Ihtilal

The Game

Most of the game I brought back from Essen 2024 were small box card games. Only three were standard sized big box games. One was a gift from a friend - Mission Impractical. The second was a signed copy of Rebirth by Reiner Knizia. The third was Ihtihal, a game from a Turkish publisher. When I walked by their booth, it was quite deserted. This was one of the smaller booths. It didn't have those fancy decorations which larger publishers had. However when I saw the box cover, I was intrigued. I approached them to ask for an overview of the game. 

Ihtilal in Turkish means "revolution". It is about modern Turkish politics, from the 1950's to the 1980's. This is a 2015 game, so it is already 10 years old. It is a 2-player-only game. You play two of the most prominent political parties, Iron Horse and Six Arrows, representing the centre-right and centre-left respectively. You compete to dominate Turkish politics. The game is played over 8 eras. Within each era you play up to 4 rounds, and then you have general elections. At the end of the 8 eras, the player with more influence on the board wins. 

This is the game board. You have a map of Turkiye, and it is divided into many provinces. There are spaces for counters in each province. Along the left and the bottom there are 9 areas. They represent the 9 steps of a round of play. Some of these areas also represent institutions which the players try to control and make use of - the police force, the military, the universities and the capitalists. 

The objective in the game is to place as many of your counters on the map as possible. When the game ends, whoever has more counters wins. All the things you do in the game ultimately links to placing, moving or removing counters. Whenever there is a general election, the player with more counters on the map wins the elections and forms the government. The other player becomes the opposition. The ruling party enjoys a few advantages, but also has some disadvantages. 

This is an event card. Event cards are divided into early game, mid game and late game sets. You start the game with only the early game cards in play. The mid game cards are shuffled in at a specific era. Late game cards are shuffled in only after a specific event occurs. Every round two event cards are drawn, and you do what they say. The cards may specify Iron Horse, Six Arrows, the ruling party or the opposition party to perform certain actions. 

These three areas on the board are the police force, the military and the universities. If you control the police force (here it is Six Arrows controlling it), you can attempt a die roll to remove a counter from the board. If the die roll is successful, you can keep rolling. If you are lucky, you may remove quite a few counters from the board. The military area has 8 different spots, representing the military academy, three armies, two navies and two air forces. Every military unit is based in a specific province. If you control a military unit, you can remove counters from the province it controls. Universities are used for placing your own counters. They too are province-specific. 

In addition to the two biggest parties Iron Horse and Six Arrows, there are other political parties in play - the Islamic party, the Socialist party, the Labour party and the Grey Wolves. At election time, you can choose to ally with one or more of these minor parties. You treat their counters as if they are your own. However you may need to pay a price to form a coalition with them, and this is for just this one election. For example if you want to ally with the Labour party, you must remove two of your counters from the Capitalists area. If you happen to have none there, then you are lucky. You earn an ally without paying any price. 

There is also the relationships between parties which you must consider. For example if you ally with the Islamic party, you can't also ally with the Socialist party. The counters of the minor parties affect play. Provinces with Grey Wolves presence cannot be targeted by the police. Provinces with Labour party presence cannot be targeted by the Capitalists. These are all very thematic. 

The Islamic party and the Socialist party both play an important role in the game. If either of them grow too powerful, the game ends early and both players lose. This represents Turkiye falling under sway of an extremist party. 

One perk of the ruling party is they control institutions more easily. Normally you need to control half the seats in an institution to control it. However if you are the ruling party, you only need to have more counters than everyone else. For example for the police force which has three seats, normally you need to control two of the three seats to control it. If you are the ruling party, and none of the seats are occupied, you just need to occupy one seat to control the police. 

The other advantage of the ruling party is getting more free counters to place every round. However this is somewhat balanced by a penalty. At the end of every round, the ruling party also loses some counters from the map. This penalty increases as the game progresses. By late game, the ruling party loses 4 counters every round, which is painful. I guess this is pretty thematic too. It is always the ruling party which gets blamed for whatever is wrong with a country. It's always easier for the opposition party to complain. 

Each player gets one die. The 6-pip side is replaced with the party logo. 

Having five Socialist party counters (red star) on the map is dangerous. If not enough are removed by the end of the next events step, both players will lose the game to a Socialist revolution. 

The Play

The biggest impression our first game gave me was - politics is hard! Both Han and I found it difficult to increase our counters on the map. I wonder whether it was because we competed too fiercely and focused too much on removing each other's counters. Or maybe the game balance is tuned that way. Being the ruling party is tough, because at the end of every round you must remove some counters. Yes, you do get some perks, but the drawbacks seem to be harsher. Possibly we haven't learned how to better utilise our position when we were the ruling party. 

We spent much effort on the institutions. This seems to be a sensible investment, because once you control an institution, in every future round you get a new power, to either remove opponent counters or add your own. However despite our efforts, we didn't really gain a strong hold on the institutions. At the same time, our presence on the map was feeble. This is tough! One way the game ends is one player losing all his counters on the map. The other player would win. This almost happened in our game. 

The players mostly play a passive role when it comes to the two event cards which must be revealed every round. You just follow what the cards say. You don't always have a decision to make. Sometimes the card will say remove counters, and you can choose where to remove them from. Some cards specify provinces for you to act on. The cards are not in your hand and you don't decide when to play them. We were not familiar with the cards and we didn't skim them before the game, so we didn't know what to expect or how to prepare. When we get familiar with the events, we might be able to handle them better. 

The relationships between the minor parties and the rules around them take some time to digest and remember. This is a theme-first game, and these rules, although a little overwhelming at first, all make sense. I imagine a Turkish player will understand and enjoy this game a lot. As a Malaysian, I learned much about Turkish history and politics. 

Some actions in the game affect political tension. If the tension rises to a certain level, the ruling party has the option to call for snap elections. So elections do not necessarily occur once every four rounds. The time between elections might be shorter. 

Han and I played until the mid game era, and found ourselves with five Islamist party counters. We couldn't remove them in time, and so we both lost. An Islamist revolution occurred and the game ended. 

The Thoughts

At the moment I've only played Ihtilal once, and I feel there is more I need to explore and learn. This is not a simple game. When I listened to it being explained to me at the Essen booth, it was likened to Twilight Struggle. There are indeed some similarities, but this is definitely not just the same system applied to Turkiye. The overall system is simpler. You don't do hand management. It is mostly an open information game. You don't hold any information which your opponent doesn't know of. You don't know what the next event is. Neither does your opponent. So this is fair. 

The institutions and what they can do, and also the minor parties and their abilities, are all evocative. The event cards tell the story of modern Turkiye. The core mechanism is straight-forward. Ultimately it is all about placing counters on the map. All your planning and strategising lead to this. 

In our game the Islamist revolution took us by surprise. Only after we lost the game I realised we probably should have somewhat collaborated. We needed to work together to prevent the rise of the Islamists and the Communists. I still think we were right in spending effort on the institutions, because that's efficient play. However perhaps we shouldn't focus too much on institutions which removed counters. It might be more productive to work on institutions which placed counters. We were more destructive than constructive, and that might be what doomed us. 

I have two concerns about the game. Everything you do eventually comes down to placing counters on the map. That feels a little one-dimensional. There are many provinces on the map, but they don't seem to matter much. It doesn't matter where your counters are, as long as you have more than your opponent. That said, some event cards do specify where to remove or add counters. The military and the universities are linked to specific provinces. The Grey Wolves and the Labour party protect provinces they are in. So actually the provinces do matter. The ultimate aim being having more counters might be a good thing instead of a bad one. It is a simple system and many other mechanisms which reflect Turkish history and politics are easily linked to it. 

The other concern I have is the events being something the players have little control over. Once you are familiar with the events, you will be able to prepare better for them. However you have no control over when they will happen. So your role is mostly passive. Sometimes I get a feeling the game is playing you. At the moment the impact of the events feel about equal to the impact of player actions. So the events tell the history, and the players need to work around that. 

Both my concerns may end up being invalid. I have only taken a first dip into this game. I will need to play more to understand it better. 

I like the historical elements. This is a game with a lot of heart and character. This is a heavy game so this will not be for the casual crowd. This is for players who like wargames and historical games. I'm glad I stopped at the Kene Yapim booth to check out Ihtilal. It is certainly a new experience for me. The publisher Kene Yapim is an indie publisher. Ihtilal has some rough edges and it is not the kind of highly polished and refined game from big publishers. Some parts of the English rules are unclear or contain typos. However sometimes it is the quirks of indie publishers which make their games endearing. Big publishers tend to make safer decisions, which sometimes makes games less interesting. I'm happy to have discovered this interesting game from Turkiye.