Fire in the Lake | Solo Playthrough and Mini Review (with Trung automa) | With Mike

[Music] hey everybody this is mike with the one stop co-op shop and i am coming back to gmt's coin series counter insurgency games this time with a big one fire in the lake i'm gonna do a partial solo playthrough for this one and then give some thoughts on the game at the end i'm not gonna do a separate review because uh honestly my thoughts on this one aren't too different from the other coin games i've played pen dragon gandhi cuba libre but this game is focused on the war in vietnam i'll be controlling the allied forces of the republic of vietnam and the united states and i'll have to atoma controlling the north vietnamese and the viet cong and i'm using the trung expansion which adds a card system similar to what they had in gandhi to this game so this is a separate expansion for a updated atoma and no disclaimer need for any of this i borrowed the main game from a viewer of the channel and i bought the expansion myself and if you like the content of the onestop co-op shop consider supporting us through patreon you get early access to our videos and exclusive videos every month you can also check out our separate streaming channel listen to our weekly podcast or join the conversation on our discord so the basic idea of the coin games is that you have a different opposing factions often nominally allied like in this case yes the us which is represented by the olive token here is working with the republic of vietnam which is the yellow but they kind of have contrasting goals at the same time same thing with the viet cong in blue and the nva in red and you're generally fighting over control of different areas this is a very big very vertical map so i'll be showing on different pieces at a time but here if you want to get an idea of almost the whole thing there's a large portion of it and there's a few core things to understand about the board so you have these uh circular spaces that are cities you have these a larger land masses which are provinces and then you've also got economic roads and rivers that are the borders between these things and the key elements to understand are all right here the provinces and cities will have a square number which is the population a bigger means more impact in the game they also have a control space this can be nva controlled coin controlled which is the us and republic of vietnam together or uncontrolled if they tie each other to determine control you're comparing the number of pieces each faction has there although for nva control they have to outnumber basically everybody there including their viet cong allies and then you've got the support or opposition of the people support means that they are more on the republic of vietnam's side opposition means they're more on the viet cong side and each of the factions kind of focuses on different things the us is mainly about support they want the people behind the republic of vietnam whereas the republic of vietnam is more about controlling territory and then the vietcong and the nva have sort of the same division the nva is all about controlling territory but they don't care as much about support or opposition whereas the vietcong is all about opposition and getting the people on their side now they each also have another metric you can see the like victory point trackers up here you just kind of keep track of it as the game goes the nva and the vietcong also care about how many bases they have on the board which are these circular pieces cubes are troops and fighting forces the exception to that are for the republic of vietnam they have yellow troops and orange police whereas these octagonal pieces are guerrillas for the nva and viet cong and irregular uh troops and kind of like rangers and stuff for the republic and the united states and then on the other hand the u.s is trying to pull out as many troops as it can so the fewer people it has on the board the closer it is to victory basically they want to make the people like the republic and then leave and the republic is trying to give patronage to their supporters by kind of uh pulling resources and money from what the us is giving them so they want control of the board and as much patronage as they can get now how the game actually works is through these event cards each event card will have generally two event options and then it'll have from left to right an indication of the different factions and this gives the faction order of who can choose to act so in this case the republic of vietnam would have the first choice of what to do they can either execute one of the events or they can resolve some operations some actions on the board like moving attacking recruiting that kind of stuff and based on which choice they make the next faction is going to have more or fewer choices because two factions can act per event card so for example in this case if yellow decided to do the event then they give the next faction the maximum choice of what kind of actions to do whereas if they took a big action with a special activity the second faction could only do the event or a limited operation that means only in a single space on the board and if they did an operation an action with no special activity no kind of bonus effect then the only choice for the second faction is a limited operation in a single space so the more you do the more you allow the next faction to do but you can also pass to get more resources and go to the next card because you can always see what the next two cars are going to be the active one and the upcoming one now seated in here are coup cards like this those are going to trigger cool rounds where first of all you see if anybody has one and if they have in the game ends although when you're playing with the atoma like i am i technically have to go through the entire deck and get to the final coup before i'm allowed to win uh that's basically a balancing mechanic because sometimes the the atoma can do something dumb and let me kind of get to a powerful position and that forces me to kind of survive for the long haul but additionally when the coup round happens uh like you get to shift your forces around a bunch of things happen uh you get a different effect based on who the current leader of the republic of vietnam is and finally look at the atoma again i'm playing with the expansion they do have an atom in the base game but it's uh more based on flowcharts and more consistent in what they do in this case you have different cards that are still kind of like mini flowcharts they'll ask you is something you know true or not and send you down different paths or even have you flip the cards based on it but these are going to control which actions the nva and the viet cong do in this case alright so those are the basics it's a pretty complicated game but hopefully you enjoy it and we'll see if i have any chance of survival and we're not going to play a full game i'll go through one or two coup rounds we'll see how long it is after the first coup and you know i'll shoot for the video to be about an hour or so so wish me luck and let's get going all right so looking here uh the current event the republic of vietnam is first to act and then it's going to be the nva so the us probably won't get to go but then the us is first on the next card so uh there's really no reason for the republic of vietnam to pass so first let's consider the event the us or arvn can free sweep into or in any cambodia spaces then free assault in one there's a few core action types here you need to understand uh sweeping generally means moving forces where gorillas are the octagonal pieces and then revealing them having their star side up which means they are now vulnerable to being removed generally speaking when they are unrevealed with their star side down they can't be affected by anything and then assaulting is how you kill things that part is probably pretty straightforward and the card talked about cambodia on the east side of the board you have vietnam uh over here you've got cambodia and then above that laos so these are other countries that the nva is kind of uh shuffling their forces through you can send troops in there but it can backfire on you if you do because you're bringing other countries into the conflict so this is a really interesting event to consider because uh the nva starts out with these being like major staging grounds for their combat but with this card i could theoretically send some forces into one of these places flip up their gorilla and then immediately attack them and potentially blow up their base so it's pretty powerful now of course the negative of that is if i take the event then the nva is going to get on a full big action to respond to me now i definitely don't want to let them do the event if i chose to do like a big action because it lets them rally basically recruit a ton of units in cambodia and then march move them for free so they would just like take over uh southern vietnam see i'm mainly looking at either doing the event or doing a small operation just a regular operation so that they can to do the event and you know what what the hey we're gonna go and do the event let's uh get aggressive so the place i'm gonna try to go is the fish hook they don't really have very much there to stop me and that would kind of cut off the parrot's beak from having much going on for them because right now almost all the nvas forces are in southern laos north vietnam and they've taken this one province at the north of south vietnam so the card says u.s or republic of vietnam if i'm going to use the u.s because they tend to have an easier time actually blowing things up and for a sweep you can move people into an adjacent province but you can also let them travel along one line of communication which is either a river or a highway and then into an adjacent space so for example i could send in this case is what i'm gonna do two of these u.s troops from this city along this river and into the parrot's beak and then i can send two troops from here along this highway and to be fish hook if there were enemy units on these locs i couldn't use them for that movement but there aren't and then how sweeping works is for each troop in the location you get to flip one gorilla to revealed except if you're in jungle that's jungle this lighter green is lowlands and then the brown is the highlands which is harder to attack in so in the jungle i need two troops for each gorilla i flip so i'm going to reveal gorillas here and here and then i get to assault in one of the locations the us is the best at assaulting in the game they get to defeat one piece for each unit they have there so i'm gonna choose you assault in the fish hook one two uh normally you can't kill bases unless every gorilla there is first revealed and eliminated they kind of protect bases but in this case i do indeed defeat one of the nva's bases i have kicked them out of the fish hook which by the way means that this is now a coin controlled province oh and actually you know what looking at that why don't i move in a third troop here and that way i'll also make the parrots be coin controlled a lot of actions aren't available to factions if they don't have control or support or opposition there so i might lock the nva out of doing some things there alright so i have largely kicked the nva out of southern cambodia that's pretty cool start now remember that was the republic of vietnam's event not the u.s they just chose to let the us do the sweep now because they resolved the event the next faction which is the nva can pass or choose to do an operation with a special activity so kind of the strongest action on the board and they have a little eligibility chart that kind of tells you what they'll do so in this case the second eligible faction the nva they're first gonna see if they're first on the next card and it's a critical event that's determined by this chart where you take the event numbers and see if it's a c for critical a p meaning they'll play it or a dash meaning they don't care but in the case of the next card the us is first so the nva wouldn't get a crack at the event anyway so we're gonna ignore that part okay then it says did the first faction choose an operation a special activity they didn't uh will it be first eligible on the upcoming card they won't okay and basically long story short we're going down to number five because the other faction chose the event they're gonna do an operation in special activity so we already kind of knew that but basically they'll check if there are like major events or they're first on the next card and they might prefer to wait to do that kind of stuff all right so with that we go to the deck of cards you always move the top card to the bottom then you keep on going until you get the correct number and now these work is you have a series of yes no statements if you get to one of these icons you're going to draw a different card you'll go to the next card for that faction if you get to one of these icons you flip the card over and resolve different activities and sometimes they'll also have you like rolling dice and stuff so here it says is the coin controlled population plus patronage greater than or equal to 42. they're basically seeing how successful the republic of vietnam is at the moment and at the moment we have not taken any additional space and it started at 41. so this is a no we're going to go to the next red card which says are there any two population spaces without coin control and heck yes there are a ton for example these two down here uh only have blue vietcong gorillas in there now the viet cong cannot control a location only the nva or coin can control it but the answer is yes so now we're gonna roll 2d6 and see if it's less than or equal to the number of available nva gorillas and they have a ton so the answer is going to be yes so they're going to do a rally action and you follow these uh numbers one by one and for standard full actions most actions you take will require resources this is the republic of vietnam resources the us and vietnam share that but for the atomo with this card deck they don't use resources well the vietcong kind of do they have this track that like lets them know how much they can shift public opinion but the nva doesn't use resources at all instead the card will indicate in the upper right a d6 value and after each action you resolve so in this case each base you place or each space where they place gorillas they're gonna roll a d6 and if they roll a one or two it's kind of like their resources are running low and they choose to stop if they roll a three through six they'll keep on going so theoretically they could like rally until every single place they rallied in is fully rallied but if they roll an early one or two they could stop the action early so the rally action lets the nba do three things they can replace a bunch of their gorillas the octagonal pieces with a base but it says they need three or more gorillas the only location where they have that much is in this province up here but only two bases are allowed in each location so since there's a vietnam base and a nva base here they cannot do that so they're going to skip that instruction entirely and next it says select spaces using place gorillas and the nva can rally anywhere where there is not support so that would include like two province spaces like this where there's active opposition but also places like this where even though the police are in control the actual population is neutral so only things like in saigon there's actually support would prevent them from rallying their gorillas this is not uh troops by the way these are gorillas into the space so this is the bane of your existence even though they use the cards they still have these things and it said uh place gorillas so what you'll do is you'll look at the matching columns so here we go place nba gorillas and you're looking at the conditions that have dots uh top to bottom means higher to lower priority so first they're going to look for a space where there is a vulnerable nva base that means uh vulnerable there are no face down gorillas preventing the base from being destroyed so lucky us usually have to go through several levels of priority to figure out where the first base is but in this case the parrot's beak has a vulnerable base from our sweep a second ago so we're gonna go ahead and rally there first and how many gorillas do they rally if they don't have a base in the place they just put down a single gorilla but if they have a base they place the number of gorillas equal to the number of bases in the space plus the current value of the ho chi minh trail this is that two right now this is a kind of representing how good their logistics are to get people through cambodia and laos and down into vietnam and again right now it's two so with one base here and a trail value of two they're going to rally three more gorillas which immediately gives them control of the parrot speak they now outnumber the us forces here and now before they rally again we're gonna roll a one or two will stop their rally short hope that was lucky so they cannot rally anybody else that was the end of this action for them but a few things still happened they were doing an operation with special activity so we have to get to the special activity in a second but they also have this star you always resolve star actions even if the other actions are stopped short by a bad role in this case they can improve the trail for free so the trail is going up to a three value if it gets to four they become incredibly mobile through laos and cambodia uh one of the main ways to reduce the trail is to use air strikes as the us so i could potentially do that on my next turn all right and now there's special activity they're either going to infiltrate or bombard they'll infiltrate if a 3d6 role is less than or equal to available nva troops and we don't even need to roll because they have way more than 18 troops the highest i could roll so they are definitely going to infiltrate so we do have these uh these are from the base game not the expansion these uh summaries of the actions basically infiltration will let them take over vc forces because again the nva while technically allied with the vc is also kind of doing their own thing or it lets them upgrade their gorillas into actual troops uh who can fight back directly against me so the first preference here if abel is to replace a vc base that would be a blue base if they outnumbered the blue pieces but they don't they do have a single gorilla sharing these two paces with them but that is not enough they have to have more red pieces than blue pieces so instead they're going to place troops leaving two nva gorillas and this one's pretty simple their first tiebreaker for where they're doing it is the city of province with the most nva gorillas and they get to do this in two spaces uh this is one of the two places with the most gorillas they've got four there so first they place troop units cubes equal to the number of bases there plus the trail so that's four for free boom well they're outnumbering us here then they can also change as many gorillas as they want into troops and they always want to keep two to keep their bases safe so that's gonna raise this up to six troops then we do the exact same thing down here one base plus a trail value of three gets them four troops and then they'll replace two of their gorillas and they always prefer ones that are vulnerable all right so they didn't like me uh coming into the parrot speak and they are hearing forced to kick me out so that is the end of their special activity they already finished their operation every faction that acted goes into the ineligible faction so that means in the next turn only the us and or the viet cong can activate and then at the end of the next turn the ineligible actions will become eligible again so this event card is done rolling thunder the top one comes into play and we see that uncle ho is our upcoming event which is going to have oh the nva first they're going to like that and so they'll uh certainly be active again so the us is first eligible let's check how these are going so rolling thunder sustain bombing i could degrade the trail two boxes that would bring it back down to one that's pretty great minus nine nba resources unfortunately doesn't mean anything against satoma since they don't have resources oh and the nva is ineligible on the next card that's kinda huge how good is this one for them the vc and nva each execute any three free limited operations that is pretty darn good and either way they'd be first so that's kind of amazing let's see if i let the viet cong do this one minus five to my resources that's not too bad oh and no air strike until cool momentum just means it hangs around so for the next uh the coos somewhere in the next like six cards or so for a little while we wouldn't be able to do any airstrikes so we could either make the trail go way down and mess with the nva um or we can let them take away our ability to get rid of the trail now don't forget we could just do an operation with no special activity although that would take away the airstrike i really don't want the trail to stay as high as it is and then they would only do a limited operation but i think i'm just gonna do the event here even though again i am wasting the nva resources part so that's an event for the us and the trail is down to one if you get it down to zero then you extremely limit what they can do and how mobile their forces are and that means blue is second eligible and with red taken out yellow is going to be first on the next card so they don't really care about this since they know they won't get first crack at it so they're going to also do an operation in special activity and their first card says are there 15 or more gorillas on the map and there are not there are 10 down here and four more a bit further north so they're just under they have 14 instead of 15. so different card it is our underground gorillas in any space not at active opposition and that's a definite yes they've got active opposition here here here and here but this province has passive opposition and that province is neutral and that one is passive opposition so they've got three places to choose from and then is 3d6 less than or equal to the available pieces and again i don't think we need to roll yeah they've got 16 gorillas and four bases so they are going to rally as well first they want to place bases where there are three or more gorillas but currently there are only two gorillas in every space so they'll skip that so very similar to the nva they're going to be placing gorillas uh with a two to stop the action and just like the nva they can only do it in places without support but if they have a base they place the number of gorillas equal to the bases there plus the population of the location so the nva cares more about the trail the viet cong cares more about the big population centers so where do you want to place gorillas there are no vulnerable vc bases that would mean all the gorillas with it were flipped so most population they're only going to look at the two population spaces without support remember because support stops them from placing and then with the most bases so that already narrows it down to their first spot because uh this place has two population and has one base and does not have a support to block the action so they'll go in a rally there and it's one base plus two population that gets them three more gorillas and do they stop a one or a two nope they're still going okay so there are no more two population places they can rally into with bases so now they're looking is the republica player yes is the u.s a player so they want to go to a place with coin control and with support the support part doesn't matter because they can't rally into support places and then they want the place with the fewest non-vc pieces so that brings us to two options this two population province here with coin control and they need only two enemy pieces and the city also with only two pieces also with coin control so sometimes you have to roll off between options we'll call the city one to three the province four to six so it's the province first and then they'll go to the city if they don't run out of actions right now they have no base here so they only place a single person and let's see if they stop yes they do okay so they didn't get to go to the other place to the city okay so then we skip down to stars if this event was in play it's not something would happen okay then they're doing a special activity so first they're checking if a 2d6 is greater than their agitate total their agitate total is the name for this little like kind of resource again the atoma doesn't track resources but the vc atoma keeps track of something for like their ability to change opposition and it's only out of two so the 2d6 would have to roll snake guys yes it is greater so they're gonna do the tack special activity which is going to get them more of those points to let them agitate and lower support in spaces in 1d3 spaces 1d3 just roll and die oh three of them if they can tax where they have an underground gorilla no coin control they basically flip that gorilla over and take some stuff from the population so they want to do it where they have the most total opposition and then the place with the most gorillas and then finally at random all right so the first of three choices is pretty obvious they have full opposition and a ton of gorillas here so they're gonna tax here now the nice thing for me is that does shift the space towards support so now it goes from active opposition to passive opposition one more would be neutral and then eventually supporting me which actively takes away from their victory conditions you multiply the level of support times the population so they just lost two of their victory points for losing one opposition in a two population space and they gain one agitate total for every population there so they get two in this case and for other two it's all kind of tied these three places all have full opposition and two gorillas each and they actually don't care about the population so here with three options and two left to choose we'll say one two three four five six whichever one i roll will be the one they don't do so they won't do this one so they're losing here but gaining two and they're taxing here and gaining one all right and that is the end of their turn they have lowered their own support from the people but set themselves up to do a ton of agitation later all right and this is interesting uh both of them become ineligible because of the event i did only the republic of vietnam is going to be eligible on the next card which is uncle ho and we're hoping oh that was lucky we got the us first on the upcoming card so we'll be able to lock out one of the two of their factions uh in the next turn but yeah this turn it's just me and no reason for me not to do it so i have to decide i'm gonna do the event or a big action because literally nobody can respond okay known communists four out of play u.s troops to south vietnam because you start with some troops out of place i would immediately get a bunch of troops or my resources plus n oh and then i get to execute any two free limited operations wow so i would immediately get an influx of troops anywhere i want them basically like they could pop in here or almost take over control one of these places and i could do two free limited operations yeah i definitely like this that's the first time getting four us troops from out of play onto the board which is nice because since they came from out of play they aren't coming from my little available forces area over there which is part of the us's victory condition again the more troops they have on the board the less happy the u.s population is back at home so this is uh great i can split them up however i want in uh south vietnam i'm thinking maybe is like this place that just got its opposition changed i could like put at least three of them there and gain control of the area yeah let's do that so it does get coin control back that gives the yellow the republic uh plus two points towards victory so that does give us coin control here three pieces to two which gives the republic the yellow player two more points then where's my other extra troop go oh over here would give us coin control as well because we'd outnumber them by one and then the republican do two limited operations they've got transport which moves their troops around they've got raid which uses their octagonal units rangers to defeat people i'm definitely gonna do that one and finally they've got govern which gets them more resources or gets them more patronage towards winning the game and actually you know i just realized the rangers can just come in and kill these guys so never mind let's not send the troops here and not get control there instead let's send one extra troop here to get control maybe two troops here to try to stem the tide of destruction because then what i'm gonna do is boop boop i can flip these guys and they just straight up defeat two people there doesn't matter if they're revealed or not so they have kicked the vietcong out of here for the moment which also gives them four more control points which is bringing them very close to their victory threshold if there was a coup although again uh playing into otoma i would have to survive uh until the end of the game and i would have to have both of my factions at victory and the us is not there yet okay now i can govern i can pick one or two places except not saigon my capital and i can either add to my resources three times the population so like here would be six or if my out number the us cubes like in who i can instead steal from the usaid and add it to patronage to help that faction be closer to winning but uh mess up other stuff but that also pushes the population towards the viet cong adds opposition i don't want to do that so what i'll do simply is just pick two two population places that'll add 12 resources i've been doing all these events i haven't actually needed resources but having 42 of them is going to be great and then the current leader of the country can affect actions and this one says each uh governed special activity adds plus two patronage so this is cool without pissing off my people without uh doing anything bad i get to patronage which i mean really pushes them towards victory and now the us needs to do stuff too and we'll be in a great place all right that's it for the uncle ho card one of the fastest cards ever because nobody else was eligible so now we go to the top gun maverick i guess the game likes successful movies too and the next card is going to be booby traps so there's pretty much no way the viet cong will go even if i pass they'd probably still wait to get to this booby trap card since their first on it so my main concern is what do i want to let the nva do here all right so for the event this is a capability card which means either the top or bottom thing would stay in play for the rest of the game so if i picked the top event i would cancel the mig's event so like later on if mig showed up they wouldn't be able to use the event for it and i would also air strike to degrade the trail two boxes it's already at one so i'll bring it down to zero that might be overkill if i let them do it mediocre tactics airstrike degrades the trail only on a die roll of four to six so i would make my own uh actions weaker for the rest of the game and i can see that for card four for the nva this is a critical event so absolutely if i give them the chance to activate that card they will do so which i don't want to happen now do i care about the mig there's a good chance that card will never come out i am playing like the short scenario with fewer cards so if you have just gonna do an operation with no special activity that'll mean they won't be able to pick the event and they'll only be able to do a limited operation in a single space so i'm really uh neutering how bad the nva's turn will be here now this is the first time i've done a regular turn so what can i do i can train which spends resources to get more of the republic's troops out uh u.s troops only come during the coup rounds and from events they don't generally get recruited otherwise i can patrol onto llc's the highways and rivers or cities that one doesn't matter because they haven't messed with me at all there i can sweep as you saw earlier to reveal their gorillas or i can assault i can attack people where we share them although remember the gorillas have to be uh revealed face up for that to work let's see assaulting is pretty much useless and already said patrolling is as well so it's really a question of whether i want to sweep or train sweeping could get my vulnerable troops out of the parrot's beak that at least sounds good although there's not really anywhere for them to go to reveal anybody i mean i guess we could come in here which is almost as dangerous for them but i think training seems like the more obvious choice so i can train anywhere a city or province where i have us pieces so i could like even train in the parrot speak i guess this could be three resources in each place i do if i do places without my bases the only people i can bring out are my irregulars i can place two of them but if i pick a place with a base i can put out uh republic of vietnam units up to six cubes and up to uh two of their uh little ranger guys oh they don't have any right now so let's see i think i want to train here and sure why not in second and that city and then do i want to put some irregulars here ah sure why not now in places where i'm only placing us units in the parrot speak i'll have to pay for it so i'm doing three other spaces that's nine of our resources so we get two irregulars here and then again in each of these places up to six cubes and uh yeah we don't have the other units place so we'll get a ton of guys here and a ton of guys there and they'll be ready to sweep and stuff later i forgot about over here um let me redistribute a little bit all right there we go a ton of people out okay and the last thing we can do this one is really nice is we can pay to add some support it's three resources per step and we can do up to two steps in one of the spaces we trained so this is very happy for the us they've now locked the viet cong from doing much else here for the moment it's gonna cost us six and it's gonna get the us two times one population towards their victory condition yay and we're actually just back to 30 resources so the governing by the previous player actually paid for that entire action i felt pretty good about that now the nva is doing their limited operation since they know they can't to do a great action with the next card what do they want to do is 3d6 less than or equal to available nva troops it almost certainly is but let's see yes okay are there six plus nba troops in any space with coin troops or a coin base yes they're going to attack all right so what's their favorite place to remove laos or cambodia with coin control uh it doesn't apply because they don't have anybody to attack there so then it's a city or province in south vietnam without nva control there's a lot of those with coin control okay so they're basically looking at a place with coin control with the most population and then the fewest non-nba pieces well this is pretty easy because they only have one place where their troops share space with units and it's right there and the nice thing is this is a limited operation so they can only do it in one space so that's the only place they'll attack and they can't do the ambush special activity because again it's a limited operation so they're just attacking they remove one enemy per two nva troops and bases are last so they've got six guys here they're going to kill three of mine so me moving the extra two troops in there uh saved the base or partially saved it and they prefer to remove us cubes first then republic so they got both of my guys and that one guy now for guerrilla forces and for the republic their units go right back to here but for the u.s any units they lose go to casualties they will get some of those back but these are going to hurt them in the cou round when the the public back home reflects on the casualties that are happening all right that was a nasty limited operation so both of them are ineligible but blue and yellow are eligible and we saw booby traps is up oop and we have a cool round or i should say a coup round coming up now when a coup card is on top of the deck we know it's the next thing then you put a monsoon token as a reminder on the current card and this has limitations you can't take sweep actions the nva and vietcong can take march actions uh airstrikes are weaker and there are no pivotal events although in the short scenario you don't play with those so this probably won't matter because they're probably just going to do the event but it is going to limit some of the actions they can take and let's see yep as i suspected this is a critical event for blue the viet cong so they are now activating this for the rest of the game not that i could have stopped them so now for the rest of the game in every sweep space where either the yellow or green units use sweep action the vietcong afterward remove one sweeping troop on a roll of one to three so they have a chance to defeat some of our troops every time we sweep that is nasty really disincentivizes us from sweeping a lot so that goes into play for the rest of the game but that's the entirety of their turn so that part's nice at least and because they picked an event yellow gets to do an op with special activity and everybody becomes uh eligible after a coup so yellow is going gonna be right back in it in a second doesn't even hurt them to do this and you know what it's a little bit uh silly but i think i know what i want to do i think i'm gonna do the transport special activity first i can move up to six of my troops or rangers they can go along any number of adjacent locs or cities basically travel like really far now i do have to stop if i get to any enemy pieces along those locs but that's not gonna be a problem so i pick one space i don't think i need a billion troops here so i'm gonna bring uh five troops and one police they're gonna travel along tons of uninterrupted spaces all the way to here hello and then we're going to assault here normally for the yellow pieces their troops only count the police don't they remove um one piece for every two of their cubes unlike the us which is one for one usually but in highland spaces it's one piece for every three cubes so six cubes means they only remove two people but that barely gives us eight versus seven pieces we have taken control oh that does cost three resources for me to assault there oh and i forgot to say it doesn't really matter but the transport special activity also flips my rangers back down so they can do their raid action again but the coup round is going to do that anyway so it doesn't really matter i can't assault anywhere else but i think that was worth it in fact man if we weren't playing the atomo rules uh then the republic would actually be ready to win right here if i was only controlling one of the factions and all right that's gonna be it for our first set of rounds going into the coup let's resolve the coup this takes a little while so bear with me all right first we check if anybody is winning the nba is down to eight and they need nineteen so they're definitely not actually wait i just wanted their bases they're actually down to seven ouch and the viet cong are at 18 and they need uh 36 they're not winning right now and if this were a competitive game then uh the republic would win immediately but the u.s is not close and i'm controlling both of them and it's not the end of the game anyway all right next the trail gets degraded by one if i have at least one laos or cambodian space occupied or sorry i should say controlled and i do thank you fish hook all right now we get more resources economy is uh equal to all the like loc little circle values they haven't taken away any of those so we just have 15 and then us8 is also 15 so we get 30 more resources going from 27 to 57 wow and we don't care about resources for anybody else because we're not playing with real players but now oof we lose two aid for each casualty so it is down to nine they are not going to help us out as much next time okay next the u.s and the republic uh first the us and the republic have the chance to pacify to increase support in some spaces and what they need is three things they need coin control in the space they need one of their own troop cubes so like the us could do it here and they need at least one police cube so like the us could pacify here but the republic of vietnam could not because they don't have any of their yellow troop cubes we can pick up the four spaces and in each of them we can spend three resources a pop to increase support up to two levels so let's see where the four best places to do this well certainly here since that's a two population place oh and oh and right up here as well that's gonna be amazing to help the us out and oh maybe here the uh republic could do that if the us me chooses to let them we could do it twice and get rid of all their opposition there and i think that might be it we can pick some random one population place here this one's probably worth doing to keep them more out of it all right so we'll do one two three four get this fully supported and five six get that back to neutral so six times three is eighteen so it's gonna take us down to forty seven thirty nine we got seven more support for the us that gets them very close to uh giving me double wins we took away four opposition from the viet cong so they're even further from winning but now speaking of viet cong they're gonna use this agitate value so they can spend up to seven and they want to spend as much as possible two shift places back towards opposition and they can do it anywhere where there's not coin control and they have at least one piece which actually i've super duper shut down for them man they're not gonna get to do much are they yeah wow i got coin control back pretty much everywhere so they're just going to do it here and here they're only going to spend two of their sets they are getting three opposition back two for the population there one there okay now we get to the annoying bit redeployment this takes a little while we're gonna get to move around a lot of stuff uh we'll get to do it for the republic and then the u.s will get to do it in a second but then the nva gets to do it and that's the one that's gonna be annoying so we'll see what we can do oh god i forgot about this ah all troops in lassen cambodia leave and the us troops go to out of play what have i done you know what i didn't pay anything for it they didn't actually do anything let's say that i never put these uh irregulars there because i was losing for no reason but i'm down five troops and i added four from out of place so i'm less than i had and now the arvn they have to do a bunch of stuff the big thing is they cannot have any troops any yellow cubes anywhere that is in a city or where they have a base oh which actually never mind i just looked and literally every troop is either in a city or on a base so that makes it easy and then we can freely move troops in any of those spaces so for example uh since i got control here i could like shore it up with even more people i might want to do that then additionally they can move their police around wherever they want which usually you do to like shore up the control that you lost because the troops moving but that didn't happen here so yeah you know what let's try to get like a bunch more people i mean i am worried about the parrot speed coming in to invade me but let's let's get like another six troops in that place well i don't want to leave sagan totally undefended i'll save a few people there yeah this gets us to 12 people which means um if we do an assault again we'll take out four of their guys and we'll just wipe them off the map pretty quickly and then i'm gonna do a few other things just like uh shift some of the police around like for example get them in these places where it's just the regulars all right then we get to the nva and actually it's not as bad as i remember basically they can move any of their troops to any places with bases so first we figure out where we want to go outside north vietnam for place troops so with the most gorillas the most bases uh we don't have any coin controlled lobster cambodia and then south vietnam without nva control so the first winner predictably is going to be here because it's tied for the most gorillas with two then it's time for the most bases with one and then it's actually in south vietnam whereas everything else is in laos for cambodia second is the parrot speak with uh its two gorillas third is southern laos if we have enough troops still to move and fourth is central laos and how it works as you roll 386 and you try to get that many troops to each of those spaces uh in this case 13 but you go in order so of course you're going to run out of troops pretty quickly so trying to get 13 troops first i'll take out everybody from north vietnam we can't even go there so they're not worried about us coming in so that gets them to 10 already so they want to get three more it's going to come from southern last or the parrots beacon the roll one two three four five six so one two three here yep and those kind of go back and forth so one from there one from southern allows another one from here all right so let's get some to 13 here i'm pretty sure what have we got 12 13 14 and they've got 13 14 15 16 yes so they have retaken control our next is the parrot speak they're trying to get to 13 they just take all the troops from southern laos since that's lower in the priority order they get up to nine troops and they stop there so they've got kind of two main troop locations now okay now we go to u.s commitment one out of three of my casualties go to out of play luckily that's zero because it's rounded down and the rest go to available so they come back and then we get to mess with us stuff quite a bit we can move up to ten troops and up to two bases between any of the places on the board and in available so i could add two more bases to the board i could uh pull two bases off the board to get me to have more available people so i get closer to winning i could add ten of these troops to the board i could take ten troops off the board and again the more i put back in available the closer i get to winning the more i take away the closer i get to losing now the weird thing about solo this is one of the things i don't like about the atoma is that since they say you don't win until the very end usually you can kind of go pretty hard and bring out a lot of forces and then just bring them back in later coups which i guess is kind of how the game normally goes but you know in theory here if i was a regular player actually playing the game i might pull off some of my units and just be set up for a quick win you would never really do that with the automa rules now sadly i can only do things where there is coin control so i guess i should have put more people here because if i had then i could have oh actually i guess i can't fit a u.s base the key thing about us bases is that they coordinate your assaults you do ridiculous damage with us bases normally in u.s assaults the us will kill people one for one for each cube but in highlands they kill two for one or sorry one for two so or i guess what is it every two troops kills one unit compared to the republic which is three for one in that but if you have a base in a place where you're assaulting then uh the us defeats two enemies for every one of their cubes so like with the four cubes here with the base even though it's in the highlands they don't care could wipe out eight enemy units you know not uh these hidden gorillas of course but eight enemy units if they were there so yeah us bases are ridiculous for fire coordination yeah you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna move this space to here because these are probably going to be in play with that big force to the north and take one of my bases from available and put it here uh both of those are again in danger but now if the enemy comes in we can smash them then i'm going to take some troops from available and also from other parts of the board and add three to each of these places should uh be probably enough with the bases to stop any aggression they might have although it brings our support plus available down to 43. shadows recount i think i'm at 44. so slightly better all right and that is the end of the coup sadly the trail if that zero automatically improves to one so my little uh having people in laos in cambodia didn't actually matter every revealed gorilla goes back underground we're all eligible again and we go back to it and by the way we do have a new leader in vietnam which changes things now pacific oh pacification costs four resources per level this happens immediately so i pacified six places i have to spend six more resources we are down to 33. that definitely hurts as a random draw let's do maybe a couple more rounds to see how things kind of pan out the nva might like do a big attack let's see how it goes all right so our active card has the us first operation attleboro and then we've got that for the next one oh so the vc might skip their turn so let's see what we do stab at iron triangle us free airless into sweeps in then assaults a space with a tunnel removing tunnel bases as if they did not have a tunnel wow so tunneled bases are super hard to destroy right now they only have a single one but there's so many gorillas here i mean how many troops would i need to sweep in with the jungle 12 troops i need to get 12 troops in here to do that so i don't think that's gonna happen how much do i care if they do the event select the tunnel space remove a die roll of u.s troops within one space of it the casualties that would be those guys no that's not happening so yeah i think i'm gonna do an op only no special activity for the u.s oh let's see even though the booby traps kind of terrify me i think i'm going to do a sweep so i'd love to like go into this place i mean i already have almost enough people there with the jungle i need one more they want to pull the one troop out of saigon i think it's the only one who can get there because i can pull this guy from here yeah all right well you know whatever saigon's fine yeah we'll send this guy in then we're gonna sweep here and here and here these aren't juggles so two guys will be enough to reveal all the gorillas there now the problem is we're doing three different spaces and each of them they have a 50 chance of killing one of my troops so let's just go ahead and do it though this doesn't cost anything since i'm the one doing it you only really spend resources as the us when you're using the yellow pieces and four is enough to get both here but now let's see if they kill me uh it's one to three no there booby traps at the bottom one no oh come on and here booby traps oh my gosh take that all right so they can only do a limited up pretty good chance they're going to skip well let's see they're not first eligible on a critical event coming up they are first eligible and centered fulbright but it's not a critical event for blue um i didn't choose app and special activity they will be first eligible on upcoming card yep okay so they're gonna pass because they'd rather get a full turn and that means red is doing a limited operation instead because they won't even get a turn on the next card otherwise or they'll get a crappy turn i mean all right red what should do and are there 20 plus nva troops on the map yes absolutely there are are there six plus nba troops in any space with coin troops or a coin base yes there are they're going to attack you know it is a limited operation so they're not getting the ambush we're only doing one space we know where it is it's the place up there this is gonna hurt i was hoping that we would be the first ones to assault here but no such luck two four six eight ten oh sorry it was thirteen so they're killing six of my gods and they alternate police and troops they will get rid of that one police guy and then four more these just go back to available but that uh definitely shored up their control there if i attack back i'll only kill two of them all right so now yellow and blue are eligible and oh blue is first oh man red's gonna be first on the next card so we're gonna get a lot of not great turns here it looks like all right so this time they are first hasn't happened too often this is not a critical event so it's not critical and effective uh next eligible could choose critical event no this one's not critical for anybody so they are checking like whether it's a great event for yellow and it's not uh do they have first choice on an upcoming critical event ooh they might let's see if this card is critical for them oh actually it is so well surprisingly they're going to pass again just to get first crack at this by the way usually passing would give you resources but again we don't track resources for them so yeah yellow has free reign to do whatever the heck they want and there's no way they're gonna miss it uh so u.s moves four us pieces from map to available oh that's not great so we're definitely going to do an operation and special activity for yellow because it's not going to affect anybody else at all now sadly i can't really assault with them i need to wait for the u.s because all the places they would assault they don't have any yellow cubes orange cubes can't attack in assaults well first i think i'm going to do a raid again what if i send this guy in and take out two of them and then what the hey i can totally take out their control of uh the central laos place here that's cool i guess let's have to do a main action i could assault here and take out two of their guys i don't know if that's doing much maybe i should train bring out some more of my guys and pacify a bit yeah let's do that that's right i can actually uh train anywhere where there is not nva control so i can like go straight into here for example or here and now that i've actually destroyed people there i could take over there so okay let's do that for one training that costs three and i got these last two guys i don't know you know let's get one troop in hue because i'd like to get that place to actually support me oh wait wait i thought it was too easy you definitely need to uh to place six guys you need to have a city or a base there so you know what let's go here that's fine and then even though they wouldn't do it in real life i'll go and have them uh since i control both get hugh and its two population to active support for eight money with my leader which gets me a lot closer to that double win threshold and all right um us is almost definitely not going to get a chance to go here because it is blue and red first oh unless red really likes that event and yeah so they might skip their turn and let the us get like at least a limited action all right i said this was a critical event for the viet cong shift saigon oh my gosh saigon one level toward active opposition and aid minus 12. so that destroys the us's support that takes away six of their victory points and then neither of us is happy about aid being at zero what all right now red has to decide if they want a full op and special activity or if you want to be first on the next card let's see how good this is for them oh it's not even one they would play oh wow but they're still going to be passing since they're first eligible on the upcoming card all right so that means the u.s gets to do an opt-in special activity they will definitely do so oh and we know what the op is yeah we know what the op is definitely assaulting and we can assault with u.s troops for free everywhere they are we can also pay to assault with uh arvn troops in a place that shares both of us if we want to i don't think we need to though or even really can now it's one for one outside of highlands so here we take out the base in both gorillas and then in highlands without a base it's two for one but with the base it's uh every unit kills two people so two and two here are each enough wow we just wiped the v8 kong almost out of southern vietnam there of course they just take away all our aids so i guess it's a little bit of a fair trade and that's it where we can assault in retrospect i probably should have gotten like a single guy here so i could have at least paid to have them assault as a free extra you know what instead let's do an airstrike here we love airstrikes right now i'm playing the first edition rules where airstrikes just do six damage straight up uh in second edition they change it to a d6 roll but hey we're playing first we're gonna go with it yeah i could just blow up six guys they have to be exposed so i can't destroy the base or the gorillas now we've got eight and they've got ten so they're still winning there which almost makes me think maybe i don't attack there now the negative part is they do become more opposed to us so i just helped the viet cong a bit but they already got so hurt i'm not really worried and i also get to degrade the trail one back to zero hahaha all right that's the end of my turn that was a great one all right now red's about to go yellow is eligible as well they've got this card they really care about oh and they got another card now the current card isn't critical for anybody and the next card isn't critical for anybody so they're just gonna do their thing so they will do an op and special activity but good thing for me the trail is so bad okay support plus available greater than or equal to 42 yes is 36 less than or equal to available troops well now it uh yeah once again i don't need to roll because of all the guys that is killed so they get infiltrate and then oh they're going to march they're going to move some people in oh all right first infiltrate remember their first priority is to take over vc stuff but they don't outnumber them anywhere so now we're going to place troops again where they have gorillas this is pretty easy they first prefer the place with the most gorillas which is here now what is devastating for them is the trail azir so they're just getting one guy here for the base and the next one with also two gorillas is here so one guy here so wow that was a terrible infiltrate action for him and they would change gorillas into troops but remember they want to keep two in each space okay now they're gonna march now if the trail was better they can basically pay extra to march through multiple spaces of laos and cambodia and kind of move around more but with the trail being zero they can only move into an adjacent space and their activation number for this is two if the trail was at four they could basically teleport through all of less of cambodia and they would have an activation number of one so it'd be because it's free for them in the regular game so first they want to march to an loc adjacent to the us without any nva there so they're going to try to mess up one of our highways and for this is no real tiebreaker except it has to be next to the a us so we just roll for a random space with us they've got this nice little chart so let's see two uh four six so play coup and sorry i shouldn't even try to pronounce these words i know i'm gonna get it wrong all right so they can't go here because the only gorilla that could move would leave their bases empty and they'll never do that so following the priorities down they're going to this one and the only adjacent llc they can get to is here with a gorilla so there we go they are now blocking this up it will affect uh the economies so it'll affect how much money the arvn gets in the next q round and that doesn't cost many resources so they don't even roll to see if they stop moving now they do this select one space in less cambodia without an nva base adjacent to the most nba gorillas and that's gonna be here they want to leave me with control there and then you pick the origin space so they're gonna move from here because that's most pieces and yeah the instructions for this one is sort of weird i think they're just asking me to send a single person there as best i can tell that does take away my control and then we roll to see if they stop oh they do really are you serious okay sometimes the atom is a little bit weird like they really would have picked their whole action to do that well worst red turn ever all right now yellow can do the event or limited operation or they can wait because with red having gone they'll be first on the next card so let's look at these degrade the trail by two boxes that doesn't matter until coo infiltrate is max one space or infinite is terrible right now so okay they don't really care about that do we care about this silver bayonet us-free airlifts into one space without any any nva pieces then free sweeps and assaults there um that's pretty good but honestly i think i'd rather do the limited operation with them and then let the us player get first crack here although i guess if i passed then we could just both go but now let's uh yeah let's do a limit operation and hey i got a good one uh three resources we're gonna assault here defeat two of their guys they're down to eight pieces we are at nine back to control of us all right that does that uh us and viet cong are eligible and again us will be first on this card what's coming up well even here the viet cong wouldn't be first i guess they aren't going to care so what's their event select a province with nva troops then remove a dire role of u.s troops within one space of it the casualties it's really similar to that other card they would hit me here and probably kill all three of those guys that's not happening so i can either do the event or just a regular operation let's see a free airlift so i pick four spaces i can move people freely between them and free sweep and assault so gosh if i can get like eight people here i mean i don't have a great chance of killing the tunnel it's a 50 50 chance but i could like take out all of the gorillas there that'd be pretty huge see i'm going to do it i pick up four spaces and i can redistribute any number of my troops then up to four of the uh rangers or regulars the octagon pieces and up to four troop uh yellow troops all kind of combined so up to four of any of those among the areas so the key thing is i want to get eight people in here let's see if i can do that from here i can take at least three people i could take all four it's already add active support i don't really need to leave anybody there from here i could take away same thing two or three and let's see in these places i could afford to take away at least one i want to leave some people here in case they build up a big force and come back and see let's get four guys from these three spaces and all four guys from here so they're just slamming in here okay then we get to do a free sweep which reveals every single one of these guys because you know it's a jungle and two for one we've got eight now we sell for roll for a booby trap wow they have not hit with any of those then we get a free assault all of these guys are gone and we gotta roll to see if we uh kill the base we need a four through six come on nope okay so now the luck turns the other way with the booby traps so we do easily take coin control oh by the way let's bring one uh police officer here so that if i get the chance later i can change this to not be opposing us anymore that'd be huge but now because i did the event i'm pretty sure they're going to do an open special activity yeah because they're not even like eligible for the next card so let's see are there three plus vc gorillas in any space definitely not i've pretty much wiped them off the map so we got a new card are there any two population spaces without vc gorillas yeah a billion uh 386 less than available i mean yeah like literally everybody's off the map so they're definitely going to rally that's the only thing that makes any sense they can't place a base so they're going to try to place gorillas first thing they care about is a vulnerable base so they're certainly going to do it here they get three gorillas that's the population plus the number of bases remember and we roll to see if they stop on a one or two they do nope all right next they're looking for places with a lot of population they're going to go here displace a single guy though without their bases it's a lot slower for them and they don't stop now they're looking for two populations with the fewest pieces although really it's this two population where i don't have support because whether i should be marking where they've already gone so here and here there are a few pieces here another one there and they don't stop okay one here and they don't stop but they actually have the money to do all this i don't know but this is the other side of the randomness coin i know you know what i forgot up here there is no support there and they still aren't stopping so now they're going to go to one population places one with the base being their preference and now they stop okay so they did get a ton of stuff down there but to be fair it's exactly what they needed to do after i attack so much okay what's their special activity is 2d6 greater than the agitate total let's see they've got five agitate yes they're gonna tax again in one to three places three again remember they want active opposition places and then with the most gorillas so they're gonna do one uh two and then even though it exposes him they'll do it uh here because there's no base for him to guard so they don't care if he gets killed so that's two four five from their victory conditions but they're getting one two three four five more points for influencing people all right red and yellow are back and red is up first this is not at all critical for them they're not first on the next card it's not critical for us either so they're just going to do an apple special activity are they going to get the trail back are there two pop spaces without coin control actually at this point i think there are not yeah because well i took that one back and i'm barely holding on over there oh wait wait hold on am i because vc just recruited there two four six eight nine two four six seven eight oh wait i guess i didn't have control in the first place or did they kill somebody i don't know what happened oh either way now does the nva have control i forget how this works so the nva heads to exceed everybody else there including viet cong so they've only got i don't think they do four eight versus eight nine yeah okay so nobody controls there right now but back to the card yes there are spit two plop spaces without coin control is 2d6 less than or equal to mva gorillas oh definitely there are more than 12 of them so they're going to rally they're going to place bases where there are three or more gorillas they don't have any okay then they're going to do place gorilla with a 2 stopping them they want to do the places with the most bases first now they only get 2 in a two base place because the trail is still zero they're going to in northern vietnam as well oh i guess i should roll for the first space so after the first space oh they do stop wow there it is getting these bad actions over and over okay but they're still getting a special oh they do improve the trail i mean that's huge and now they could actually do stuff and then are there three six let's say oh so they're probably going to infiltrate let's roll for it though yes and now with the trail up they'll get a few more troops all right they're doing where there's the most gorillas so this is the first of the two spaces they get two bases plus trail three troops and they can change one of the three gorillas into another one and then their next tiebreaker is most bases they're going to north vietnam and putting three people there all right not terrible but they are building up again all right uh yellow's gonna not get to go on the next card so do they like the event add arvn troops to double the arvin vn pieces in a space with nva and then all arvn free assault nva now it's interesting i think add the troops when i don't have any available does let me take them from other places on the board i'd check the rules on that so i believe i can double my guys here and then blast them let's do it i'm going to take them from saigon where i have a ton of troops so i go up to 14 here definitely retaking control and then 14 divided by three i'm taking out four of these guys so woof that uh definitely kicked him out all right it's a blue and green all right no contact and then r okay so blue's up first and then me and it's not an event they care about but it does say it's a critical event for me placed two casualties onto the map all raiders and irregulars underground now i think it doesn't really check whether it's a critical event that actually does anything so i don't have any casualties right now so i think they're going to do the op only so i like that what are they doing there's definitely not 15 or more of their gorillas on the board although it's close it's like 11. okay so we get a new card underground vc gorillas in any space not at active opposition yep there's a lot 386 less than or equal to available pieces yep that's automatic okay so they're going to rally again first they want to place a base where there's three plus gorillas and they want to do it in the eligible space with the most population so i guess this is a move i mean the one guy's still going to keep it safe for now but yes we just got another base there remember they can be up to two bases now that does mean that that's activated so they can't place anything else and they still have to roll to see if they stop nope and next they're going to do it here it's definitely helping them get uh closer to victory and roll again oh they stop there okay and then it's 2d6 less than the agitate total they got 10 now so almost certainly probably going to finally spend their money yep so instead they're going to subvert we haven't seen this one yet it lets them change arvn units yellow and orange into their own units so it's one or two spaces with an underground vc gorilla and any troops or police all right so things they care about is there's no vulnerable bases the most population where they could do it and then the most basis so this is definitely their first place there's only one guy here so they're going to replace him with a gorilla okay next there's a lot of tie breakers for two population places they're going to go here because it has the most gorillas and they prefer to remove two when they can so they're gonna get rid of both these guys which takes away my control and then they take away patronage for every two people they removed so they got rid of three people so we lose one and that leaves me with the next choice yellow's next on the next card so and i'm sorry they did a special activity so yeah i want to do the event or a one space up place two casualties on the map yeah i mean this is useless so i'll do a limited operation i guess sweep makes the most sense right i'm still here you know i'm gonna bring anybody else in so we'll just go ahead and make these uh bases vulnerable then i gotta roll for their traps and it finally works we have a casualty darn all right yellow red eligible and oh okay so uh this will be the last turn we'll just go through two clues and we won't actually go through the whole coup we'll see how close we were to winning so we're just doing rok and then we're finished okay it's critical for blue huh would they have uh no no because they would have been first so yeah it's not going to matter for yellow or see it's not going to matter for yellow red oh i'm actually first aren't i so what is the event u.s or arvn free sweep into and then free assault fubon in all adjacent spaces as if u.s and as if all rvn cubes are us troops oh my gosh only one problem nobody's there so never mind the event and there's not even a red event that they would play so yeah i mean i might as well just do the biggest action i can and let them get a limited operation although remember since it's a coup we can't uh sweep let's see i could patrol to get rid of that guy from the loc there could assault up here and wipe out the final troops at least we know what the hey let's uh let's see if we can win the game here like if we were actually uh stopping so i gotta get a single point of control or patronage that's pretty easy and then the big thing is getting the us up that high a six of that would come from flipping saigon back to full supports then i would need three more yeah i guess that's not possible well so we can get things close let's say we train here for three resources and then flip this for four more seven we are very poor we're down to nine resources but that gets the us to 48. then for our special activity we can govern in two spaces get some uh oh we can add it to aid although we're at zero eight we're about to lose from from casualties oh crud you know last time i think i governed i didn't do aid i did straight to resources that actually would have been better in a way but it would have 12 less money let's see right now i'm at nine resources so let's say that i didn't do that but i think i can still uh increase the support that we were kind of rewinding things so aid would have been 12 higher but then there was three that we couldn't lose so i think it'd be at nine and now we're going to govern and we'll pick some random plays here we'll lose the support there to gain one patronage yay and then in one of our two population places we'll get six more aid so that would get us to 15. now hold on we would have had 12 more aids we would have 12 more resources i don't know it's all weird because i messed that up but yeah i think we're actually better off than we would have been i don't know then they're going to do a limited operation and that'll finish us up let's see what is it yeah they have a lot of available troops and are there six plus nva troops in a space of coin there are not this times we're gonna flip because we just took out so many of them are there eight plus nba troops in a space outside the south yes they have ten in uh cambodia so they're gonna march oh but you can't march when it's a coup round um so i think when that happens you just go to the next card okay the 20 plus troops on the map actually are barely not it looks like there's 19. okay another card is coin controlled yes are the 20 plus nva troops on the map no it's 2d6 uh less than available gorillas yes it is okay so they're going to rally in one place yeah this is honestly a nice action for them to end with against a bunch of people here and they improve the trail one as we go into the coo round so there's no effect for this guy and we're not going to do the full coup thing but it's a show where we ended up technically yellow was ready to win us was almost there if we just had a few more troops off the board nva is doing pretty rough they only have six bases on the boards they're actually worse when they started off and they don't have control of any of southern vietnam although they do have a bunch of troops ready to attack and the vietcong is not much better they only have 13 with so many of their bases removed so i think i was in a pretty commanding spot going to the last set of cards probably would have pulled off some us troops here and just tried to held out and build up more support with the resources we did have although resources would have been a problem though we would have been back to like 40 something i have to look back at the video and see if i messed up more on that so that was fire in the lake with the new expansion automa my thoughts um most of this is identical for other coins i love the event card system i think it runs really smoothly um this one compares most closely to pendragon of the ones i've played uh gandhi and cuba libre are not as much like kind of military simulations but this one like pendragon is very much attacking now in some ways this one is more complicated just because there's more stuff going on but in some ways it's less because pendragon has like all these extra rules for fortifications and stuff so i'm not sure if i would say this is easier i'd say they probably they're probably similar in complexity level but both are more complex than cuba libre which is the easiest and gandhi i do think this otome works well i definitely prefer it here and in gandhi over what cuba libre and pendragon have though i will say just like for the other ones it is very kind of onerous a lot of the time to run the atoma for the coin factions because like whenever they have to sweep or move around they have so much mobility that's kind of teleport all over the board that can take forever to figure out where those things happen so i definitely vastly prefer in this one to play the way that you saw in the video with a viet cong and nva being the only uh atoma i just find it's a lot easier to run when i've played where i'm a single faction i'm having to run three atoma it was really a beast it felt like the most uh kind of cumbersome of these games i've played uh even more than pen dragon which is probably the most complicated otherwise so would i recommend this one it's it's tied with pendragon for me i think um i do still prefer the more militaristic ones over cuba libre and gandhi but those are both easier to play and easier to run um i i do like that this one the coin faction like the us has some special things going on but the nva and the viet cong are pretty comparable in their capabilities it's pretty easy to kind of uh differentiate between them and uh yeah like it's not impossible to play i definitely have enjoyed this one i had fun recording the play through i don't know though um i'm not sure this might be like my second ranked coin very good and i do strongly recommend this uh having to go through the regular flow charts is kind of a beast and you know sometimes they get into like weird loops and stuff so i definitely prefer the cards the one possible negative though you saw it sometimes they just like roll really badly right away and their actions are super cut short it doesn't really make sense and sometimes they like just keep on not rolling and they get to do way more than they should it's the nature of the beast but i do kind of wish that there was like some sort of abstracted resource tracking so that like if they really did almost nothing on one card they would do more on the next one or if they like did a ton on one card they would do less on the next one i know that would make it even tougher to run but it would just make it a bit more realistic because right now they sometimes do too much or too little and it can really swing the game either way so yeah that's my only like major complaint with the cards but otherwise i do think this is the best system and i look forward to more coin games in the future using this alright thanks for watching everybody sorry this was a long one but hope you enjoyed it and feel free to let me know all the many mistakes i made besides just the governing aid thing good gaming everyone and i'll see you at the next stop

Channel: One Stop Co-op Shop

Views: 16,480

Keywords: board, game, one stop, co-op shop, oscs, fire in the lake, solo, trung, war, wargame, gmt, coin, vietnam

Id: tc6eGHpnviE

Length: 69min 44sec (4184 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2022