NORTH KOREA! (2013)

A game where your best strategy is paranoia! Take brinkmanship to a nuclear level and control the World's most secret State!

The game is played in a fictional future North Korea. Play the leader of your own faction - THE ARMY, NAVY, AIRFORCE, BIG BUSINESS, THE PARTY AND THE FAMILY. Win by getting BRINKMANSHIP points, which reflect how good you are at manipulating your opponents and surviving as you raise the levels of international tension to nuclear levels. Win by getting to 20 points without blowing up the World

The Armed Forces, Big Business, The Party and the Family compete to fill the Central Committee with their supporters. The player who runs the Central Committee is The Leader! There can only ever be one Leader, so it is importnat to understand the rules of the game and use them to your advantage! If no one player dominates the Committee then deals have to be done. Each turn players move around the board along the demilitarised zone which runs along the perimeter of the board and have to make decisions. Decisions are determined by the number of cards they have in The Central Committee. Each turn can change the number of cards a player has and so alter their influence. Players have to manoeuvre themselves through the politics until one player has gained 20 brinkmanship points. Points are gained by taking control of the Committee, time as Leader and from doing deals with other players to get their support.

At the same time the committee decides the level of international tension. As public parades whip up popular fervour and brinkmanship is taken to a nuclear level so the opportunities for players to decide how to run the World's most secret State determine who ends up winning the game and who gets manipulated.

This leads to a fast paced game, players are constantly changing sides, working out who best to support, and not getting caught out in political exile. It is an exhausting game of wit, strategy, coercion and survival that brings out the best and the worst in participants! In the end you don't just win you have an great evening's entertainment!

Each space on the demilitarised zone offers the opportunity for the composition of central committee to change as players are beset with show trials, parades, rocket launches, 6 party peace talks and nuclear tests!

Past deals, double deals, double cross and you see where the strategy starts. Each player's strategy will be determined by their own strength of character, belief in their own destiny, how well they can manipulate others to support them and how they make best use of the opportunities as they arise.

As the game evolves so moments of growing tension occur as the population get ever more excited with increasing parades across the the Country, international tension nears extreme levels, infighting means there are no clear alliances and the date of the next central committee election approaches, only to be disrupted by a spontaneous war game! and rocket launch. Leadership crisis and mayhem. But then players only have themselves to blame as what happens is a result of the choices players make in the central committee. Ultimately players have the choice to create a peace agreement where the right strategies are promoted rather than a dash to the winning line! It is interesting to see how as a player nears the winning line that choice becomes more challenging!

As they say - Your best strategy is paranoia, take brinkmanship to a nuclear level and tale control of the Worlds most secret State!