Fire in the lake. Vietnam COIN boardgame

[jomni]

Four fractions,  with automated decision tree each if you don't have enough players. Solitaire friendly.

https://www.gmtgames.com/p-450-fire-in-the-lake.aspx

[bayonetbrant]

We're working on trying to get an interview with the design team.  We've been following this for a while :)

[bob48]

It looks interesting.

[LongBlade]

Great concept.

[Ubercat]

I'm definitely pre-ordering. I got to play a demo game at WBC.

[bayonetbrant]

I'm definitely pre-ordering. I got to play a demo game at WBC.

How was the demo?  Did it "feel" right for the conflict as we knew it?  How about counterfactuals - do you have an opportunity to try and change things in a significant way?

[Ubercat]

It was a short game, probably only a 3rd of the length of a full one. There were 3 newbs at a time having the rules explained by the volunteer playtester running the demo (who was also controlling the NVA). It would have moved much faster with experienced players. I didn't get the full experience of all the nuances but I got enough. I was the only newb that stayed through the entire game.

The great thing to me is that it's a 2 V. 2 "team" game. You can call it that because your interests in the game will be mostly aligned with your team mates, but not completely. Victory conditions determine an individual winner so you do need to look out for a back stab, and try to initiate one of your own. Back stab may be too strong a word but that's basically what it is. You want to play the events and perform your actions in a way to pull ahead of you ally, but at the same time you have to cooperate sufficiently to keep the other team from winning because neither of you have anything to gain from their success.

I was the ARVN and managed to stop the American player from achieving his individual victory condition just before the game ended. None of us achieved individual victory conditions and we didn't bother calculating who came closest.