Flashpoint: South China Sea is a two-player game designed by Harold Buchanan and currently on GMT’s P500 preorder list. The game simulates the current events taking place in the South China Sea, a sea area in the western outskirts of the Pacific, near China. This article introduces the game’s key mechanics.

In the recent years, the South China Sea has become an arena of superpower competition between China and the United States. Natural riches and the role of these waters as a major maritime trade channel make it a potential flashpoint indeed. Alongside China and the United States, an array of claimant countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines are involved in the complex geopolitical situation in the region.

Designed by Harold Buchanan, Flashpoint: South China Sea is a game for two-players, one playing the United States, the other China. The game belongs in GMT’s “lunch time series” alongside Mark Herman’s Fort Sumter. As a lunch time game, the game plays quick ―in about 30 minutes. It features the familiar card driven game play familiar from Twilight Struggle, Labyrinth: The War on Terror, and a range of other GMT classics. Yet, a number interesting additional mechanics add spicy twists to the gameplay. More on this below.

I’m writing this article from the vantage point of a playtester. I came to the Flashpoint team early on, soon after the game’s entry to the P500 list. Seeing the game develop from close distance has offered a fascinating glimpse in the development process as Harold Buchanan and Grayson Page (the developer) have worked on the design. We the playtesters have helped with playtesting, playtest graphics, a VASSAL module, and more. Gradually the two player game has evolved towards its current, nearly finished form.

Gameplay

The game is played over three rounds. To begin with, players draw a hand of six action cards. Also, two crisis cards are revealed constituting a changing set of further challenges or opportunities alongside the map spaces. Finally, for each round, a set of seven scoring cards are placed next to the map, available to be scored during play. These same seven scoring cards are available during each of the three rounds of play.

The action cards can be played in a similar fashion with two additions: alternately, the players play a single card, either making use of the card’s operations value, or play its event, or trigger a scoring card, or play the action card for its mode (more on these below).

The operations menu is extremely streamlined and easy to get into. Each operation costs a single operation point (subject to tension level) and any mix of operations can be played during a turn. Only the level of tension tracked on a separate track may pose some limits and additional conditions.

Card Driven Gameplay

The cards can be used to place influence cubes on the map. The map spaces represent countries of the region as well as reefs, some of which China is currently reclaiming into artificial islands. In each country, influence may be placed in the economic and diplomatic sectors.

The first twist to the card play is that the cards also contain a third column that allows each card to be used to trigger one particular scoring card (sitting beside the map). At the start of each round, I’m thus looking through my cards thinking how can I combine the cards to produce a focused influence impact on the map. Yet, I also have to be thinking which cards I preserve for triggering a scoring card (or three) later during the round. All the while I need to plot my course with an eye on what the opponent may be up to with their cards.

These three elements on each of the cards ―ops points, an event, and the scoring column― create a truly tense love triangle that the players try to get the most out of. The triangle is the beating heart of the game and makes for some absolutely fascinating game play. It took Harold and the team about a year of trial and error to get to this, but oh boy, now that the system is in place, it is working! It is fascinating to see what level of emergent strategic complexity a mechanically simple system is able to generate.

The cards have a fourth possible use as well. Each card has one of three modes printed on them, the military, territorial, or trade mode. The mode allows a given card to be played to trigger the friendly event or scoring of an immediately preceding card played by your opponent provided their modes match. This mechanic tends to have a subtle effect on the order in which you play cards with the opponent-associated event on them. You never know whether the opponent might be able to trigger that event against you after your turn.

Scoring

There are seven scoring cards in the game. Five of these represent each of the five countries on the map. Further two scoring cards are in play, one focusing on the overall economic situation on map, the other on the relationship between Chinese reclamation and the US freedom of navigation operations known as FONOPs. Points are scored by comparing the number of cubes each player has in a given scoring dimension. The advantaged player scores the difference in points.

The scoring cards achieve a neat balance between short-term and long-term goals. In particular the ongoing Chinese reclamation represents a sticky dimension of permanent Chinese presence on the map once placed. By contrast, the FONOPs are placed and removed again at the round’s end (representing, as FONOPs do, one-off maritime operations in contested waters).

China has some opportunity to build up a position here that the US player has to reckon with over the long-term. By comparison, in particular the diplomatic influence placed represents a less sticky dimensions in which shorter term reactions are possible. The economic dimension is something in between. Some economic influence is removed during the reset at the end of each round of play, yet some survives constituting a basis upon which to build up economic dominance in the region.

Political Warfare and Tension

There is a political warfare mechanic that adds something of a nuclear option to the game (without the contamination)! Political warfare involves, first, playing up to three cubes on the political warfare track, perhaps over a number of turns. Second, certain effects can be triggered by declaring to resolve political warfare as a free operation. Draw a random card from the draw deck and compare its ops value to the number of cubes on the political warfare track.

If the political warfare cubes equal or exceed the ops value of the card, you are ok and may proceed with the procedure. If there are three cubes on the political warfare track the resolution is automatic allowing the player to remove all risk if they choose.

Political warfare enables the player to select a country, clear either its economic or diplomatic section of opponent’s cubes entirely, and temporarily lock the country. Locking prevents further influence placement by the opponent for the time being (unless it is via event cards).

The tension track signals the current level of tension in the region. Higher levels of tension block or increase the cost of certain actions. Events can be used to de-escalate tensions. Operations such as Chinese island reclamation escalate tensions. The trick is to manipulate the track at the right moments to enable your actions while blocking those of the opponent.

* * *

That was a quick runthrough of the game’s mechanics. As you can see, it is all fairly straightforward, yet, in interaction with one another, the mechanics give rise to captivating game play.

In a future InsideGMT article we will look at these game mechanics in action in the form of an after action report.

---