Civil Wargames

Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker!

by Brian R. Train




by J. F. Dunnigan and Jerry Avorn;
The Columbia Spectator, 1969.

Components: 12 markers and 24 small cards, to be mounted by the players;

Map: one double newspaper page with a cartoon representation of the Columbia campus;

Scales: abstract.

This game took as its subject the student riots at Columbia University and was originally published in the 11 March 1969 number of the Connection, a supplement to the Columbia Daily Spectator, near the date of the first anniversary of the riots. Jim Dunnigan, then aged 25 and described in the game's designer's notes as a history major in the School of General Studies, had already designed 1914 and Confrontation and was at the time working on Origins of World War II, but was asked to take time out to work on this design.

The game is for two players, Radicals and Administration. The map features eleven tracks for each of the political subgroups in the game (e.g., Black Students, Moderate Strikers, Alumni, Harlem Community). The objective for the players is to have the most influence, determined by the positions of markers on these tracks, for their side by the end of the twelfth turn. During a turn, players deploy abstracted units representing their political leverage onto the tracks to 'attack' the other player's units (as tokens, Dunnigan suggests small pieces of paper coloured red or marijuana seeds for the Radicals, and blue bits of paper or capsules of Seconal for the Administration) and so move the markers towards their end of the tracks. The 24 Contingency Cards add some randomness by taking or giving units of wherewithal to one player or another.

SPI (as Poultron Press) sold photocopies of this game supplement for a couple of years after its start. They are hard to find now and command a high price, often $150 or more.

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