Red Dust Rebellion (RDR) was recently released by GMT games. The game focuses on social, economic, and political control of Mars in the future, around 2250. The game is based on the popular COIN series published by GMT, but its main difference is that it doesn’t focus on historical engagements, but instead on a speculative future.
In June the game was awarded the 2024 Charles S. Roberts award for Best Political, Social, or Economic Game. The Charles S. Roberts award was begun in 1975 by Mr. Roberts, who founded a historically important gaming company called Avalon Hill. For many years the CSR award focused on historical war gaming, although now it can be awarded to any type of conflict simulation game. In addition to Red Dust Rebellion, in 2024 there were awards given to war games from different eras (examples include medieval, gunpowder, World War II), different game scopes (strategic, operational, tactical), and several other categories.
Gameplay Overview
The game is designed for 4 players, each controlling one of four factions.
- Earth-based Corporations, which are attempting to monetize resources from Mars
- Mars Government (MarsGov), which is trying to protect the norms of Martian society
- Red Dust Rebellion (RDR), which is attempting to overthrow MarsGov and install it’s own form of governance
- Church of the Reclaimer, which is attempting to subvert these typical forms of governance
There is also a fifth faction, the Earth Government, which is allied either with the Corporations or MarsGov depending on the situation on the playing board.
Gameplay is driven by a deck of 36 random cards (from a 71 card deck), each of which contains an event as well as the order in which each faction is eligible to play. Normally a given faction can only play on every other card. The first eligible faction can take the event, or play a sequence of faction specific actions and special activities. The options available to the second faction are dependent on which option the first faction selects.
At various times during the game, play is interrupted for a Dust Storm round where victory conditions are checked, resources are earned by the eligible factions, and other game play activities. There are 3 Dust Storm cards in the game, and these are distributed randomly in the bottom 6 of each 12 card group of the 36 card game deck. When complete, the game deck will contain 39 cards.
How Do Victory Conditions Work?
Each faction has its own Victory Conditions, often at cross purposes with other players. Details can be found in the rulebook, but briefly
- Corporations want to maximize profits by constructing and terraforming bases
- MarsGov wants to maximize political support for the government
- RDR wants to maximize political opposition against the government and install lots of bases to support its activities
- Church of the Reclaimer wants to maximize the number of bases (churches?) on the board and control much of the population
Game Report
We recently played a game with 4 experienced gamers, 3 of which were very familiar with other games in the COIN series. Here are a few of our collective thoughts
- The game is more complex than others in the COIN series, with several mechanisms unique to this game
- As a result, our first play took longer than initially expected
- The Corporations, MarsGov, and RDR all seem somewhat similar to factions in other COIN games, but there are some key differences in capabilities
- The Church of The Reclaimer really has nothing else like it in any other COIN game, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it in any other game that I’ve ever played. I’ve recently finished reading Dune, and this faction reminds me of the Fremen.
As mentioned earlier, Dust Storm cards in the deck cause the game to pause and check for victory. There are three Dust Storm cards in the deck. Between the 2nd and 3rd Dust Storm cards the Victory Points leader changed multiple times, and with the final Dust Storm card not showing up until almost the bottom of the card deck it provided a window for RDR to eke out a win.
Final map state is shown here.
