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.

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