In the latest InsideGMT articles on All Bridges Burning, we kicked off a series of short posts going through the base game commands and special activities to help gamers ease into playing the game with minimum effort.

Last time we looked at the Rally command and the Prepare special activity. Today we continue that series with Activism and Political Event.

Activism

This command is probably one of the strangest birds in All Bridges Burning. The command is used by the Reds and Senate for three purposes. One of these is to activate their own cells, that is, to flip them from their symbol-down to the symbol-visible state.

Activate, “but why my own dudes?”, you might ask, for those with experience of the COIN Series are used to the Sweep operation that turns insurgents from their hidden, underground, state into the exposed, symbol-visible, state in which the insurgents are a lot less dangerous as well.

Not so in All Bridges Burning. In fact, the opposite is the case.

Thematically, consider a cell with its symbol-end showing to be an active supporter of its faction’s cause. An active cell is capable of Terror and, as we shall see below, of collecting resources using the Political Event special activity.

In terms of game mechanics, the activation happens by the player rolling 1d6 and the proceeding to activate the rolled number of cells. The activations must, however, happen evenly. This means, during a single command, no second cell of a single space may be activated, unless the player has already activated at least one cell in every other space with friendly inactive cells during this command. The cost of this action is one resource, even if multiple cells are activated.

Notable of the “1d6 activation” is that it can be performed as a limited command, even if multiple cells are activated in multiple map spaces. You are going to be doing this several times in each game, so take note of the rule.

A second function of Activism is to deactivate and remove the faction’s own cell for a reduction in Polarization. This can be a useful action late in the game as the factions face the need to reduce Polarization. Obviously deactivating and removing own cells will hurt your own game, so good timing is important.

The cost of this second part of Activism is one resource per selected space.

Why should you worry about Polarization? Polarization is a key victory condition for all three factions in play, incorporating in the game the question of how the nation is going to be returning to peace and functioning society after a bloody civil war ―instead of falling into permanent turmoil and becoming a fractured, failed state. This is a pressing question in any civil strife situations. And it was a pressing question in Finland in 1918, for the country dreamed of national independence, which arguably was unattainable on a sustainable basis, unless the tensions between the working class and the bourgeoisie could be resolved through political reform, not military conflict.

The third function of Activism is to deactivate opposing cells (to stop them from getting up to no good, such as Terror). Active friendly cells may deactivate opposing cells in a ratio of one to one, while two inactive friendly cells are needed to deactivate a single opposing cell. The cost of this part of Activism is one resource per selected space.

Finally, for the Reds, and Reds only, Activism offers an extra function: to raise Opposition. Instead of the “1d6 activation” option, the Reds may choose to select one space with a Reds Administration disc and Reds control. The action costs one resource and shifts the space one level, and one level only, towards Active Opposition. Thus, for example, if a space was at Passive Support, it would be shifted one level to Neutral. Additional resource costs may apply if any Political Issues have been resolved against the Reds (we will discuss Issues in a future article in the context of the Moderates Politics command).

Last but not least, each time Reds and/or Senate cells are added or removed, the Cells on Map marker on the edge track ought to be adjusted accordingly. The marker tracks the total number of Reds and Senate cells on the map. When that number hits 27 or more, the game’s only pivotal event, the Red Revolt!, is set up as the next event card, after which the war Phase II is automatically triggered.

Political Event

The special activity of the day today is Political Event. The Reds and Senate players will find this to be an all important special activity with which they will be able to earn more resources.

For this special activity, up to four spaces may be selected ―an important, if annoying cap from the perspective of aspiring Reds and Senate players.

Furthermore, the selected spaces must have an active friendly cell and friendly control. Taking an Activism command is therefore one precondition for running a successful Political Event.

The special activity adds one resource for each selected space. Therefore, a maximum of four resources may be earned in one special activity.

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