Below is the third in a series of People Power articles from Ken Tee. The previous two articles can be found here.

Below is the second in a series of People Power articles from Ken Tee. The first article, “Joining the COIN Family – People Power’s Journey from Concept to Reality”, can be found here.

Welcome to the first article about People Power, Insurgency in the Philippines, 1983-1986, Volume XI of GMT’s popular COIN series! This journey started almost as soon as the first COIN volume – Andean Abyss was released back in 2012. It was designer Volko Ruhnke’s third published design, and I was already a big fan of his previous contributions: Wilderness War and Labyrinth. I saw Wilderness War as another brilliant CDG (as he himself admitted, it was an adaptation of Mark Herman’s We the People) But it was with Labyrinth, where Volko modified the standard CDG mechanics, that Volko really showed me that he just wasn’t an adapter of popular game systems, but also an innovative designer willing to take risks and see them through. One of those risks I respect is the willingness to take on obscure topics such as the French and Indian War and even more precariously, the War on Terror. Colombia and the War on Drugs was probably an even more unpopular topic in the eyes of some, but I had read Mark Bowden’s Killing Pablo as well as watched the documentary that followed later so as far as I was concerned, I could not wait for the release of Andean Abyss.