A Distant Plain (English)

This volume in Volko Ruhnke's COIN series takes 1-4 players into today's headline-grabbing Afghan conflict, this time in a unique collaboration between two leading board game designers about modern irregular warfare. A Distant Plain teams up Volko Ruhnke, the award-winning designer of Labyrinth: The War on Terror, Brian Train, a designer with 20 years of experience creating influential simulations such as Algeria, Interventions in Somalia, Shining Path: The Fight for Peru, and many others.

A Distant Plain features the same accessible gameplay system as GMT's recent Andin Abyss and upcoming Cuba Libre, but with new factions, abilities, events, and objectives. For the first time in the series, two counter-insurgent (COIN) factions must reconcile competing visions for Afghanistan to coordinate a campaign against a dangerous twin insurgency.

A Distant Plain adapts the well-known mechanics of the Andean Abyss to the conditions of Afghanistan without adding rule complexity. A breeze for players in the GMT COIN series: A Distant Plain will transport them to another place and time. Among the New Products, we find:

• Joint Coalition-Government operations.
• Pakistan's volatile posture in the face of the conflict.
• Evolution of both COIN and insurgent tactics and technologies.
• Government corruption and desertion.
• Coalition losses.
• Returning Afghan refugees.
• Pashtun ethnic land.
• Several scenarios.
• A pack of 72 cool events.

...and more.

As with every volume in the COIN series, players of A Distant Plain will have to make difficult strategic decisions with each map. This innovative gaming system seamlessly integrates political, cultural and economic affairs with military and other violent and non-violent operations and capabilities. Flowcharts are available to manage the three Afghan factions, so that any number of players — from loner to 4 — can experience the internecine brawl that is modern-day Afghanistan.