A Fistful of Pesos
(Originally published on October 29, 2013)
Designers: Jeff Grossman, Volko Ruhnke
Player count: 1 to 4 (fully soloable)
Publisher: GMT Games
From
1953 to 1959, the natives were restless on the island of Cuba. The revolution
had brewed long enough and was finally boiling over. In real life, Fidel Castro
and his 26th of July movement successfully kicked Fulgencio Batista
away from the president’s chair, but GMT is offering a chance for budding
revolutionaries to change history, one event at a time.
Cuba Libre is the second
volume in the COIN (Counter Insurgencies) series of games, and sits up to four
players, with represented factions being Batista’s government, the 26th
of July, the Directorio and the Syndicate. A four-handed game is the ideal
situation, although clever AI algorithms allow for as few as one player to rev the engine and enjoy
the ride.
Said
engine is the event deck, a genius idea that propels the game forward by
allowing up to two factions to act on each turn. At the top of each card are
the four faction colors, in a row whose order changes from card to card. On any
given card, the first faction in the row gets the option to act first,
performing either the card’s historical event or one of its own actions. If the
faction decides to pass (or if it’s unavailable because it’s acted on the
previous turn), then the next faction in the row gets a shot—and so on until up
to two factions have acted.
Several
remarks are vital here. First, some cards feature two different events, with
effects that are usually opposite from one another. Only one faction may play
an event, and then only one of the two. Second, for each card, the action of
the first faction dictates the options left open for the second faction;
generally, if a faction plays the event, then the following faction will have
to perform one of its actions, and vice-versa. Third, some actions are
different from faction to faction, while others are the same. Those include
such evocative names as Kidnap, Assassinate, Bribe, Muscle, Infiltrate, and
more.
A
typical turn will have factions deploying guerrilas to the board and/or moving
them around, building bases (or opening casinos in the case of the Syndicate!),
attacking other players’ guerrilas or bases, sabotaging economic centers,
stirring patriotic support of fomenting revolutionary opposition, terrorizing
whole populations, ordering air strikes…
The
deck sports 52 cards, four of which trigger a Propaganda Round which is
essentially a housekeeping round. Some factions have to redeploy their forces,
others can spend resources (the game’s abstracted currency) to turn one aspect
of the game or another in their favor, and each faction receives a number of
resources based on individual conditions. For instance, the 26th of
July receives resources equal to the number of bases it has in play, while the
Directorio gets resources equal to the number of spaces where it has pieces.
Then,
if no faction has attained its own, individual set of winning conditions, the
game keeps going. If nobody has yet claimed victory after the fourth and final
propaganda card (shuffled somewhere in the fourth quarter of the deck), the one
faction closest to its goal is declared winner.
WAR PRODUCTION
There’s
a lot of material in Cuba Libre. The
game ships in GMT’s now famous “reinforced double deep” box—the sort of stuff
you could build a house with. Inside is a metric ton of wooden components (the
bases and guerrilas for each faction), as well as a host of thick control
markers of various kinds, plus the card deck printed on fine cardstock. On top
of everything sit one rulebook (20 pages), one playbook (36 pages), and a bunch
of full-size player aid cards, from turn sequence to detailed AI charts for the
non-player factions.
And
then there’s the board depicting the troubled island, fully mounted—but much
smaller than that of the other games in the series! This gives everyone less
room in which to maneuver, but makes the action tense from the get-go.
I’m
not sure exactly why, but I find all the COIN game boards rather bland, and the
one in Cuba Libre is no exception. There’s
something about the general look that doesn’t push the right buttons for me. In
any case, while that makes for a board that I don’t find exciting per se, it doesn’t mean the object is
not functional. On the contrary: everything’s got a spot and a use, and the
board is a big part of what makes the game flow the way it does. (Especially
when it comes to the Sequence of Play track.)
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
Cuba Libre (or any entry
in the COIN series, for that matter) is not complicated, but reading the rules
can be overwhelming. Get this: the standard four-player game requires new
players to read a grand total of ten pages. TEN. Ah, but the heart of the
document is a list of actions, many of them presenting only slight differences
in implementation from one faction to another—and all of them at times
complicated to visualize without the actual board and pieces in front of your
eyes.
So
I recommend that you read through the rules once without bothering to memorize
anything, and then set up the game and start playing. Everything will soon make
sense, and turn out to be much easier than at first sight. Or you could jump
right into the 13-page tutorial that takes you through the first few turns of a
game, including the first propaganda round.
The
player aids are a tremendous help during the learning process. Not only because
they contain pretty much everything you need to play the game, but also because
they highlight the specifics of each faction’s action in the faction’s color.
For instance, both the Directorio and the Syndicate can execute a Rally action,
but not exactly in the same way. Thus, on the player aids, the subtle
differences are highlighted in yellow for the Directorio and in green for the
Syndicate, making it dead easy to compare the two.
The
full complement of players is four, but the game also works with less. For each
missing human, the system provides an algorithm to play the orphaned faction, all
the way down to a totally solo game experience. (In a head-to-head match,
players can also handle two factions apiece, making the game less reliant on
automated mechanisms, but requiring more brain power from each player in order
to maximize synergy between paired factions—ultimately making the game a bit
longer, in my experience.)
Now
the AI gears mesh really well and create a believable enough narrative, but
they’re a lot of work to operate. Each algorithm is essentially a big flow
chart, and things can get heavy pretty fast. I’m okay using them to simulate one
or two factions, but the full solo game is not for me. Although it does work, it
requires too much effort for me to truly enjoy the process.
FUN FACTOR
Cuba Libre operates on a
tug-of-war or see-saw feeling reminiscent of GMT’s own Twilight Struggle and 1989,
or Z-Man’s 1960: The Making of the
President. You’re spending a lot of time and energy adding some of your own
forces to the board and removing those of your opponents. But the key here is
to find a way to make it more costly or time-consuming for your opponent to
rebuild than it was for you to destroy.
And
I find that fascinating. Especially with four belligerents, where the
tug-of-war is much more muddy than it would be in a two-player situation. The
asymmetrical resource systems and victory conditions add a layer of ownness
that very few other games out there can generate: you want your faction to win, using your
tools to meet your goals. Sometimes your
tools and goals will align with those of an opponent, and temporary alliances
will coalesce, only to dissolve a couple of turns later.
Strange
bedfellows galore.
PARTING SHOTS
Cuba Libre is currently
the most accessible game in the COIN series. The rules are admittedly just as
simple as those of any other COIN title, but the reduced board space makes them
easier to put into action. Plus, the smaller card deck (52 cards instead of 70+
in the other two titles) brings the play time down by about a third.
Because
of all this, I’m tempted to say that Cuba
Libre is the “learning game” for the COIN series, but don’t let that fool
you into thinking it doesn’t make for a deep and engaging experience—because it
does. It’s a thrill-a-minute, gnaw-off-your-whole-arm affair, full of theme and
history.
If
you’re into solid four-player confrontations that are playable in three hours,
look no further. Cuba awaits.
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