Cross Bronx Expressway

Cross Bronx Expressway is an unusual branch of the COIN family: strictly a three-player game, with capital, the state, and communities represented as abstract ideological forces. It has little interest in imitating its more military relatives; instead, it follows the Bronx through six distinct historical moments, using a far more compressed economy of decisions.

The structure is tight: there are few actions, each with substantial consequences, and every side is trying to keep the game alive through one of those six historical junctions. This is not direct conflict of the military variety. It is about where the three ideologies stand in relation to one another, and when an apparently small move redraws the whole position.

That makes its interaction unusual even by COIN standards. It lacks the immediate force of some actions in the more martial entries in the series, so players expecting clean, tangible blows may find themselves briefly stranded; the interesting decision is learning to read the indirect consequences and the metagame created by such restricted options.

It is not difficult in the case-by-case manner of Gandhi or Pendragon, but it remains slightly opaque until the mechanisms have become familiar through repetition. If COIN games do nothing for you, this will not convert you. If you already like them, it may initially put you off; persist, though, and there is a very serious game beneath its odd surface. At a stretch, and respectfully, it is a Splotter-COIN.