Close, but no cigar

It's 1957, and the Cubans are fed up with Batista, with revolution brewing and Castrolian cigar smoke in the air. While the US government prop up the flagging regime, three factions seek to take control of the country, in markedly different ways.

 Getting ready to rumble

Castro's 26July group wants to turn popular opinion against the government and establish itself as a political force from extremely humble beginnings.

The more established, and less radical, opposition party Directorio has a similar objective.

The syndicate want financial control, seeking the population's money rather than votes, and building casinos to tempt them into their pockets.

Meanwhile, of course, the existing government wants desperately to cling on to power.

All of which is to say Cuba Libre is an asymmetrical fight for dominance - each player (ideally you play four, though there are bots for non-playing factions) takes control of a single faction, which each has it's own set of insurgent operations (for the challengers) and COIN (counter-insurgency) set for the government.

Batista starts in a strong position, with lots of troops, police, available resources (a catch-all term, and the game's currency when paying for actions) and a strong alliance with the US. Broadly speaking, the syndicate is a non-hostile to the government, as the two factions work in tandem to a degree: casinos are protected by the state, and the government can skim money off the top of takings.

Because they both start relatively weakly, at the start of the game at least the 26July and Directorio are kind-of-allies too; it makes more sense to go after the government at this point.

The game is from GMT's COIN system and functions like this: a deck of cards is face-down and round by round, they are revealed (starting with two, so you can always see what card is up next). The cards denote two things - the possible order of play (faction symbols along the top of the card) and the Event on the card, that may or may not get played.

Two potential events; only one (or none) will be played

From left to right, factions choose whether or not to play, and what to play: if it's not been activated, an event on the card, an insurgency (or counter-insurgency, in the government's case) operation with or without a special activity. But - and there are two buts here - a maximum of two factions will play in every round, and the first faction to play will define the choice of the second faction: take an event, and you allow whoever goes after you to do an operation and a special activity. Do that combo yourself, and you hand them the event. Or give them a less alluring single operation, by doing the same yourself.

The other but is the fact that when you play in one round, you are (usually) ineligible for the next, so you need to factor in not only the options this round, but the next round as well.

Combine that with the asymmetrical winning criteria, and it becomes a bit of a beast to play through. The operations and special activities are fairly straightforward, but the implementation of what to do when is another matter. You're fighting against three people each with a different objective, and the events can throw a real spanner in the works - if you see a powerful one coming up it's worth passing sometimes (and picking up a measly single resource) in order to be in pole position to take it.

Operations left; special activities right

Four propaganda cards are shuffled into the deck, and these are your chance to win the game before the deck runs out. Assuming no-one has, there's a bit of income, deployment and general jiggery-pokery before everything resets (and all factions are now eligible again) for the next card.

Playing all four this evening, I struggled with Castro the most, just finding the 26July guys were often swamped. Probably I was taking far too many rally actions (get more guys on the board) and not doing enough assassinating/kidnapping etc. The two key elements on the board itself are control of a region (have the most stuff in it) and support for the government, which swings from active to passive to neutral/passive opposition/active opposition. 26 July needed the opposition to be actively against Batista, and although they got a lot of bases on the board, they couldn't sway opinion for any length of time.

The Directorio seemed to get into squabbles with everyone, having flown under the radar in the early game when they seemed to struggle to do anything resourceful. Having inched their way over the map though, we (me and my three Dirks) realised they were close to winning, and kept batting them down. This gave the 26July faction some late-game momentum, as they took advantage of the weakened Directorio to shuffle themselves into contention for an unlikely comeback.

Meanwhile, the Syndicate seemed so unthreatening to everyone that they had no trouble getting down the seven open casinos they needed for victory - but they also needed 30 resources, and when they were finally in a  position to get anywhere near that amount, Batista himself claimed victory at the third propaganda card!

All the government needed was active support in the three major cities and overall support of over 18, which thanks to an oversight on mine (and the two other Dirks') part, they achieved it despite doubtful noises from the direction of the US, where support was dropping. Viva el statu quo! Unlike how it really played out, this time Batista wins.

Inevitably I didn't play every single rule; realising a few turns in that my guerrillas had different effects/capacities depending if they were underground or not: quite a key thing as it turned out, but not enough to abandon a rough and ready play-through. I'm keen to try this out one night soon with four actual people, but I think I'll need a couple more solo runs before then...