Review Summary: You don't shout 'hakkaa päälle' when brother kills brother, even so however this is not a game to overlook.

Blurb from the publisher: 'In late January 1918, in the newly independent nation of Finland, the working class rose up in revolt, taking control of most major population centers in Finland. The revolt led to a short but brutal civil war between the Reds and the Whites, in which the nearby European superpowers of that time - the German Empire and a revolutionary Russia - also became involved.

The revolt was the culmination of yearlong political turbulence in the context of the collapse of Tsarist Russia, as well as the excesses of rapid industrialization, with nearly feudal conditions in parts of the Finnish countryside. All of this came flaming up in violent class conflict. For political moderates, the civil war threatened to ruin the Finnish national independence achieved from Russia only weeks before.

In All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland 1917 - 1918, the Reds player seeks to stage a successful revolt and hold onto the gains, while the White Senate faction seeks to beat back the Reds and restore control in the major towns. A third faction, the Moderates, fight for the political survival of a parliamentary democracy, as well as to keep all the competing and volatile national sentiments conciliatory enough for a stable post-conflict settlement.

All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland 1917 - 1918 features the familiar card-assisted COIN Series system, adapted here for three players. Three factions, all with their own particular asymmetric abilities, and military and political aims, deal with the unpredictable exigencies of a varied deck of historical event cards, and a game-play divided into two characteristically distinct phases: the pre-war build-up and the civil war itself. A full, cards-based, solitaire system is included.'

What you get: Your USD 72 or equivalent will buy you All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland 1917 - 1918, an asymmetrical, area majority wargame that can accommodet from one to three players in a maximum playing time of six hours. This is the tenth game in the COIN series and the first one that we examine together.

In addition to the 32-page Rules of Play and the 40-page Playbook that can be also downloaded from the publisher's website free of charge, the game also contains the following: one 20'' x 25 1/2'' mounted game board, 47 Event cards, 17 Solitaire System cards, 88 wooden pieces (an assortment of discs, cubes, cylinders, and octagonal pieces), a sheet of markers, thre e6-sided dice, 3 Faction Player Aid Foldouts, one Sequence of Play and Attack Procedure sheet, and one Solitaire Play sheet.

Important: In the game's first printing, a handful of cards, the Faction Player Aid foldouts, as well as the mounted board, were printed with errors. GMT Games has corrected these mistakes by reprinting the cards, the player aids, as well as three stickers for the map, and is offering them as part of the 'Three Game Update Kit' which covers the present game, Imperial Struggle, and Versailles 1919. The kit is provided free of charge, even though you have to pay for shipping if you order it separately. Thus, my advice: if you buy either of these three games from your FLGS or from an online vendor, expressly demand that they also give you the Three Game Update Kit. In that way, you will get your game(s) right from the get-go, and you won't have to pay the additional shipping cost for the kit. In the interest of full disclosure, I received the kit along with the game. Thus, all playtests were done with the correct cards and player aids.

As I stated just earlier, I have not yet playtested another game in the COIN series. Thus, do not expect comparisons of All Bridges Burning to some of the most famous games of the line like Cuba Libre, A Distant Plain, or Fire in the Lake.

Gameplay: The players incarnate one of three factions, the Senate, the Reds, and the Moderates. Two external, non-player powers (Germany and Russia) are favourable to the Senate and the Reds respectively. Each faction has from 0 to 30 resources available to pay for its actions. At the beginning of the game factions start with different numbers of cells in each province on the board; foreign troops are also present. Depending on the faction that the cells belong to, they can be either active/inactive, or active/underground.

The map depicts the center and the south of Finland, and in particular eight provinces with five main towns. Each shows a population from 0 to 2 and provides different levels of Support or Opposition. An area can be controlled if the Reds or the Senate have more Cells plus Administration than all the other factions combined. The Moderates can never control an area; they can merely deny other factions from controlling them.

The heart of the game are the Event and Propaganda cards. A semi-random creation method leads to the construction of draw deck with four Propaganda events at semi-expected places. Not all Event cards are used during the construction of the deck.

In a given round, the current, as well as the future Events are revealed. Events pertain to both the political as well as the military struggle of the time, and include Political Struggle, General Elections, and Canons, amongst many others. A faction can execute a Command, be it fully or limited, implement the Event, or pass. At the beginning of the game faction order is random, from there on however action order is dictated by the actions that factions chose to implement. As an example, a faction that passed in a previous turn will play before a faction that chose a Command. Depending on what action a faction chooses, it immediately limits the actions available to its opponents. I.e. the first eligible faction can select a Command, a Limited Command, or to implement the Event. The second eligible faction however can only Pass or play one of the two actions that the first action did not play. Idem for the third faction, which can either pass or choose the single action that its opponents did not pick.

The Commands that factions have access to are asymmetrical. The Reds have five Commands and three special activities to use overall, the Senate five and five respectively, while the Moderates have four and three. On the other hand, the Moderates have access to all their actions from the get-go, while the Reds and the Senate will unlock some of their actions only during the game's Phase II. Some actions are similar, but not identical. As an example, all factions can rally cells or networks, the process however differs both on conditions as well as the results that it produces. On the other hand, only the Reds and the Senate can wage terror and eliminate cells from the board; the Moderates cannot do so. All in all, actions either help a player build up his position (e.g. gain resources, add cells, sift polarization) or undermine that of his opponents (e.g. remove enemies, move enemy cells etc). The Commands of the Reds and the Senate can be combined with any of their special abilities, that is not however the case with the Moderates. Their Commands are much more restrictive, and can only be combined in particular ways. Commands have a cost, on the other hand some Events might grant free Commands. A Limited Command is a Command that is executed in a single space only, without being combined with a Special Ability.

At some point the game will pass from Phase I to Phase II, i.e. from 1917 to 1918. This changes the severity of the Event cards that are drawn, activates the Germans and the Russians, while the Senate and the Reds can now use all their Commands.

Four times during the game a Propaganda round will be called out semi-randomly. If a faction fulfills its victory conditions at this point the game will instantly end. If it doesn't, an open political issue will be resolved depending on the factions' contribution to the current unresolved issue. Winning on issues is important in that it increases the Agitation cost of the opponent, Moderates always excluded. The factions then gain resources, each with its own different criteria, Russian vassalage is reduced, while the factions may shift Support and Opposition or decrease polarization. The Reds and the Moderates have even more actions available at this point. In Phase II the Reds and the Senate may also release prisoners of war, making them again available for their opponent, in order to increase polarization. The presence of foreign powers on the board is also adjusted in accordance with the vassalage marker.

Factions claim victory differently. The Reds win if Opposition plus the Red Administrations on the map are higher than 11, while Russian Vassalage plus Polarization are equal to or less than 5. The Senate win if the Total Senate Controlled Town Population is higher than 3 while German Vassalage plus Polarization is less than 6. The Moderates win if they have more than 14 Resources, while Resolved issues plus Networks plus one is equal to or greater than Polarization. On the other hand, if nobody achieves his objectives, Germany or Russia, the game's external powers, win. Congrats; you all just cost your country its newly acquired independence.

The game can be played with less than three players, in those cases however one or two factions (in case you play solo) will be played by a non-player deck. Non-players do not track and spend resources, are exempt from certain rules, and follow a particular algorithm as to what option to choose. Each faction has its dedicated non-played mini-deck consisting of five or six cards. Once again, these decks are asymmetrical.

The game's Playbook includes a full-blown historical background, the factions introductions, aims and interactions, examples of play for both players and non-players, the historical background behind the game's Events, selected sources, notes from Volko (the creator of COIN), Jason carr (the developer) and V.P.J. Arponen, the game's creator, as well as a pronunciation guide clearly addressing itself to English-speaking audiences without the slightest clue of how Finnish is pronounced.

The strong points: I'd dare say that he overwhelming majority of non-Finns are not aware that this model of a country lived through one of the most vicious civil wars in human history, that's however one of the things that All Bridges Burning sets right. I can talk about real history for hours; the starting points (for newbies) or insight (for those already aware of the times) that this game offers are simply astounding. Well-researched, lovingly crafted, with attention to detail, faithful to the historical mindset and framework, these are all honest descriptions of what the game does... ...and they are also platitudes, seeing how well the game succeeds. If you want to be educated, you definitely will be. Spoilers: this was not a war of good vs bad. It was a vicious, ruthless war of brother vs brother where most victims perished in captivity, in non-combat situations that would most likely qualify today as crimes against humanity.

The game however is not educational because it goes out of its way of being so. It is because it offers a thoughtful gaming experience. I don't know that happens in other COIN games, yet I have never seen the player order being sculpted, turn after turn, in such a way, even though the availability of actions directly point towards more austere worker placement games. There is a fluidity to this structure, where if you pass you might go first, but if you go first, you will by definition have to do something. How heavy-handed your action is, is up to you. Your choice of action will be ultimately influenced not only by what you need to achieve, but also by what you need to deprive your opponents from. Sometimes you might restrict yourself to doing something suboptimal because your opponent will then be forced to play an even more useless action, giving you the edge. That having been said, this is not a zero sum game nor is it based on continuous negative plays. You are trying to do your best for your faction, and sometimes things get out of hand, just like they did in the real war. Ooops.

The asymmetry is extremely pronounced, seeing how the factions are different in both Commands, Special Activities, and winning conditions. Add the substantially different feeling between the two years of the war, and the additional, more violent options that the Reds and the Senate have in Phase II, and you get into a build up that spirals into more pronounced forms of violence. Don't expect to get into advanced strategies in the first few games, you will be simply getting the hang of things even if you play solo against two bots. After game three or four however, the time (and brain capacity) investment pays off in spades. By that point you will become aware that the game is more about strategy than about turn to turn tactics, and especially because if you push too hard and you don't balance things out, you risk collectively losing the game to the game's external powers. This is an intense experience, an extraordinarily good game!

The Moderates deserve a dedicated paragraph. Playing the Reds and the Senate is a more straightforward experience since they behave in a more traditional way. The Moderates on the other hand are a dark horse. They have all their Commands and Special Activities available from the very beginning, even though they are more complex to use. Where the other factions see Polarization through a fixed threshold, the Moderates see it as a variable; they will fight tooth and nail in order to see the issues resolved. They won't eliminate opponents straight-out, they will simply deactivate them. Personal advice: don't start with them in a multiplayer game, even though you are most likely to win it because your opponents will initially ignore you due . Once you get the flow of the game by leaving them to a more experienced player or a bot, try your hand at them. They are very rewarding, but one should know what he is doing. That having been said, running the Reds or the Senate is no walk in the park. Too much reliance on foreign powers, and bang: Finland is no longer independent.

The solo game is solid, even though it requires additional effort to learn. I enjoyed how the same rules are also used for a single bot player in case of a two-player game, so one will have to learn these rules sooner than later. The solo game plays faster, but then again the three-player game is no sludge either for what it brings to the table. I definitely recommend playing solo before tackling this as a full-table multiplayer affair. It will be much easier to explain both the rules, as well as the concepts behind what is going on.

Replaybility is very high. Even though each game starts from the exact same setup, the Events used are not the same since some events are randomly excluded. Even more so, one can estimate when a Propaganda round will take place, but cannot predict it with absolute accuracy. This is in fact one of the game's biggest selling points: you have to make your faction shine at just the right moment. Not too early, even though the game does not appear to suffer from catch the leader issues, nor planning for future turns that never come.

The production values are at the usual GMT Games standards. The wooden tokens mesh fantastically with the cardboard elements, while the map is easy to read and doesn't feel either busy nor hard to read. The player aids are exquisite, and cover my perennial fetish of seeing not only my faction's actions, but also all the actions of my opponents. They seriously reduce the learning curve, not only when it comes to the actual rules, but also when it comes to discovering tactics and different approaches. I might have complained if I had gotten the 'defective' version and no solution was on sight, yet GMT covered that brilliantly. I have said it before: mistakes like this can happen. Great companies shine when they put the effort to correct them, and GMT is one of them.

The weak points: History buffs might be perplexed by the inclusion of three factions instead of the two that actually participated in the civil war. I personally do not mind that. It is obviously done for gaming reasons, yet it does not alter the thematic context within which the game works.

Some Events and rules feel overtly situational. They didn't necessarily disrupt the flow of the game, I was however left wondering whether the game could have been even tighter than what it is.

The rulebook is probably the most complex and counterintuitive GMT rulebook I have read, even though the game is not the most complex GMT game I have played. No matter which version you have, immediately download the game's living rules. The peculiar use of English at times does not make things easier. I am not dissing it, mind you. The historical insights as well as the gaming considerations that it provides are numerous and constructive, not to mention the references that it makes to other COIN games which will help the veterans of the system adjust more easily. Idem for the many examples of play which clarify quite a few situations. Yet, it simply isn't up to GMT's usual standards. One needs to read the rules many times, and very carefully, in order to understand how the game works in practice. Don't expect to break it open and start playing a multiplayer game in the same evening, unless one of you knows the rules already.

I am nitpicking here, but whoever thought of the pronunciation guide of Finnish locales for English speakers probably wanted to have a laugh. The flawed end-result is the kind of lazy approximation you would expect a non-Finn to use before you corrected them, not after. A game that hits the global market in English only in 2021 should better use the IPA for such kind of exercises... if they are necessary in the first place.

Conclusion: Barring the mediocre rulebook which ultimately however works, All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland 1917 - 1918 is what I want to see in a dedicated three-player gamers' game of that duration. The asymmetry, the tough choices, the immersion, the entertainment, it hits the right buttons, and even more so because it is also entertaining as a solo. If only a civil war of such brutality didn't happen for it to come to life.

For more info on All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland 1917 - 1918 and GMT Games take a look at http://www.gmtgames.com.

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