Blog Archives
Winds of Change, Part Three: Kenya
It’s all too easy to think about colonialism as something that occurred centuries ago, resolved in the dim twilight of history and bearing little import on current interests. But as we examined in our last two entries on Stephen Rangazas’s The British Way, both the Palestinian and Malayan “emergencies,” as they were euphemistically known, are relatively fresh historical atrocities whose reverberations can still be felt today.
The same goes for British imperial behavior in Kenya. Indeed, the imperial incursions into Kenya were a 20th century phenomenon. Missionaries and British corporate interests began settling East Africa in the late 19th century, but the incorporation of the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya only occurred in 1920. Over the next three decades, British abuses reached a fever pitch. It was no surprise when an undermanned and underequipped group of rebels named the Mau Mau began to terrorize the countryside.
Winds of Change, Part Two: Malaya
In the West, it’s all too easy to blind oneself to the long-term consequences of colonialism. As we examined last time, the reverberations of British Imperial promises in the Middle East continue to be felt a full century after they were made. Today we’re looking at a conflict — euphemistically called an “emergency” — that was far bloodier and more pressing to the Crown than the logistical colony of Mandatory Palestine: the communist uprising and subsequent imperial deployment on the Malay Peninsula.
The Malayan Emergency is the second of four insurgencies included in Stephen Rangazas’s The British Way, and it’s by far the most robust of the multipack. Were players to pursue these scenarios in order of complexity, this would likely constitute the final installment. Unfortunately, history doesn’t gently ramp up its level of complexity for our ease of play. Cinch up that rucksack, because this one is going to require some explanation.
Winds of Change, Part One: Palestine
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.
The People Person’s People Power
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. 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. That said, it’s also a challenging series, both thematically and as player experiences, not least because of its unswerving dedication to force asymmetry. Perhaps that’s inevitable. 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.
Somewhere along the way, the series morphed into a depiction of not only governments and insurgencies, but also popular movements. Kenneth Tee’s People Power: Insurgency in the Philippines, 1981-1986 leans into this more recent characterization. It’s also the simplest and most approachable the series has been since its second volume.
Slaying Probus
Ah, the third century. When men were men, women knew their place, and the Roman Empire was so tattered that the lifespan of its leaders was measured in months rather than years. Who wouldn’t want to be transported to those halcyon days?
If their previous design catalog is anything to go by, Wray Ferrell and Brad Johnson might volunteer. Time of Crisis and its expansion tackled the military anarchy of the third century with ease, highlighting the plagues, inflation, invasions, and civil war that were the hallmarks of the era. Their newest title, The Barracks Emperors, covers such similar ground that one might mistake it for another expansion.
In a Wooden Boat in the Shipping Lanes
Everybody’s racing to make the next half-hour CDG, both a testament to the staying power of Twilight Struggle and a play note that the thing had a tendency to drag on. The latest aspirant is Harold Buchanan’s Flashpoint: South China Sea. Buchanan, you might recall, is the designer Liberty or Death, the fifth volume in the lauded COIN Series, which for no specific reason remains the only volume I’ve never gotten around to writing about. South China Sea rather boldly, perhaps presumptuously, announces itself as volume one of the Flashpoint Series. It’s like the kids say: always be branding.
For what it’s worth, I do hope there’s a volume two. Although maybe not for the reasons one would expect.
Ole Snaggletooth Nevsky
Board games are fantastic at modeling complex situations. I suspect that just as music is the art of sound, film is the art of directing, and literature is the art of fantasy authors using italics to tell me when their characters are delivering moody internal monologues, board games are the art of reducing models to their most digestible format.
Volko Ruhnke is no stranger to setting cardboard and counters to this purpose. Best known for the COIN Series, which depicts asymmetrical insurgencies, revolutions, and ideological contests throughout history, Ruhnke has now delivered a second system. This one is called Levy & Campaign, its first volume is Nevsky, and it’s an exemplar of how to deploy incentives and constraints to teach us something about history.
Le Temps des Cerises
Mark Herman’s Fort Sumter was a lean, rangy filament of a game. After initially falling for its charms, I soon found its leanness and ranginess a little too emaciated, with not nearly enough muscle and fat beneath the skin. One of the reasons I play historical games, after all, is to see how the history is modeled, not to merely see it sketched out as the titles of locations and cards.
Enter Red Flag Over Paris. Designed by Frédéric Serval, it uses the system and leanness of Fort Sumter while still piling on, well, everything else. Its topic is the Paris Commune, the brief but fierce revolutionary outpouring that would prove so influential on Karl Marx — and become a stain on the early days of the French Third Republic.
Set Another One Afire
One of the things I value about the COIN Series, which stepped onto the scene back in 2012 with Volko Ruhnke’s Andean Abyss, is its ability to fill in the gaps of history. The Finnish Civil War was a bloody three-month conflict that left lingering scars for decades, yet it’s one of those wars that’s usually only mentioned in passing, more notable for how it impacted the foreign policies of its larger neighbors, especially Germany and Russia, rather than for the sovereign republic it ultimately birthed.
No longer! As the tenth volume in the Coin Series, All Bridges Burning is the first published design by VPJ Arponen. Never mind that. His confidence with the subject matter is evident in the game’s finest details. I’d even go so far as to call this one of the series’ most radical entries.
The Dignity and Indignities of Comanchería
Across the span of 1700 to 1875, the Comanche carved an empire into the American southwest roughly the size of modern-day Texas. Their instruments were both legendary and notorious: open-handed trade, remorseless warfare, unparalleled horsemanship. “Comanche” means “the people.” To outsiders, it came to signify “the lords of the plains.”
Comanchería, as their empire was called, would not survive. Between outbreaks of smallpox and cholera, the extermination of the great herds of buffalo, and continued incursions, the Comanche gave ground, then dwindled, then accepted the treaty that consigned them to a reservation. Far from the cataclysmic fall of a great empire, it was a succession of small cuts, gnawing infections, and inflicted indignities.
Joel Toppen’s Comanchería: The Rise and Fall of the Comanche Empire captures every excruciating detail. It is one of the finest historical games I have ever played. It also represents one of the hardest gaming experiences of my adult life.
SPACE-BIFF! 