Historical Events in Tsar

This is the second in a series of InsideGMT articles from Paul Hellyer about his board game Tsar, currently on GMT’s P500. You can view the first article here.

As part of Nicholas II’s coronation in 1896, the Tsarist regime planned an event to placate the common people of Moscow: a giveaway of food, kvass, and souvenirs at the fairgrounds known as Khodynka Fields. By early morning, hundreds of thousands of people had already gathered in eager anticipation. As often happened, the government’s plans were incompetent. The number of police on hand was woefully inadequate and the terrain dangerously uneven. When rumors of a shortage circulated, the crowd surged forward, people began to stumble and fall into ditches, and mounted police were swept along with them. Within minutes, 1,300 people were crushed to death. That evening, Nicholas attended a ball as scheduled, leaving the impression he was indifferent. The “Khodynka Tragedy” (or “Khodynka Massacre” as some called it) became a symbol of the regime’s callousness. People took it as a sign that Nicholas’s reign was cursed.

In the game, a Coded Card recreates this event at a fixed point in time. In the first round of 1896 (the winter Quarter), players get an instruction to seed this card in the game board’s “Q+2” slot, meaning it will be played two Quarters later, in summer 1896. The card is viewable at any time so players can plan for it. Like all the events in Tsar, Public Banquet on Khodynka Fields presents a mix of historical reality and player agency: the event might unfold as it did in real life or, through careful planning, the players might achieve a happier outcome.  To avoid the tragedy, players need a competent government (as measured by the Total Adviser Rating in the red circle) and at least 2 Gold (to buy adequate supplies).

These requirements are not particularly difficult to achieve, but like the real-life regime, players will be distracted by their own factional ambitions, which exist in tension with the need for responsible government. Will you appoint the most competent advisors, or prioritize your own Faction’s Characters to maximize power for yourself? Will you leave enough Gold for this event, or spend it on your Faction’s scoring goals? One player has an immediate incentive to avoid disaster: the player who controls the Tsar’s current “Favorite” Character.  The Favorite occupies an asymmetric role in the game, with enhanced authority over government appointments and scheduling, but with the burden of personal responsibility for setbacks. If the Khodynka tragedy occurs, the Tsar will direct his anger at the Favorite, as represented by the yellow “Favor -2” icon shown on the card. The other players in the game might also want to avoid destabilizing the regime or, if they’re in a more aggressive mood, might deliberately maneuver toward disaster to unseat the Favorite. These factional problems drive the game’s strategy as well as its simulation of the weak government that plagued Russia in the Tsarist period.

The Port Arthur Coded Card is another example of a card based on a specific historical event. After winning the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), Japan forced China to cede Port Arthur, a strategic port city in northwest China known today as Dalian. This move alarmed the Tsar, who coveted Port Arthur for its year-round, ice-free access to the Pacific Ocean. With support from France and Germany, Russia pressured Japan to give up its claims to Port Arthur, supposedly out of concern for Chinese territorial integrity. Next, Russia shamelessly grabbed Port Arthur for itself by pressuring China to sign a long-term “lease.” Japan was infuriated, and this incident became a key cause of the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War.

The Port Arthur Card has several functional differences as compared to Khodynka Fields. The latter card applies one of two possible outcomes based on current conditions without giving players any choice—although it does depend on choices players made before resolving the card. Port Arthur, however, is a Council Decision with two numbered options: as long as players meet the requirements for Option 2, they may choose between the two options. The choice is made collectively through a simple bidding process using Influence Cubes (we’ll discuss decision mechanics in more detail in a later article). Tsar uses a mix of condition-type cards like Khodynka Fields and decision-type cards like Port Arthur, but either way events always have alternate outcomes, ranging from two to six different possibilities.

Although Port Arthur is initially seeded at a fixed point in time (Winter 1896), it can be reintroduced through the randomly-drawn Era Card The Kaiser, so that if players fail to secure Option 2 on their first attempt, they might get a second chance later in the game. This is why Port Arthur’sOUTLOOK instruction for Option 1 tells players to return the card to its deck (so that it can be drawn again), while the OUTLOOK instruction for Option 2 tells players to remove the card from the game (so that players can’t seize Port Arthur twice). Likewise, The Kaiser’s Option 1 removes the card but Option 2 leaves intact the default discard rule for Era Cards. Many cards have distinctions like this in their OUTLOOK fields, so that the game can distinguish between outcomes that might recur and outcomes that can happen only once.

Another difference compared to Khodynka Fields is that Port Arthur is a scoring goal for the Autocracy and Pragmatism Factions, so this card is more likely to provoke a struggle in multiplayer games. But like all scoring goals in the game, seizing Port Arthuralso contributes some non-scoring benefits: it boosts Russia’s Trade Capacity, raises Navy Morale, and increases Popular Support in the Bourgeoisie Sector. It also avoids the Favor penalty that comes with Option 1. These other features give non-scoring players something to consider: in a solitaire game, Dynasty or Reform players might still want Option 2, and in a multiplayer game, they might dial back their opposition.

Aside from its immediate effects, Port Arthur also impacts the game’s narrative direction and legacy-style play. The “Japan -2” effect means that Russia’s relations with Japan are dropping by two points, putting Russia and Japan closer to war. You still have a chance to avoid war through diplomatic maneuvers or by shoring up your defenses, but otherwise, seizing Port Arthur means you will fight the Russo-Japanese War in Era II. (Each Era is played as a separate game in a legacy style, with Era II bifurcated into peacetime and wartime tracks.) This is one of the clearest examples of the way your choices in Tsar can change history.

Tsar’s Coded Card and Q-Slot system can also support longer-term, multi-stage events such as Trans-Siberian Railway. During Era I setup, you’ll place this Coded Card in the active Hand that players share; if players choose Option 1 (“Begin work . . .”), they’ll have a chance to apply Option 2 and complete a stage of the railway two Quarters later. At that point, the card will be reseeded in the Q+4 slot, so that work on the next stage can begin one year later. This card will remain in play until the railway’s three stages are complete. Aside from advancing the players’ scoring goals for Industrialization and Grain Production, Trans-Siberian Railway also alters the historical story, albeit in a more subtle way than Port Arthur. This card is one of many that shape the game’s economic history, which in turn affects the regime’s ability to project its power and survive. When war arrives, you will find the outcome depends on Russia’s infrastructure, economy, and political stability.

Many other events in Tsar are generated randomly through the shuffled Era Decks. These decks include “All Era” cards that mostly feature generic, repeatable events like Drought and The Tsar Greets a Crowd, mixed together with Era-specific cards like Bosnian Crisis (Era III), Greco-Turkish War (Era I), and Maxim Gorky (Era III). Because they are shuffled randomly, the timing of these cards is unknown and they may not be drawn at all. This enhances the variability of the game and gives players a mix of long-term planning goals and short-term opportunities. The more problematic events in the “Unrest” and “Famine” decks are also shuffled randomly, but these are drawn only under certain conditions. (Drought is one example of how a Famine Card might be triggered.)

The game also includes many events that never happened in history, but might have happened. During the Russo-Japanese War, the British Empire came very close to entering the war on the side of its ally Japan—and in this game, that can happen if you don’t manage your relations with Britain carefully enough. Other alternate histories include political reforms that Nicholas II rejected in real life, Russian control of the Turkish Straits (see the Coded Card above), a military alliance with Germany, and construction of the Moskva-Volga Canal. That last one is something that actually occurred later (during the Stalinist period), and there are a few other features in the game that draw their inspiration from post-1917 events.

In the next InsideGMT article in this series, we’ll examine how Tsar’s game engine simulates the regime’s stability and the possibility of revolution.

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