The Guerrilla Generation Interview: Stephen Rangazas

The Guerrilla Generation: Cold War Insurgencies in Latin America is the second COIN multipack, containing four separate games exploring a series of thematically related insurgencies. Building on the The British Way, this new multipack allows players to explore variations in insurgent groups’ organizational structures, strategies, and relationship with civilians, across four insurgencies in Central and South America between 1968 and 1992. During this part of the Cold War era, Latin America experienced an incredible number of different insurgent groups, many inspired by the Cuban Revolution featured in Cuba Libre, ranging from popular backed rural insurgencies, flexible urban guerrillas, externally sponsored raiders, and brutal ideologically rigid groups. This multipack features a game exemplifying each of these types of insurgencies, to offer players the chance to compare different approaches to rebellion highlighted in the quote by scholar Jeremy Weinstein above. The Guerrilla Generation also offers four longer and more complex individual games than those found in The British Way, as well as an entirely different approach to the linked campaign scenario, which combines two games into a simultaneous side-by-side experience.

The rules and images shown here are not final.

You can find it in P500

-Why did you choose these conflicts?

Each multipack is organized around a general point alongside the specific setting of the pack’s conflicts. The Guerrilla Generation is set during Cold War Latin America and has the broader general point of the need to consider variation in insurgent organizations. Therefore, I selected topics across Latin America during the Cold War that maximized the variation in insurgent organizations and strategies across the four conflicts. The pack includes a highly centralized insurgency with cult of a personality around its leader (Shining Path in Peru), a rural popular backed movement with substantial military capabilities (FMLN in El Salvador), an externally backed cross-border raider seeking to inflict economic damage (Contras in Nicaragua), and a clandestine urban insurgency (Tupamaros in Uruguay). Unlike the modern multiplayer COIN volumes that tend to emphasize similarities in the organization of political insurgent factions (FARC, M26, Taliban, VC, and FLN), the goal of this multipack is to illustrate the significant variation in insurgent groups across the world.

-I think that today we all know the COIN system well. What new rules does this game add?

I imagine that we all know the older multiplayer COIN system (adapted to 2-player in Colonial Twilight) but not the new efficient 2-player system for COIN used in my multipacks and Fred Serval’s excellent A Gest of Robin Hood(also by GMT Games). The new 2-player system introduces a streamlined sequence of play and more flexible objectives for each faction than those found in older volumes. However, The Guerrilla Generation adds additional new mechanics, on top of the 2-player system that will be introduced in the soon to be released first COIN multipack,The British Way.

The Guerrilla Generation includes the first entirely urban setting in the COIN series (Montevideo, Uruguay), with new mechanics such as the clandestine People’s Prison, Specific Strategic Sites across the city, an interactive Prison space, and Headline events on each of the Cards that may be blocked by Censor/Propaganda actions. In addition, The Guerrilla Generation introduces the first modern cross-border insurgency in Nicaragua (with the Scotti and Saxons in Pendragon being a pre-modern example of cross-border raiding), that focuses less on spreading Opposition among the population than inflicting economic pain. Additional new mechanics are introduced in El Salvador and Peru to capture the specific nature of their topics, but I’ve got to leave at least a few surprises for your readers!

-Can you tell us about the particularities of each scenario?

First, I should note that the multipack comes with four separate games, not scenarios. Each possesses its own entirely separate rulebook. A multipack is similar to getting four mini-COIN volumes in one box: they share some of the most general rules such as the new 2-player Sequence of Play, but each is a unique game.

Given that each of these conflicts were chosen to maximize their variety from each other, it would take up a lot of space to try to summarize each in depth here. We will be doing an InsideGMT article for each of the conflicts in the pack, so potential customers know what to look forward to in the multipack. For now, I’d direct readers to the summary of the character of the insurgencies in my answer to your first question.

-Can recommend us books, podcasts, etc? To know the setting of the game

Here is a link to a BGG post for the game where I provide my full working bibliography and recommendations for each game and the overall pack: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3052399/what-should-i-read-guerrilla-generation-see-here

I will also recommend some specific books for each individual conflict at the end of the forthcoming InsideGMT articles. For a single book for the entire pack, I’d recommend Jeremy Weinstein’s political science book on variation in insurgencies’ organization, behavior, and strategies: Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (2007). The general point of The Guerrilla Generation pack is that one should always try to identify the type of insurgency one encounters (by consulting contemporary news, history, etc…), rather than assuming they all operate in similar ways. I think Weinstein’s book is a great first step in exploring that argument.

-After this project, what do you have prepared for us?

For the COIN series, a lot will depend on the success of the first two multipacks. I’ve planned and begun research for a high complexity third multipack with the general point focusing on the complex regional and local cleavages of these conflicts often left out in narratives that only focus on the “master” or national cleavage.

I’ve got other non-COIN series games in various stages of design that focus on aspects ofinsurgency and counterinsurgencythat are not covered well by the COIN system.