![]() As before, each round is framed by an event card, a flashpoint that draws the attention of at least two of the game’s sides. Perhaps the biggest change is that every faction can act in a single turn. It’s a delicate balance, but it’s handled so smoothly that it puts the series’ previous three-sided effort, All Bridges Burning, to shame. And the Reformers sit somewhere in the middle, benign until they present an overwhelming majority that could topple the presidency or crash under their own weight. The NPA is placed in his path, using guerrillas to launch terror campaigns and build up bases of resistance. Marcos’s government is all about raw control, using troops and police to secure cities and the countryside while he extracts as much wealth as possible from the people to grant as patronage to his inner circle. There were historically others, including the Moro resistance that’s been fighting against foreign rule for four centuries, but those have been rounded out in favor of these big three. Given that the People Power Revolution was escalated and concluded by such a gathering, their sudden game-swinging appearance feels like one of those happy details that arise so organically from this series and really no other. ![]() This group, which is both grassroots and planted in the country’s Catholicism, function much like the Congress of Bruce Mansfield’s Gandhi, a faction of invisibles until they appear en masse to launch protests. ![]() They’re contrasted by the Reformers, the historical victors of the coming change, who begin with no presence on the map at all. The NPA fills the usual insurgent role, launching ambushes against government police stations and roving troops, but also embracing the Party’s ground-level ideals, letting them initiate workplace strikes and other labor actions. There’s the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, who have been outlawed and scapegoated across Marcos’s tenure. But for all its necessary omissions, it’s a robust and dynamic landscape that Tee has splashed together. This is, like all things in the COIN Series, a painting of broad strokes. Now two major factions have arrayed themselves against single-rule. The Marcos regime has ruled with an iron fist, only to galvanize its opposition with one slap after another. That has been the background thesis of the COIN Series since the very beginning, when Volko Ruhnke’s system-inaugurating Andean Abyss exhibited the government crackdowns and evasive drug cartels of Colombia. Although Marcos has now lifted martial law to curry favor with the incoming Reagan administration in the United States and to coincide with a visit from Pope John Paul II, he retains most of his privileges and powers.īut power is a slippery thing. In the banal tradition of all dictators, his rule has been marked by human rights abuses. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos have ruled since Ferdinand’s election as the nation’s 10th president in 1965, including a years-long period of martial law enacted to extend his power beyond the end of his legal two terms. ![]() The Philippines on the eve of revolution. It’s also the simplest and most approachable the series has been since its second volume. Kenneth Tee’s People Power: Insurgency in the Philippines, 1981-1986 leans into this more recent characterization. Somewhere along the way, the series morphed into a depiction of not only governments and insurgencies, but also popular movements. It is, after all, dedicated to showing how small irregular forces can paralyze military juggernauts with their unpredictability and tendency to disappear into the countryside rather than trade blows with tanks and helicopters. That said, it’s also a challenging series, both thematically and as player experiences, not least because of its unswerving dedication to force asymmetry. It’s a series I’ve always appreciated for how it dusts the underappreciated corners of history for conflicts that are otherwise too unconventional for easy gamification. Between its eleven volumes, two spinoffs, and a handful of spiritual successors, the COIN Series has covered a lot of ground over the past decade.
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