Volko Ruhnke’s COIN System sure has come a long way since Andean Abyss. It’s sobering to realize that it’s been twelve years since we stalked the mountains of Colombia for drug cartels and Communist insurgents. The system has always prioritized certain assumptions about adversarial state-building, but now, in its twelfth volume, with multiple spin-offs and grandchildren padding its family tree — not the least of which is Cole Wehrle’s Root — the main series has taken a hard left turn into the speculative. We’re a long way from those history classrooms and CIA factbooks now, grandpa.

Red Dust Rebellion is the first game by Jarrod Carmichael, although we took an early look at his forthcoming Shadow Moon Syndicates a couple months back. For the most part, this project is a surprisingly cozy fit for the COIN Series. Set two hundred years in the future, give or take, the usual geopolitical boundaries have been redrawn thanks to the game’s remote setting, the red planet itself. What’s that phrase about how history doesn’t repeat itself, but often rhymes? Yeah. That. Even thought it takes place 140 million miles away, Red Dust Rebellion is so familiar that it might as well be a roadmap.

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