This is the third in a series of InsideGMT articles from Paul Hellyer about his board game Tsar, currently on GMT’s P500. You can view the previous article here.
As the new year arrived in 1917, Russia’s Tsarist regime teetered on the brink of collapse. Public opinion had turned against it, its army was struggling in the war, the economy was falling apart, and the capital of St. Petersburg faced a severe food shortage. In late February, hungry workers went on strike, demonstrated in the streets, and looted granaries. The regime had a short window of opportunity to reassert control, but this proved difficult. Its most loyal and capable troops were away at the front, as was the Tsar himself. The Tsar boarded a train and ordered troops to return to the capital, but they all found themselves stranded on blocked railway lines. Some officials in St. Petersburg tried to use the unreliable local garrisons to put down the disorder, but the soldiers instead murdered their officers and joined the revolutionaries. Left with few options, Nicholas II signed his abdication in a railway car.
Tsar turns the clock back to 1894 when Nicholas acceded to the throne. To give players a chance to set a different course, the game aims to capture all the factors that ultimately led to revolution: public support, army and navy morale, the regime’s political authority, agricultural and industrial production, infrastructure, and external factors like international trade, foreign relations, and war. As you play the game, you can change the inputs and watch the game engine respond. The end result might be a repeat of history, a stable constitutional monarchy, a fearsome police state, or a dysfunctional kleptocracy hanging by a thread.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at these factors and discuss how they relate to the regime’s survival, starting with popular support. Tsar measures this in four key “Sectors”: Nobles, Bourgeoisie, Peasants, and Proletariat. One angle is the total level of support in all Sectors combined, which determines the number of Unrest Cards featuring incidents such as general strikes, demonstrations, insurrections, and assassinations. Another angle is the level of support in individual Sectors: different Sectors react differently to various events, with the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat Sectors tending to be more troublesome for the regime. Low support in the Bourgeoisie Sector triggers a recurring Dissidents Coded Card and trouble in any Sector can trigger economic production penalties. If support in any Sector falls to zero, players draw a Revolt Coded Card which can rapidly lead to revolution if left unchecked.
But as an autocrat, the Tsar doesn’t necessarily rely on public support. Depending on other factors, his regime might easily counter domestic opposition. One of these other factors is army and navy morale, which are also tracked on the game board. High morale gives the regime more options to suppress unrest, while low morale can itself become a threat to the regime—when morale reaches zero in the army or navy, a Mutiny Coded Card appears which can be even more dangerous than a civilian revolt. Another key factor in the military is the availability of “Elite Army Units” that always remain loyal. They’re based on historical regiments such as the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment that drew their officers from the ruling class. Assuming resources and transport are available, these units can always be used to put down strikes, revolts, and mutinies. But with only three of these units, they can easily become overstretched. That’s especially true in wartime, when players are pressed to send the best units to the front, meaning they are not immediately available to respond to internal threats —creating the same situation that brought down the real-life regime in 1917.
The regime’s political authority is measured by the game board’s “Order Tracker,” shown on the left. It consists of two parts, Fear and Reverence. Order is defined as Fear or Reverence, whichever is higher. Fear refers to the government’s reputation for oppression and punishment, while Reverence depends on the Tsar’s mystique and cultural authority. The former is easier to manipulate, but actions that raise Fear tend to come with negative side effects. For instance, you can opt for capital punishment for the Tsar’s enemies, but this lowers popular support in the Bourgeoisie Sector, which may trigger a dissident movement and lead to a cycle of violence.
When Order is high, the regime has more options for responding to domestic unrest and maintaining military discipline. The highest levels of Order often allow the regime to silence its critics through surveillance and intimidation without the expenditure of any resources, whereas lower levels of Order may restrict the regime’s ability to issue orders and use force. But as with popular support, high levels of Order aren’t necessary to the regime’s survival. If you govern through popular consent, you won’t need the most oppressive options offered by the highest levels of Order. This lets players aim for different models of stability, emphasizing either Order or popular support. Having a coherent strategy is important: once you commit to political reforms that lower Order, you need to be vigilant about maintaining popular support; if you alienate the public through Fear, you need to be vigilant about maintaining Order. Avoiding extremes is also important: you need to maintain some minimum levels of popular support and Order, regardless of your strategy. High levels of public unrest will eventually exhaust the regime’s resources, while a total collapse of Order triggers Coded Card 8 (Revolution) and ends the game.
As in real life, the Russian economy affects the regime in many ways, and so the game leans heavily into resource management. The game board tracks five key economic factors: income for the treasury, grain production, industrial production, transport infrastructure, and international trade. The regime needs cash to pay troops, advance government programs, and keep the Tsar happy. Grain keeps the population fed and functions as Russia’s key export in this time period. Industrial production drives the development and maintenance of infrastructure and the military. A robust transport network is needed to move grain from the countryside to cities and ports, to move and supply troops, and keep the economy functioning. Finally, the regime can’t import or export unless it has willing trade partners and infrastructure such as ports and canals. Through trade, the regime typically earns cash through grain exports and (on occasion) pays to import industrial products. All these economic factors are connected and a failure in any one area will weaken the regime, either by angering the public, lowering army and navy morale, or limiting the regime’s scope of action.
Finally, the game tracks foreign relations, which affect trade levels, access to credit, the regime’s reputation, and the possibility of war. France was Russia’s main creditor in the late Tsarist period, and the game creates opportunities for loans and financial aid conditioned on relations with France. Relations with other countries can affect trade, Russia’s international objectives, and the possibility of armed conflict. The game captures the effects of soft power through state visits and reactions to Russian cultural exports; it also captures foreign reactions to Russia’s internal politics—for example, too much political oppression can trigger rebukes from Western nations, while performative amnesties can improve the regime’s public image abroad.
War is the most significant aspect of foreign relations. In real life, war was the catalyst for revolution, both in the incomplete Revolution of 1905 and the February Revolution of 1917. The story of Nicholas II could not be told without war. When war arrives, you’ll find that Tsar is not a traditional war game of tactics. War is treated at a macro level and we’re mainly concerned with the way it affects the regime’s stability. Outcomes mainly depend on the economic factors discussed above and the regime’s ability to maintain internal cohesion. The effects of war may include blockades, public unrest, economic stress, and faltering morale. For instance, drafting a large army reduces grain production, while at the same time increasing the cost of paying and supplying the soldiers. In short, war will present the regime with a stress test.
Notice how all these different factors are connected to each other. Nothing stands on its own. Popular support affects the economy, and the economy affects popular support. The regime’s troops need economic support, and the economy may need the intervention of troops. Healthy trade levels are needed to develop the economy, and a healthy economy is needed to develop the infrastructure for trade. So there are many feedback loops in the game, which can be either positive or negative. When things go badly, the game reaches a tipping point where revolution becomes inevitable.
Watching these feedback loops and forecasting the regime’s stability is an important part of gameplay, because victory conditions are radically different for games that end in revolution and games that end with the Final Scoring Card. If the regime survives to the end of an Era, players win according to their VP scores, based on their Faction’s policy objectives. Gold that they stole through corruption is deducted from their VP scores. But in multiplayer games, revolution ignores VP and awards victory to the player with the most gold. You’ll need to closely watch the game board for signs of collapse and consider what the other players are thinking: when everyone at the table loses faith in the regime’s survival, they’ll focus on hoarding gold through corruption, which accelerates the slide into revolution. In solitaire games, revolution means you lose—so your first goal is always to avoid revolution, which requires careful long-term planning and perhaps some desperate measures at the end.
As a final note, I’ll share some thoughts about the regime itself and its depiction in the game. In real-life terms, was the regime’s collapse in 1917 a good or bad outcome? My feeling is that the late Tsarist regime occupies a morally ambiguous space, comprised by its many atrocities and failings, and yet relatively benign compared to the Stalinist regime that followed. But whatever my views may be, I don’t try to convey them through the game. My aim as designer is to make a game that’s enjoyable to play, historically accurate, and thought provoking. I’m content to let players create their own narratives through the choices they make and form their own opinions about the regime’s place in history.
In the next InsideGMT article in this series, we’ll focus on the players’ factional objectives and scoring.
Previous Articles:
The Historical Figures in Nicholas II’s Regime
