In the first InsideGMT article on The Guerrilla Generation, I covered the famous urban guerrillas known as the Tupamaros in the Uruguay game. In this article, I’ll cover the other game set in South America, The Guerrilla Generation: Peru. The Peru game depicts the Shining Path insurgency from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. As with Malaya in The British Way, Peru represents a less radical departure from the standard COIN model and provides a good starting point for COIN players transitioning to or from existing modern conflict volumes such as Andean Abyss, Cuba Libre, or A Distant Plain. Thematically, The Guerrilla Generation: Peru has a lot in common with the Colombian civil war depicted by the first COIN volume Andean Abyss. Both South American conflicts involved a leftist insurgency that outlasted the end of the Cold War, partially by becoming involved in the drug trade. However, as will be explained below, the Shining Path insurgency’s violence featured in Peru makes the FARC insurgency in Colombia look restrained by comparison.

The Guerrilla Generation: Peru allows players to learn about one of the most violent insurgencies in Latin American history, the Shining Path. The Shining Path insurgency operated as a highly centralized group that organized around a cult of personality of its leader Abimael Guzmán. The movement glorified the use of violence and carried out extensive civilian victimization. Unlike most conflicts in Latin America, the Truth and Reconciliation report conducted in Peru after the conflict found that the Shining Path committed more violence against civilians than government forces, responsible for 54% of the 69,820 reported deaths or disappearances. To accurately depict the conflict, the Peru game builds the group’s extensive use of violence into their Faction, but also makes sure to model the major drawbacks of such violence. Facing the brutal Shining Path insurgency is another Government faction that must balance their response to the insurgency with the restrictions of a democratic government. As in the Uruguay game, featured in the last InsideGMT article, the use of too much repression could lead to a military coup against the democratic government.

This is the first in a series of InsideGMT articles on the games in the second COIN Multipack by GMT Games, The Guerrilla Generation. First, I should mention that I’m very happy with the reception of the first COIN Multipack, The British Way, in terms of reception and sales. Thanks to all your support the game’s first printing ran out of stock in only six months! Stay tuned for further updates on The British Way. It’s exciting to see many players and reviewers enjoying this new approach to the COIN series, getting to explore many different conflicts in one game box. The Guerrilla Generation offers four more conflicts for players to explore, with each involving slightly more complexity and depth than the ones found in The British Way. In the rest of this article I’ll outline the first chronological game in the pack, Uruguay (1968-1972).