Fire In The Lake – First Look!
By: Michael Eckenfels, 17 September 2014
I’ve never played any of the COIN (COunter INsurgency) games by GMT (so far, there’s A Distant Plain, Andean Abyss, and Cuba Libre). To be honest, only A Distant Plain sounded interesting to me personally, though I’d heard good things about all three. When Fire in the Lake came around as a possible review title, I jumped on the chance. The Vietnam War is of interest to me and I wanted to learn some more about their COIN system, so I jumped at the chance.
I did watch the tutorial video that the designers (Volko Ruhnke and Mark Herman) produced for YouTube – you can check it out here. I highly suggest it if you’re interested in the game and want to get a feel for its flow; it’s what sold me on my choice to check this out for review. (The camera work is, well…let’s just say there’s an immediate apology from Mark on his camera work. But that’s easily overlooked.)
A review will be coming by the end of October to a beloved wargaming website near you (cough, cough). In the meantime, I thought I’d provide some teasing bits through an unboxing ceremony that, for me, has become a standard thing now with every game I buy, it seems.
The box in all its shrink-wrapped glory. This thing is thick and heavy. I love the good feel of a heavy wargame box in the morning (though it’s late in the evening when I take these pics). It feels like…well, you know. I really like the cover artwork and the subdued darkness that makes you feel like you’re staring into a quagmire. Huge props to the artist on this venture!
