Patrol action. Instead, Garrison is present, an action that allows you to place police pretty much anywhere. 

This, to seasoned COIN government players, might seem like an incredible ability: starting from Andean Abyss, one of the most important factors that affect government strategy and tactics is "how to place police out of the cities and into the countryside". In other COIN games, the only ways to do it are usually either placing the police there during a redeploy, or creating a base (which is a limited resource) and then training police in that area. So being able to place police in an area directly is quite a powerful tool. 

The special abilities for the Government are the standard Troop Lift (which is comparable to the Coalition's Airlift in terms of power), Deploy (which is also comparable to the Surge ability of the Coalition, although it has the extra effect of also allowing you to depopulate an area) and, finally, Neutralise, which allows the government to destroy enemy pieces even with a special action, although it does by creating opposition to the government in the area. 

One final thing that distances the COIN faction in Colonial Twilight is the fact that you have both Algerian and French troops. Algerian troops are easier to get onto the board, but are limited in number and also can be subverted by the insurgents. The French pieces can only be placed on the map through a deploy, but have the additional benefit that they cause attrition on the insurgents if attacked.

The insurgent faction, the FLN, is also very similar to other insurgents factions such as FARC, the 26th July Movement and the Taliban. They can rally, march, attack and terror, with the only major difference being that their terror can never create opposition, just remove support. For special activities, they have extort (present in many other insurgent factions), subvert (which allows them to remove/replace Algerian forces) and a slightly weaker version of ambush, which only removes a single enemy cube and doesn't create a new insurgent unit.

By this point in this large, rambling review you might be wondering how any of this applies to the title that I have given this post. The "Difficult Decisions" that I refer to (although difficult decisions are a standard in the series) refer to one of the more interesting and innovative mechanisms that are present in the game: the Pivotal Cards. 

Old COIN hands might be wondering why I would call such a mechanism "innovative". After all, Fire in the Lake had already showcased the use of pivotal event. What sets apart the pivotal events in Fire in the Lake and Colonial Twilight, however, is the number of pivotal events afforded to each side (1 per side in Fire in the Lake, 3 per side in Colonial Twilight), and, principally, the fact that a lot of the pivotal events within Colonial Twilight are not as unequivocally good for the player playing when compared to FitL pivotal events (although the Tet Offensive event for the NLF in FitL does have some downsides).

This is what truly interested me in the game after that first play: the pivotal events make for some head-achingly difficult decisions and can really change the flavour of the game if they are played or not. They also inform what kind of strategy the player is attempting. The mobilization event, for example, frees up a lot of French units essentially for free, and is potentially the start of a larger offensive from the French player, but can only be played if the victory condition of the FLN player has reached a certain threshold: does the FLN player thus attempt to slow down his own accumulation of points in order to reach that point or not? 

The Mobilization event itself provides a further interesting and difficult choice: if the card is played, it allows the FLN player to play the pivotal event that allows access to Morocco and Tunisia, areas that can potentially house up to 6 insurgent bases in relative safety. But, if the Morocco and Tunisia cards are played, the French player has the option to start building border controls, which decrease the number of resources that the FLN player receives at each propaganda phase. It's difficult decisions, nestled into difficult decisions, nestled in other, even more difficult decisions.

The Suez Crisis is more straight-forward: the FLN player can play it at any time to remove French troops (temporarily) and resources, but it also costs the FLN player resources that they only get back on the next propaganda phase. Does the FLN player slow down his tempo in order to remove some French troops momentarily? That's also not an easy choice to make.

The final three pivotal events are Coup D'Etat, Recall De Gaulle and OAS, the former both French event and the latter being an FLN event. Coup D'Etat is literally a dice-roll: it could be good or bad for the French depending on what you roll. Recall De Gaulle can only be played if at least one Coup D'Etat has been played, and allows the French player to disregard penalties for casualties substained as well as making it easier to train in the countryside, while OAS is a powerful new special ability that can only be played if Recall De Gaulle has been played, and basically allows you to perform terror anywhere on the board, while also decreasing resources for the FLN player.

Coup D'Etat is principal in showcasing that most pivotals in this game are double-edged swords. While all other pivotals can only be played once per campaign, Coup D'Etat can be played once per campaign (ie the time between one propaganda card and another). But why would you want to play it? One of the central things about pivotal events that I haven't touched upon yet is that they also gain you the imitative as well as cancelling the current card played from the deck. Is there a particularly bad event that you want to prevent your opponent from playing? Playing Coup D'Etat (or really, any pivotal event) can get you out of that pickle. You might have a negative effect from the Coup itself, but sometimes that's preferable to the previous event being played.

Recall De Gaulle, on the other hand, is probably one of the most difficult decisions in the game. Although it does make peacekeeping in the countryside a lot easier, OAS is truly one of the most game-changing abilities in the game and can quickly lead to the government losing the lead, or even the FLN running out of resources. Thankfully, Coup D'Etat can potentially be used to get rid of both Recall De Gaulle and OAS, but the difficult decision remains. Crucially, it is possible to win as both sides without playing ANY of the pivotal events, and the wonderful thing about them is that they truly change the flavour of the conflict if they are played or not, instead of just helping/hindering one side or another like the FitL pivotals.

One other aspect that ties in with the pivotals is that there are many capabilities in the game that affect both side. One of these both makes the Neutralise special ability better, but also gives a further penalty to the French player for using it. Overall, the game is absolutely swimming in these difficult "will this help or hinder me more?" decision spaces, and for that, it should be commended. 

Considering all of the above (and cutting short a too-long article), I would say that Colonial Twilight certainly has the possibility of being one of more favourite COINs, alongside A Distant Plain. From a historical perspective, it is interesting (and certainly has made me want to read more about the conflict and rewatch The Battle of Algiers, a very thought-provoking film about the French-Algerian War), and from a gameplay/mechanisms perspective, the duality of many of its events really make the game stand out. If you are looking for a COIN game that doesn't require 4 people or even if you are entering the series for the first time, I would strongly recommend this volume in the series.

Context when writing rules and why it is important

You might be aware of Age of Sigmar (AoS), the rebooted version of Warhammer by Games Workshop that has been the source of much discussion within the Warhammer community. Although I am not going to go too deep into the quagmire that is Age of Sigmar, it is a useful point of comparison for the purposes of this particular article. Be forewarned that I generally don’t have very favourable opinions of the ruleset for AoS, but the intention of this post is NOT to bash the game, or its players.

The principal comparison that I want to make is one between the mechanisms present within AoS and the Operational Combat Series (OCS). OCS is one of my first forays into the depth of what some people would call ‘proper Hex and Counter games’. So far, I’ve had the possibility to try mini-campaigns of Reluctant Enemies, Sicily II and Tunisia II, and I’ve been very pleased with my experiences so far.

For those that are not well-versed in Hex and Counter games, OCS is a series that models Operational-level battles of World War II, with an eye towards making you track the movement and use of supply. In essence, the series is more about being able to create a solid logistical backbone, with supply dumps, trucks to bring the supplies close enough so that units can use it to move or fight, and making sure that you protect your rear areas so that your logistical backbone is not broken in two. Having to track the movement of supply might sound daunting at first, and it is, but the strength of the system is the relatively simple, straightforward combat system that makes resolving  fights relatively easy.

From the above, you might ask how a comparison to AoS can be made: AoS is a relatively simple miniature skirmish game without the high level of detail and complexity present within an OCS game. Where the two games coincide, however, is how they deal with turn order. Turn order in both games is handled with a simple dice-off: who ever rolls highest, gets to choose who goes first and second. Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? What I will attempt to do, though, is prove why the mechanism is good in one game, and awful in the other, and hence, why mechanisms are never bad in of themselves, but how they can be bad/good based on the context that they are being used in.

Let’s start with AoS: the standard turn structure for AoS is relatively simple: during your turn, you use the special abilities of your heroes, you can shoot with any units that have ranged weapons, you can move your troops, charge with them and then perform combat. Combat is resolved by getting the active player to pick a unit to attack with, which then rolls to see if they hit/wound, then the opponent picks a unit to attack with, and so on until all applicable units have fought: this is the only part of the round in which a passive player has any choices to make at all (since the order that you pick your units can be important, as there is no simultaneous combat in AoS).

The system for OCS is very complex, but suffice to say that the main action rounds for the system work as follow: Movement Phase for the active player, then a Reaction Phase for the passive player, followed by a Combat Phase for the active player and finally an Exploitation Phase for the active player. During the movement phase, the active player can move as many units as he wants, but performs no actions at all during the Reaction Phase. However, only units that had been previously marked as Reserve units (for OCS veterans, yes, I know this is a mode, just bear with me) can move during this phase, but they can initiate combat using overruns. Reverses are thus very important in the game: they can be used to blunt an attack, plug up gaps, chase down raiders in your rear areas, and are thus crucially important to use well while playing an OCS game.

If you read the design documents for OCS, the intended effects for rolling initiative in OCS is make the state of the board more unpredictable: will you be able to hold in time to react? Can your crumbling front-line survive an opponent’s double turn. It is also used to simulate strategic initiative: you might be in a position that forces your opponent to always take the first turn, thus setting you up for a potential double turn later on. The crucial aspect, however, is that by proper planning and good use of your Reserves, you can prevent some of the biggest disasters that could be caused by a double turn: allowing the passive player to perform decisions during the active player’s turn is what allows all the above to be true.

AoS, on the other hand, has no such safety valve: the passive player has very little to no control of his troops. As such, the double turn can be crushing within the game. The active player gets to move twice and, worse of all, to fire twice. Without the opponent being able to react in a meaningful way, the double turn is a detriment to the game in both small sized (where taking casualties that you can’t react to can be fatal) as well as large-sized games (where, if your opponent is taking a gun-line, can potentially mean entire units destroyed before they managed to do anything meaningful).

I hope that with the small example I’ve given above, I’ve shown that context in rules matters: this is still important to understand nowadays, since even in 2017 people are still discussing the use and abuse of dice within board games. In the end, it is important to understand that there are rules and mechanisms that, by themselves, might not sound like they are well constructed, but thanks to the effect that they have on the game overall, can be used as an effective tool within the broad mechanisms of the entire game.