THE BRITISH WAY Interview: Stephen Rangazas

The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire is the first of several COIN multipacks, containing four separate games exploring a series of thematically related insurgencies. Between 1945 and 1960, the British fought four major “emergencies,” as they referred to their counterinsurgency campaigns, each trying to manage their retreat from empire. The four games in this pack focus on exploring British counterinsurgent responses to a variety of different opponents, including communist insurgents in Malaya, militant nationalists in Kenya, and smaller and more clandestine terrorist organizations in Palestine and Cyprus. The games adjust the core COIN mechanics to provide a compelling new way of handling two-player conflicts, while also streamlining several mechanics to quicken gameplay. The British Way offers an approachable introduction to the COIN series for new players, while presenting experienced players with four mechanically distinct games to explore and compare.

The rules and images shown here are not final

You can find it in P500

1-Who are you and what are your favourite wargames?

I am Stephen Rangazas, designer of The British Way and Sovereign of Discord (a new prequel expansions for Fire in the Lake). I’m a big fan of the COIN series, especially Fire in the Lake. In general I prefer wargames that can teach me something about history, and when I play wargames, I always read a book with the game to learn more.

2-Why did you decide to do this game?

I’m a PhD candidate at George Washington University, studying political science, with my research focusing on civil wars. My research area has probably played a major role in getting me interested in the COIN series, and especially in my decision to design this four-pack of games about British colonial conflicts. I think the series does a great job of presenting a strategic overview of these types of conflicts and wished that some topics were covered in the series, so that pushed me to design them.

3-Can you talk about the mechanics?

The British Way covers four British counterinsurgency campaigns during the process of decolonization immediately after World War II. These include campaigns against larger insurgencies that sought to contest territory and topple colonial rule through armed conflict such as in Kenya and Malaya, but also smaller more clandestine armed groups that sought to wear down British prestige to force a withdrawal as in Cyprus and Palestine. The main changes to the core COIN mechanics for The British Way was altering the way two player COIN works. I streamlined the two-player sequence of play designed by Brian Train in Colonial Twilight and changed victory to work off an overall Political Will Track to reflect that these were really head-to-head challenges between the British and insurgents. There are also significant variations to the core COIN mechanics with the two more clandestine cell-based insurgencies in Cyprus and Palestine. Finally, I think the multipack really benefited from the linked campaign scenario and designing a macro game that covers four smaller COIN games required innovating from what had been done before in the series.

4-How do the different factions work?

The British are a faction in each of the games but have different tools to use across the four games, mainly based around control of the civilian population. The insurgent factions range from communist insurgents in Malaya, militant nationalists in Kenya, and smaller and more clandestine terrorist organizations in Palestine and Cyprus. Each of the four insurgent factions operate differently. The MCP in Malaya is the most similar to communist insurgencies in existing COIN volumes but possess some tweaks to reflect their heavy reliance on only a segment of the population for support. The Mau Mau in Kenya struggled to collect arms and faced a severe power imbalance with the British but are able to leverage their relative size and the protection of the Mountain Jungles to contest British rule. The two clandestine terrorist organizations, EOKA in Cyprus and Irgun in Palestine, operate significantly differently from existing insurgent factions, relying on flexibility to evade the British and launch Sabotage and Terror attacks to drain British Political Will. Greater detail about each faction across the games can be found in our InsideGMT article series about the games (starting here: https://insidegmt.com/the-british-way-introduction-to-the-multi-pack/).

5-What are the Scenarios and length of the game?

All of the games have a single main scenario with the same deck structure. There are three campaigns in each game that consist of 6 Event cards and 1 Propaganda card, shuffled in with the bottom 2 Event cards of each campaign. Therefore, each of the games have a typical length of between 16 and 18 Event cards, taking between 1 and 2 hours to play. This is roughly equivalent to playing a 36-card multiplayer COIN scenario, given that your faction will get to operate on each of the cards rather than every other one. I thought these conflicts fit this length well because the military intensity and political complexity of each is significantly lower than Vietnam, Algeria, or Afghanistan. In addition, these conflicts were not as long as some of the other games covered previously in the series. The shortest conflict is Palestine which only covers about two years (1945-1947). Even though Malaya (1948-1960) and Kenya (1952-1960) were significantly longer, the games focus on the most intense period where the insurgency was going to be won or lost: 1948-1954 for Malaya and 1952-1956 for Kenya. However, given Malaya was longer and higher intensity than the others, there is an optional Extended Malaya scenario that adds 2 Event Cards to each campaign for a total length of 24 Event cards.

6-Do you have any other game projects in mind?

I’d like to work on games that are centred around different types of political conflict in Comparative Politics, a major subfield of political science, such as social movements, democratic transitions, and how civil wars begin. Although I appreciate the rise of more political topics in the hobby, I think we can continue to push for further diversity in the types of conflict modelled beyond purely military depictions. That being said, I’ve also been mulling over a few more military oriented games as well. I’d like to work on something at the Corps level in Vietnam that focuses on the unique features of each Corps zone in Vietnam, highlighting more macro resource control and strategy than operational level games like Silver Bayonet, but also giving a more military focused depiction than the macro political and socio-economic simulations like Fire in the Lake. This is inspired by a combination of my dissertation research and playing Volko’s Levy & Campaign series, but I assure you that for better or worse there will not be any sleds in Vietnam.