Red Mistress in Red Dust Rebellion

RockyMountainNavy, 5 December 2024

The GMT Games Counterinsurgency (COIN) series, inaugurated by designer Volko Ruhnke with Andean Abyss in 2012, has delivered 11 volumes focused on historical and contemporary conflicts featuring guerrilla warfare, asymmetric warfare, and counterinsurgencies around our world. Twelve years after the series first appeared we find GMT Games publishing Volume XII – Red Dust Rebellion—the first game in the COIN series not based on history but instead on a fictional far future Mars. The change of setting from history to a fictional future unlocks the true narrative power of the COIN system making Red Dust Rebellion perhaps one of the most enjoyable and easy to understand implementations of the core game engine.

 

Pocket change

Red Dust Rebellion is not my first COIN rodeo. I do not call myself a hardcore COIN player but I do own a few titles: Vol. II – Cuba Libre (2013), Vol. V Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection (2017), and Vol. VII Colonial Twilight: The French-Algerian War, 1954-1962 (2017). I love Cuba Libre for its simplicity, Liberty or Death for challenging commonly held notions as to the motives of belligerents, and Colonial Twilight for turning COIN from a 4-player game into a 1 or 2 player version. I also enjoy several other COIN-adjacent games such as The Expanse Board Game (WizKids, 2017), Root (Leder Games, 2018), and Robotech: Reconstruction (Strange Machine Games, 2023). All of which is to say that I enjoy playing asymmetric conflict games but—aside from Root—have yet to really find one that engages me deeply.

 

Beauty in red

Suffice it to say that COIN is a flagship series for GMT Games and, as such, no expense is spared for the components. Red Dust Rebellion ships in an extra-deep 3” box with a mounted 22” x 34” map board from Terry Leeds. The cards and cover are illustrated by Marcos Villarroel Lara and are evocative of the setting designer Jarrod Carmichael writes about. Being a COIN game one must have wooden bits and Red Dust Rebellion does not disappoint. As luxurious as the components are, however, in play they still invoke a sense of starkness and scarcity that Carmichael envisions for Mars in the time of the game.

 

COIN by design

While some COIN series purists may view the use of a science fiction setting with disdain, I argue the use of such a setting actually allows the designer to create a more pure COIN game. By using a fictional setting, designer Jarrod Carmichael is able to deliver not only a setting that is highly suitable for exploration through the COIN system, but factions that in many ways showcase the archetypes of many COIN situations, all manipulated by a game system that is both highly polished yet with room for innovation.

The tutorial for Red Dust Rebellion found in the Playbook describes the setting of the game:

Mars, 2250. The bicentennial celebrations are about to begin, but behind the facade of planetary unity and civic pride all is not well. The struggling Martian Government has lost the confidence of its supporters back on Earth, and Martian workers increasingly chafe under the repressive authority of Corporate bosses. Organized opposition parties and other clandestine groups have unified into the Red Dust Movement, fighting for Martian autonomy. Meanwhile, the radical Martian nativists of the Church of the Reclaimer oppose all terraforming and resist extensive settlement of the red planet. These competing visions for Mars cannot all coexist, and the fuse is lit for wider violence to break out. Welcome to Red Dust Rebellion! (Playbook, p. 3)

Carmichael describes in the Playbook how they created the core conflict for Red Dust Rebellion:

The obvious cause of the conflict was independence. Self-determination is a powerful motivator for an insurgency, so that meant we needed a class of colonizers and a subjugated people. Earth vs Mars would be the core point of contention.

The next step was determining a second axis of revolt, and that naturally led me down the cyberpunk route, to extreme capitalism vs alienated workers. Self-determination and solidarity, those became the cornerstones of what the insurgents were fighting for. And those core ideas proliferated across the entire design. Playbook, p. 41)

To further explore the core conflict of the Red Dust Rebellion design, Carmichael created four factions; each seemingly optimized for their role in the conflict. The first faction Carmichael created was the Martian Government:

The first faction built was the Martian Government, a legit and legal government, mostly concerned with the well-being of its citizens, but believing that Martian independence is a practical impossibility and that Mars needs Earth a lot more than Earth needs Mars. This provided the ‘pro-Earth’ axis in the conflict. (Playbook, p. 41)

The next faction Carmichael created for Red Dust Rebellion is the Corporations. With this faction the designer was able to dig deep into archetypes and deliver a faction that is in many ways optimized for the role it has in the game:

The next faction were the Corporations, concerned with little more than keeping the status quo so they can be profitable. The Corporations in this game are mercenary, manipulative, brutal, and self-serving. They represent an extreme take on corporate culture, and are a strong homage to settings like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. Extra-territoriality, private armies and secret black sites are the norm here.

But Corporations are ultimately answerable to profit and their shareholders. One could argue that in a capitalist dominated world, like that of the 23rd century in this world, the Corporations are simply doing what the law and authorities have empowered them to do. After all, without Corporate investment and involvement, there would likely be no human presence on Mars. (Playbook, p. 41)

Carmichael next imagined who would stand up against the Government and Corporations; the insurgents in Red Dust Rebellion. The first insurgent faction is Red Dust, “a socialist workers rebellion aimed at seizing the means of production” (Playbook, p. 41). The second insurgent faction, The Church of the Reclaimer, is something much more complex:

The Church of the Reclaimer was something else. I wanted a group that was so utterly different to the relatively normal insurrection goals of Red Dust. They had to be extreme and with objectives slightly alien and frightful. So I thought about how extreme I could make a group. The Reclaimers believe that a creator God made the universe and put humans on Earth for a reason. The Earth was made for us, Mars was not. Mars should remain as it is, and humans must adapt to it or leave.

This religious dogma is combined with a veneration of technology. The Reclaimers are a technologically capable religious order, and one whose moderates believe that we shouldn’t mess Mars up like we messed up Earth.

I also blurred the religious goals with ecological goals as well to give them a wider scope. Reclaimers come from all walks of life and are not all extremists. Moderate Reclaimers focus on returning Earth to a less polluted state and want Earth to focus on that over Mars. But in modeling the conflict, the extreme parts of the movement are in sharper focus. The Reclaimers are not a contemporary or historic faith. They are entirely a construct of fiction, and that is on purpose. I didn’t want any contemporary faith to be the target of this game. (Playbook, p. 41)

Interestingly, there is actually a fifth faction in Red Dust Rebellion, Earth. The Earth faction is not played by a single player but instead the faction is controlled by either the Martian Government or the Corporations:

And finally, Earth itself is a fifth faction, who are controlled by either the Corporations or the Martian Government. If Earth has faith in the Martian Government, they will listen to what they say. But if that trust is broken, they will seek to protect their assets via the Corporations. (Playbook, p. 41)

The key to all the factions in Red Dust Rebellion is found in the penultimate sentence of the last paragraph describing The Church of the Reclaimer; “They are entirely a construct of fiction, and that is on purpose….” By designing factions that maximize archetypes, Carmichael in some ways has taken the “grey area” out of a COIN conflict. While many different factions have appeared in the 11 previous COIN-series games, in some cases the alignment or factional goals feel forced or are a bit unclear. For some players, like myself at times, that can lead to analysis paralysis in play. Some players (me?) are unable to fully play a faction because they are hesitant play a faction by the rules which do not always match their historical vision of what that faction is. Red Dust Rebellion, by leveraging a fictional world setting, delivers to players factions that are rather easy to understand. Of course the Martian Government will use Operations like Train, Secure, Recon, or Assault to advance their cause! Of course Red Dust will use Rally, March, Attack, or Campaign to fight the oppressors. All of which means the players in turn are less likely to suffer analysis paralysis in play because it is much more “obvious” how a faction can use their Operations and Special Activities or play Events to reach their Victory goals.

 

Dusting off COIN

While Carmichael leverages archetypes for the factions in Red Dust Rebellion, this does not mean the core game engine is simply a retread of previous volumes. Having already mentioned I am not a COIN series neophyte, it is important to note that I am also not a COIN series expert and thus some of the innovations I am about to discuss may have already appeared, in some form, in a previous game in the series. Regardless, Carmichael’s “adjustments” to the core game engine of the COIN series work to make Red Dust Rebellion a unique experience that does a better job at building a narrative through play than any other COIN series title I own.

The first major change to the core game engine of Red Dust Rebellion I recognize is how The Church of the Reclaimer plays. In place of Resources, The Church of the Reclaimer has Asset cards. Whenever The Church needs to spend Resources, they instead discard Asset cards to pay the cost. Asset cards may also have an Asset Event that The Church can use when they can play an Event instead of the one found on the Event card. Assert Events may even grant Asset Capabilities which are long-term effects on play.

The Church of the Reclaimer also has a special rule for eligibility that makes Red Dust Rebellion play differently from other games in the series. Like most any COIN series game, Event cards in Red Dust Rebellion have a Faction Eligibility order; i.e. the order in which factions may activate. The Church of the Reclaimer, however, is always the last eligible. This does not always mean The Church goes last; The Church player has the option of discarding Asset cards to advance one step in eligibility. Given a hand limit of six cards, the chance to move ahead in eligibility may be costly…but sometimes it is the right (necessary?) move to make.

 

The second innovation in the Red Dust Rebellion game engine that makes the game unique in the series is Flashpoint Rounds. Event cards in Red Dust Rebellion have a Flashpoint value before the faction eligibility order which is the number of spaces the Flashpoint track is advanced when the Event card is played. When the Flashpoint track reaches the lightening symbol at the end of the track a Flashpoint Round is triggered. Note that a Flashpoint Round is NOT the same as a Dust Storm Round (the game ends after the third Dust Storm Round).

The seven steps in a Flashpoint Round are important to building the game narrative of Red Dust Rebellion. Key events, like the Aldrin Cycler, are resolved to bring pieces from Earth to Mars, A Flashpoint Round is also when Corporate casualties are resolved, the confidence of Earth in either the Mars Government of Corporations is resolved, Terraforming is resolved, Dust Storms rage, and general Attrition and Conversion for each faction is resolved.

 

The story of rebellion

When it comes to the COIN series GMT Games is serious about their history. Every COIN game comes with extensive historical notes to assist players in understanding the conflict. Designer Notes are another important source of historical background as they often provide insight into what the designer attempted to model in each game.

Red Dust Rebellion includes extensive Designer Notes within which are three stories. The first story is a personal one from Carmichael relating their personal sense of identity and how it influenced the design of Red Dust Rebellion. The second story is the creation of the factions which I extensively referenced above. The third story, taking up five of the seven pages of the Designer Notes, is the “history” of Mars in the lead up to Red Dust Rebellion and provides the world-building background for the setting.

Jarrod Carmichael’s world-building for Red Dust Rebellion is more than simple musings and rather well thought out—I can easily see myself importing the setting into a tabletop roleplaying game campaign. Carmichael is a self-avowed science-fiction fan and I am happy to see references to Star Wars (hopefully just the original trilogy and none of the later cr@p), Babylon 5, Total Recall, and The Expanse (again, hopefully more than just the TV series, as excellent as that was) as well as Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars books. What Carmichael does not mention, and which I am curious to know the answer to, is how other Mars-themed boardgames like Terraforming Mars (Stronghold Games, 2016) may have—or have not—influenced the world-building of Red Dust Rebellion. Regardless of the influences, Carmichael provides a rather complete background for Red Dust Rebellion covering scientific assumptions to facts of life on Mars to a discussion of the government. There is also a timeline of Martian colonization covering from roughly now to 2250; the bicentenary of Martian colonization and the start of Red Dust Rebellion.

 

Carmichael also takes time to explain all the Event cards for Red Dust Rebellion in the Playbook. The explanations notably include what the events on the cards are but also tips on how to play them. Each card also has a short background providing context for the event.

While the “history” of Red Dust Rebellion and the context of the Event cards are interesting to read, they ultimately are not necessary to play the game. Granted, on one level the extensive history and context can help players to immerse themselves into the story of the game, but the core game engine, with the innovations noted above, work to build a great story by themselves. The organic story that emerges from play of Red Dust Rebellion is the most appealing part of the design to me. In my experience with other COIN games, I all-too-often am too concerned with what levers of the game engine to pull that I miss out on the story the game is speaking. Red Dust Rebellion, through the use of what are arguably archetype factions placed in a very simple to understand setting (quest for independence) allows players to more clearly understand the relationship of the levers of the game engine to the factions. That relationship in turn allows players to not only understand their action selections, but to also place those actions into the context of a story built by the players as the game goes on.

Will Red Dust Rebellion become the new gateway game to the COIN series? Given the easier to understand factions, a refined game engine developed over 12 volumes, and a very well written Playbook, Red Dust Rebellion may be the right game to bring new players into the realm of COIN. Likewise, for experienced players, Red Dust Rebellion offers innovations in the core game engine and a setting where one can enjoy the story that emerges from manipulating the levers of the game. Is Red Dust Rebellion interesting enough that I will go back and pick up previous COIN series games I missed? No, but that is because Red Dust Rebellion has enough replayability to keep it interesting through many plays.

 

Red Mistress

Robert A. Heinlen wrote the book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress in 1966 where a rebellion on the moon throws off Earth’s control. Though not referenced by designer Jarrod Carmichael as an inspiration, when playing Red Dust Rebellion I felt in more than a few ways that this game was the Mars rebellion version of that Heinlein story. Which is to say that Red Dust Rebellion very much feels like a science fiction story should; that makes the game a success not only for the designer but especially for players.

 

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