If you’re invested in historical board games, you’ve probably heard about Phil Eklund’s infamous essay defending British colonialism. Personally, the backlash against that essay was a pleasant surprise. Perhaps I had become numb to imperial apologetic. To me, the essay was merely the latest impressionable perspective in a century that had been meticulously prepared for selective memory. The notion that the British Empire was a gentle overlord has been a constant drumbeat across its tenure, from its earliest adventures in the New World to its participation in my generation’s quagmires in the Near East and Central Asia. Where other empires were vicious taskmasters, so the story goes, the British were invested in winning the hearts and minds of their colonial subjects.

That’s precisely the topic behind The British Way by Stephen Rangazas. This is the first official spinoff of Volkho Ruhnke’s now-formidable COIN Series. Rather than tackling a single conflict, The British Way functions as a folio series in a single box, covering four wars from 1945 to 1960. It has quickly become my favorite expression of the system. Which is why I intend to cover each of its conflicts separately. Today we’re looking at the first battle of the era: the Jewish insurgency against British rule in Mandatory Palestine.

British forces clash with Irgun around Tel Aviv.

You would think the British Empire would be riding high now that the Second World War has ended. You would think. But the war has taken its toll, both at home and abroad. The economy only limps along thanks to American loans, and the armed forces are spread thin trying to reestablish control over far-flung territories and tattered lines of communication. Many of the Empire’s subaltern subjects had set aside their differences in the face of the Axis threat, but Germany and Japan have been broken. Many fought proudly alongside their colonial masters, gaining experience in arms and partisan tactics, not to mention earning the respect of their British peers. Surely the Empire would reward their efforts in defeating global fascism?

For many, however, the Empire was already proving forgetful. Mere months before the start of WWII, the British government had issued the White Paper of 1939, a statement of policy that tried to walk the tightrope between the promises they had made back in the First World War. The Empire had double-dipped, offering to carve out two distinct national entities within the boundaries of Syria, one for the Arab population in exchange for their support against the Ottoman Empire and another for the global Jewish community, which Britain hoped would help bring the United States into the war and stabilize the borders of revolution-torn Russia. For the duration of the war against Nazism, the issue was largely tabled. But with the horrors of the Holocaust now public knowledge, Zionist arguments were more urgent; hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees needed resettlement as quickly as possible, and proposals to place them elsewhere — say, Eastern Europe, the site of previous pogroms — were untenable. On the flipside, the native Arab population was none too happy with the constant stream of hostile immigrants into their promised homeland. The British Empire had bargained itself into a corner.

Their response was to sit on the problem.

This is the first thesis of Rangazas’ The British Way. When the Palestine scenario opens, the British Empire is in a holding pattern. Half a million Jews have settled in Palestine already, but the incoming Labour government has decided to restrict immigration. Refugees from across the world are detained in holding camps or, in some cases, returned to their point of origin. Far from embodying the “hearts and minds” ideal, the Empire is determined to stuff cotton in its ears and dismiss its detractors as terrorists.

In this regard, Rangazas threads an especially narrow needle — and this is no wealth-justifying “Needle Gate of Jerusalem” myth. Like all of the scenarios in The British Way, this is a two-player take on the COIN System, one indebted both to Brian Train’s Colonial Twilight and Fred Serval’s forthcoming A Gest of Robin Hood. There were three historical Jewish resistance movements against the British in Palestine, but players adopt the role of the Irgun, an offshoot of the more legitimate (and much larger) Haganah, but one that’s more efficacious than the smaller and more violent Lehi. Rangazas does little to varnish their reputation. The Irgun are terrorists; they bomb not only iron railways but also occupied carriages and hotels, rob banks and raid arms caches, and ruthlessly threaten anyone who collaborates with their occupiers. By the end of the conflict, they will be hanging kidnapped sergeants in eucalyptus groves. That said, there is a reason for this violence. The Irgun, indeed the entire Jewish Agency, have been shut out of the possibility of dialogue. When people’s words go unheard, they turn to their fists.

The Irgun court the support of the Haganah.

As befits the geographical squeeze that is Palestine, the map is claustrophobic. There are only three major urban centers, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Haifa. These are linked by vulnerable railways. Each of the scenarios in The British Way centers another aspect of the COIN Series; here that aspect is lines of communication. This is a suitable focal point. Not only did the Irgun go out of their way to derail British shipments and destroy bridges, but the entire region was effectively one switch in the ocean-spanning network that was the Empire itself. Britain’s interest in the region is not extractive; there are no economic zones or resources to safeguard. Rather, this is but one gateway to the Suez Canal and the colonies beyond.

Consequently, the scenario doesn’t bother to depict resources at all. There is none of the fiddling with cash that marks other volumes in the series. Instead, both factions are operationally limited by other means. The Irgun were simply too compartmentalized to worry about wider funding. Here, their main limitation comes in two forms. The first is arms caches. These are analogous but distinct from the bases that are customary in the COIN Series, only appearing on the map when plundered from the British, and then acting as hubs for recruitment and sabotage. The second is their relationship with the Haganah. When they have their elder brother’s support, they can perform operations in an extra location per turn. Demonstrating too much leeway through acts of terror, however, will see the Irgun’s support ebbing and eventually giving way to more intel for the British.

That intel, by the way, is the Empire’s limiting factor. British security forces increasingly isolated themselves from the local populace, constructing fortified zones to prevent further casualties. These so-called “Bevingrads,” named after the foreign secretary Ernest Bevin who denied Jewish refugees entry into Palestine, reduced their casualties but made it impossible for officials to develop ties to the local community. British operations are testy affairs, often taking place across a limited geography or only having a minor effect. They can mitigate this by spending intel chits to increase their coverage or uncover hidden Irgun cells more readily. But these snippets of intelligence are difficult to come by, requiring dedicated efforts that the historical British didn’t bother to invest.

That’s but the first failing of Empire. I’ve criticized the COIN Series in the past for being somewhat “blank,” in that the series prizes operational procedure over ideological cause and effect. One unfortunate byproduct of this blankness is a tendency to identify more with the plight and objectives of counter-insurgent forces than those squatting in mountains and jungles. Which is one thing when the insurgent is a cartel goon, but another entirely when the dominant regime is an oppressive enterprise that treats international opinion as little more than an gadfly to be occasionally shooed away.

Lines of communication are crucial to the British.

Rangazas is on surer footing. The British Way encodes its interpretation of history directly into its operational language. Not only are the British entirely uninterested in learning what their captive hearts and minds are feeling and thinking, but their entire operational approach is a backfire waiting to happen. Their sweep-and-clear techniques emphasize mass detention without trial, sapping Irgun manpower but also directly undercutting their own political will to remain in-country. Their punishments are collective rather than acute, enforcing citywide curfews that become ready fodder for propaganda by the Irgun. Even their basic patrols protect lines of communication without bothering to secure the allegiance of the local population. Every other title in the series emphasizes the idea of support versus opposition. In Palestine, there’s no such thing. Indeed, the whole map functions as though it’s in opposition to the British regime by default. The British can only deploy in territories they command by brute force, but still require uninterrupted infrastructure in the form of police and absent Irgun whenever they want to repair sabotage or terror.

As a game, this reduces The British Way: Palestine to COIN at its purest. Players never worry about resources or support. Thanks to the streamlined initiative system, both sides act every turn, each operation and event declaring their priorities and future turn order. Yet it rarely feels gamey the way other volumes do. Because turns are lightning fast and the entire game wraps up in around an hour, there’s very little room for filler. Every action matters. Sometimes a whole lot.

This streamlined approach also crystallizes the game’s argument. The British Way depicted here is not a steady stewardship of hearts and minds. It begins with neglect for the needs of the local population; later, once that population has been radicalized, their newfound intransigence is countered with violence toward both combatants and noncombatants alike. The Jewish insurgency succeeded after its own acts of breathtaking violence blew apart the King David Hotel and strung up British officers. These acts were often retaliatory, sometimes even preventative, as when kidnapped soldiers were flogged in response to the treatment of Jewish prisoners at Acre. They succeeded in humiliating the British and threatening their global prestige. Of course, this didn’t occur in isolation; the Empire’s line of communication through Palestine became less crucial after the withdrawal of the British Raj from India, and pressure from the international community was growing more severe as boatloads of refugees were turned away.

Soon, though, the success of this insurgency inspired others to follow. Menachem Begin, one of the Irgun’s principal leaders, chronicled the organization’s growth and tactics in The Revolt, a book that has been studied by such far-ranging recipients as Nelson Mandela and al-Qaeda. That’s one of the overriding problems with the British approach. By disregarding the local populace so completely, they’ve created a scenario where their only winning move is also a losing proposition.

A mixed result for the British Empire.

There’s a final detail to consider. Instead of assessing these colonial wars in isolation, Rangazas includes the option to string them together into a full campaign. This confronts the British player with additional considerations and tells a wider tale than that of a single insurgency, and does so without adding much in the way of rules. In our campaign, while the emergency in Palestine was sowing the seeds for the coming century of conflict in the Near East, I was unexpectedly presented with an uprising on the Gold Coast. I declined to send troops. They had their hands full policing my railroads and cracking down on Jerusalem. As a consequence, my overall imperial prestige ticked downward, stirring the first whispers of change on the wind.

Because already, the Jewish insurgency had inspired other subaltern populations to take their shot. That’s the topic of the next scenario, which takes us through the Suez Canal and beyond the boundaries of the Raj itself. And the British are determined to learn all the wrong lessons from their withdrawal from Palestine.

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A complimentary copy was provided.