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).

The Guerrilla Generation: Uruguay allows players to experience one of the most famous urban guerrilla groups in history, the Tupamaros. The Tupamaros insurgency, inspired by earlier efforts at urban operations by groups such as Irgun and EOKA, mainly launched their operations in the capital city, Montevideo. As many veteran COIN players already know, it is often risky for insurgents to operate in cities; however, the Tupamaros felt it was the only logical option given the conditions in Uruguay. A large portion of the country’s population lived in the capital city by the late 1960s and the rest of the country offered few areas conducive to a rural insurgency. Facing off against the Tupamaros is a Government player that has to carefully balance their use of repression. During the late 1960s, Uruguay was one of the most established democracies in South America, but the democracy progressively slid into authoritarianism. To combat the threat of the Tupamaros in the early 1970s, the military became increasingly involved in the country’s politics. After crushing the Tupamaros in 1972, they went on to topple the civilian government in a military coup the following year. Military rule would continue until 1985.

The Urban Environment

Unlike other COIN series games that feature City spaces or Economic Centers, almost the entire map of Uruguay features the city of Montevideo. Most of the spaces on the map represent Urban spaces where the Tupamaros insurgency will attempt to build up their pieces and Sabotage markers to create Unrest, a new mechanic introduced in The Guerrilla Generation. The more of the City at Unrest, the greater the pressure the Tupamaros are placing on the Government to make meaningful changes to address the socio-economic issues plaguing the country, particularly a rapidly deteriorating economy. In addition to Urban spaces, the game needed a way of modeling the different locales where the Tupamaros launched their most daring operations. These are represented by the five Strategic Centers, each labeled with a unique name: Government, Armory, University, Prison, and the Casino. The Government player must balance protecting these spaces and the rest of the city since Tupamaros Sabotage will trigger a different special effect for each of the Strategic Centers. For instance, let’s say the Government managed to Arrest a large number of Tupamaros Cells, but left the Prison unguarded. A Tupamaros Sabotage in the Prison Strategic Center allows the Tupamaros to return two Cells to Available. This can be important for keeping sufficient cells on the map to ensure Unrest, while also denying the Government Political Will from containing the insurgency through detention.

Given the game focuses primarily on the capital city of Montevideo, instead of tracking the attitudes of the population of each space, the Public Sympathy Track covers the broad attitudes of the population in the city toward the insurgency. During the first few years of operations, the Tupamaros focused heavily on propagandizing their acts to ensure a high degree of sympathy. However, as time went on, the Tupamaros took a more violent and confrontational stance with the Government’s security forces that cost them some of their popular support. In addition, as the democratic government implemented more authoritarian methods such as extensive censorship, the Tupamaros faced difficulties in getting their message out. These are only a few of the new mechanical changes to reflect the primarily urban environment of this conflict. In the interest of space, I’ll let players discover for themselves how Headline Events and the small number of Rural spaces change up standard COIN dynamics.

The Organization and Operations of Urban Guerrillas

A major theme of the multipack as a whole is on exploring the vast variety in organizational and strategic approaches used by insurgencies across Latin America. The Tupamaros use of Cells and Sabotage is closest to the Irgun and EOKA factions from The British Way, but with several major differences. First, the Tupamaros are primarily operating in a single city, which required a number of mechanical changes to better reflect the shift in scale. The Tupamaros were extremely skilled and usually ran laps around the helpless Uruguayan police. Therefore, the Tupamaros don’t roll for their Sabotage Operations, unlike the Irgun and EOKA factions. Similarly, a major part of the conflict was the Tupamaros’ use of Safe Houses to evade capture. Rather than Arms Caches, the Tupamaros’ base discs represent Safe Houses that allow their Traveling Cells to flip back Underground. The Tupamaros also possess one special Safe House, the People’s Prison, whose location is concealed and that if on map allows them to Kidnap hostages. Second, even though the Tupamaros don’t have Arms Caches, they instead get access to Supply Chits. Most of the Tupamaros resources from robbery and kidnappings went into acquiring supplies needed to launch their sophisticated operations. The game models this by allowing the Tupamaros to draw Arms, Escape, and Order Supply Chits that allow the Tupamaros to enhance their Operations. The Supply Chits allow the Tupamaros player to even make a Limited Operation feel like a spectacular feat!

However, despite all their exciting new features, Tupamaros players must face a difficult organization choice over the course of a game. At the start of the conflict, the Tupamaros operated in a tightly controlled and disciplined structure that enabled their highly effective political messaging. However, attrition from arrests took its toll with much of the original leadership ending up in prison. To keep the organization going, the Tupamaros expanded their organization bringing in many new members that loosened their tight control over the movement. During the same period, the insurgency increasingly shifted to more violent and confrontational tactics against the security forces. The Guerrilla Generation: Uruguay models this tradeoff by allowing the Tupamaros player to change their organizational structure from Control to Expansion. At Expansion, the Tupamaros gain additional forces but at the cost of losing some control over the organization. For instance, Supply Chits become randomly drawn to reflect insubordination of subordinates who may no longer collect the desired supplies. Tupamaros Capabilities also switch from being positive under the Control Structure to negative hindrances under Expansion. As much as the Tupamaros player will want to carefully time their switch, actions by the Government player may force their hand earlier than desired.

The Government Response

To keep this InsideGMT article manageable and focused on the insurgency, I’ll only offer some brief previews of the Government faction. As a democracy facing an urban insurgency, the Government player begins the game with only Police. Since the game’s map zooms in on the capital city, the Police in Uruguay are more mobile than in other COIN games but still not terribly effective. As in The British Way: Cyprus, Cells in Prison can be used to collect Intel Chits, though the uses of Intel Chits have mechanically changed a bit. By sticking to democratic restrictions, the Government player will desperately try to mitigate the drain of Political Will caused by the Tupamaros. However, once Political Will begins to drop, the Government player is faced with a major choice, similar to the Tupamaros’ change in organizational structure. As happened historically, the Government can allow the military to enter the conflict. This is desirable for a number of reasons: the Government immediately gains ten invulnerable Troops cubes and their Censor Special Activity becomes more effective. Troops are also more mobile and effective at Arresting Cells. Military intervention will often overwhelm the Tupamaros in terms of their board presence. However, like historically, military intervention risks a coup. If Coup Threat exceeds Political Will at the end of the game, the Tupamaros win a moral victory. This may seem a bit like an artificial victory imposed by necessity, like someone winning after nuclear war in Twilight Struggle, but it’s worth pointing out that the Tupamaros remained politically relevant after the end of military rule in 1985. José Mujica, a former member of the Tupamaros imprisoned during military rule, became president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015 and strove to enact policies similar to those advocated by the movement. It is a good example of the long road to “victory” that can sometimes be lost in the binary outcomes often imposed by victory conditions in games.

For those looking to read more on the Tupamaros, I’d recommend Pablo Blum’s The Robin Hood Guerrillas: The Epic Journey of Uruguay’s Tupamaros as a good starting point. For those interested in previous designs on the Tupamaros, Brian Train not surprisingly designed the first and so far only game on the movement: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7448/tupamaro. In the next article, we will stay in South America with an article on The Guerrilla Generation: Peru.

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