I’ve enjoyed every entry in the COIN series that I have played so far. However, I also know that there is no way I could ever own every game in the series - my small European home cannot accommodate them let alone my hectic life. This means that I have spent an inordinate amount of time contemplating which entries in the series I would like to keep on my shelves, playing over and over again, and which I’m happy just experiencing once or twice via someone else’s copy. Pendragon is definitely staying on my shelf for the time being - it’s so different from the rest of the series and I’m a big fan of its late antique/early medieval setting. However, after much debate I decided to trade Andean Abyss away. I enjoyed it and it was very useful for helping me learn (and teach) the system, but my friends didn’t seem to like it as much as I did and playing A Distant Plain made me realise I wanted something a little different. However, I didn’t want to buy my own copy of A Distant Plain because its subject is a little too grim for me to want to play it more than a few times, no matter how much I liked the gameplay. After much internal debate, I decided to pick up Gandhi as my next COIN game. Gandhi’s new non-violent factions and other deviations from the core COIN formula intrigued me but if I’m honest the main appeal of Gandhi lay in two aspects: it isn’t really about war and the short scenario is supposed to be quite good.
The set up for the short scenario (please ignore any out of place pieces, I had a three year old helper during set up and some incongruities arose)
Now, as you can tell from this blog, I’m not against a good game about war. However, not all my friends are so keen and for a big four player experience like COIN I need more than just myself to get the most out of it. I taught Andean Abyss to my friends and we enjoyed it, but I know the subject matter wasn’t part of the appeal. That’s what I was hoping for from Gandhi - a less violent COIN game for players less interested in games about war. The other aspect of Gandhi that appealed, and which I first saw in Space Biff’s review of it, was that the short scenario is supposed to be quite good. My friends and I are at a stage of our lives where having a full day to play one game is pretty rare so the length component of COIN is a big issue. Andean Abyss kind of only had the long scenario and while Pendragon comes with shorter scenarios, so much of the appeal of that game is seeing the slow collapse of Roman rule over many turns and you miss that in a shorter game. Gandhi having a good and engaging short game that covers a dramatic conflict which is not exactly a war (but also not exactly a peaceful period of history) seemed like a good fit for my group.
Protests erupt across India and the Raj calls in more troops to try and quell the growing unrest and disaffection.
Now, unfortunately, I can’t yet report on how they have taken to it yet because we haven’t gotten together to play in a little while. However, right after I bought it I was fortunate enough to join a play by email game of Gandhi on Vassal which I supplemented with a four handed solitaire game to get my initial impressions. In my PBEM game I played the Revolutionaries while in the solitaire game I obviously played all the factions. Gandhi does come with a solitaire system that uses a deck of cards as a modified version of the flow charts used in previous games, and I very much hope to learn this system and try it out in the future, but for now I’m still playing it multi-hand. But enough background, what do I think of the game? The short version is that I really like Gandhi but I’m also still only forming my initial impressions.
The addition of non-violent factions didn’t feel as radical as I might have expected, but that may reflect on my still relatively limited experience with the system. In most of my games there was relatively little direct combat among the insurgent factions, excluding one burst of violence near the end of Andean Abyss, so the removal of that option didn’t feel like as fundamental a change to the experience as it looks on paper. That said, the mechanics introduced to replace this more direct form of conflict and the new operations and special abilities added to the factions in Gandhi were all really interesting. The non-violent factions are probably my favourite element of Gandhi even if it is not exactly their inability to attack that makes them so interesting.
End of the first Campaign sees the Revs in the lead but the game could still be claimed by anybody. I think Revs had a natural advantage because of my experience playing them in my PBEM game, plus they’re more similar to insurgents in other COIN games I’ve played. Raj are suffering because I’m bad at being the government player.
I think it’s a nice little touch that the Campaign cards also trigger a change in governor for the Raj - a nice development of Andean Abyss’s change in presidents during Propaganda rounds.
My experience playing the Revolutionaries was one of constantly not having enough funds to do what I wanted to do. While insurgent factions are not often blessed with an abundance of resources the supply felt particularly tight in Gandhi. Similarly, the available pool of units was a really interesting limitation, Players can unlock more pieces over the course of the game, so you can build your strength, but even with the full supply it felt like I didn’t have anywhere near enough. In contrast to playing the Taliban in A Distant Plain, where I could fill the board with a sea of potential terrorists, being the Revolutionaries required careful prioritising of where to focus my forces. In other games I worried about other players removing my pieces, in Gandhi I worried more about just not having enough in the first place. My solitaire experience with the Muslim League and Indian National Congress had me feeling the same limitation not having enough people to complete my plans. This is only a minor deviation from my previous COIN experiences, but it felt significant.
I really loved the mechanics around Unity and Restraint. In general having a set of mechanisms showing the level of disorder in India at the time is really interesting, but what I liked most was how it impacted on the kinds of actions players can take. For Raj and Revolutionaries the cost of actions is at times tied to either Unity or Restraint, so these have a very direct impact on the decisions you make every turn. Similarly, Muslim League and Indian National Congress often have a limit imposed on the number of places they can take their actions - since they have no resources to spend this is the primary limitation on them - based on either Unity or Restraint. The fact that this changes over the course of the game, and generally trends towards a more chaotic India, has fascinating potential for how the game develops. There is definitely a lot of strategic consideration to be made about when to increase/decrease either Unity or Restraint which I must confess I do not fully understand. That not understanding is of course part of the appeal, though, as it’s something I can learn over multiple plays of the game.
Revolutionaries clear their victory threshold partway through the second Campaign but aggressive play and an unfavourable event have drained their resources to empty. Meanwhile the Muslim League are making steady progress. Can the Revolutionaries hold on? Can anyone stop the Muslim League?
The whole dynamic of Gandhi feels recognisable but unique compared to what I’m used to, and I think this is largely down to the role taken by the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress. The two sides are almost allies, both want to increase opposition to the Raj but while the INC cares about opposition everywhere the Muslim League only cares about it in Muslim population regions. The Muslim League also wants to establish separate Muslim States in Muslim population regions. This creates a similar dynamic that I’ve enjoyed in the past, where the two sides are well situated to cooperate but as the game progresses and their victory conditions diverge that cooperation will naturally break down. They also exist sort of between counter-insurgent and insurgent in terms of their role managing the state of the game. They are obviously in opposition to the Raj, and so fulfill something of an insurgent role, but they also play an essential role in suppressing the Revolutionaries, who fulfill a more traditional insurgent role. This places them in an interesting middle ground that felt different from what I’d seen in other COIN games. I think it is these two factions and their role within the game that makes Gandhi feel special and is definitely what I like most about it so far. I think it also maybe makes Gandhi a little more approachable at least in terms of being the Raj. In other COIN games I’ve played it has sometimes felt like the burden of controlling the chaos falls squarely on the COIN faction - I felt this most keenly in Andean Abyss - but in Gandhi while the Raj definitely does need to keep the other factions in line it feels like it is a little more explicit that the other factions all need to keep each other in check, so I think learning to play a COIN faction with the Raj may be a bit easier. But I could be wrong, I am utterly terrible at playing government/COIN factions after all.
The game ends on the second of three Campaign cards with a Muslim League victory. Both Muslim League and Revolutionaries cleared their victory threshold, but Muslim League win’s on ties - also after taking this photo I did a recount and realised that the Muslim League actually cleared their victory threshold by even more so they would have won even without the tie break.
A few final thoughts in no particular order. For my solitaire game I tried out the short scenario and I was pretty impressed with it - it felt like the game got exciting pretty quickly and the end result was a Muslim League victory on the second out of three Campaign cards. It definitely seems promising as an option for playing COIN in just a few hours.
I have more mixed feelings about playing COIN as a play by email game. I think the system works fine for asynchronous play and I have no critique of my fellow players but playing big multiplayer games asynchronously might not be for me. I found it a bit much downloading all the files and keeping up with the play of the game. I think a prefer the simpler and a little more intimate experience of swapping files with just one other person. I also really missed the kind of wheeling and dealing that can happen around the table during a live COIN game. A lot of COIN strategy is making progress towards winning while also convincing other players that you’re not the threat, it’s actually this other player that’s the real threat. I missed that experience playing it asynchronously. I’ll probably give it another shot sometime in the future. You never know, it could grow on me.
I’m intrigued by what I’ve experienced so far in Gandhi and I’m looking forward to exploring it more. I want to try and learn the solitaire system, something I have previously struggled with, and I really want to play some big four player games as the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress, since they are the most interesting factions to me. I should also try and play some more games as the Raj - I have traditionally been terrible as the COIN faction but I’ll never improve if I don’t practice. Overall, it’s too soon to give much of a judgement on where Gandhi will fit in terms of my preferred COIN games but I’m certainly excited to play more and happy to have it in my collection for the moment.