In the sea of historical, card-driven war games, the COIN series (short for COunter-INsurgency) from GMT Games has always stood out to me because its subject material is precisely NOT what most others are: large, national superpowers fighting one another in historically well-known and globally impactful (but otherwise covered-to-death in the wargaming space) conflicts. From the Colombian government hunting down Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel (Andean Abyss, Volume I) to Mohandas Gandhi’s civil resistance against colonial rule (Gandhi, Volume IX) to a bloody civil war in Finland (All Bridges Burning, Volume X) the COIN series focuses on smaller guerilla, revolutionary, and civilian fighters and protesters taking on the powerful, ruling parties (as well as one another), using asymmetric powers, variable winning conditions, and an innovative turn structure to produce some of the most compelling war games I’ve ever played.

A quick COIN gameplay overview: Using a deck of Event cards, players take actions on their turn (based on the faction initiative on each card) with the resources at their disposal, attempting to reach their unique winning condition. A small number of cards, spaced out and mixed into the Event deck, lead to a “victory check” when flipped up, and if no player has reached their particular winning condition, there is some shuffling of the map, resources, and/or pieces, and…

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