Jul 22

Proliferation: a Review of the Nuclear Arms Race Board Game.

Updated: Aug 19

Proliferation is a game of nuclear strategey, cold war style. There is an arms race on and 2-9 players will compete to be the last country standing or by meeting their specific win conditions first. Do you have what it takes to lead your country to victory? Players will build up their arsenals, create defenses deploy peackeepers and build up their infrastructure in Proliferation. Proliferation Sucessfully cowdfunded in March 2023.

Setup

There are a lot of cards in Proliferation, like 473 of them. There are eight kinds of card in the game. To set up the game I highly recomend the playmat. I usually do not recomend tplaymats as they are usually just an add-on but in this case they are super helpful in getting the game set up and organized. To that point There are three kinds of cards that will have 4 cards each setup in a row Infrasturcture, Misson, and Trade Agreement cards. The next part is to place the event , Nuke, Defense System, Peacekeeper and Collection draw piles.

After all the cards are placed in the middle of the play area its time for players to pick countries. There are nine countries to choose from Isreal, ChinaRussia, N. Korea, India, The UK, Pakistan, France, and The USA. Each country has its own starting technology and economic point starting value. Also included on each country card is the win condition for that country. The game doesnt take long to set up especially if you have those playmats. I dont normally advocate for playmats but for Proliferation it just makes sense.

Game Play

To win a game of proliferation you have to meet your "consolidating power" goals or be the last country standing. On each players turn there are seven phases. Dont worry these phases go fast. For example in phase one the current player flips over the next event card and reads the condition that will affect the rest of the turn.

France is a little different.

Phase two the current player declares if they have met the win conditions for consolodating power or not. The win conditions consist of having certian cards, geting a certian amount of EP (economic points), or meeting a roll condition. France is a little different. France has to have over 100 EP and have the Political Unrest event card in play to consolodate power.

Phase three the active player reveals all nukes and resolves the actions on them the nuke card has an action. The nuke cards in Proliferation all are named after real nukes and have a fact on the card. Part of phase three players will remove one nuclear winter token. The first three phases will take less than a minute once you get into the flow of the game.

The meat of the game is in phases 4-7 this is where players ar purchasing infrastructure, missions, trade agrements and nukes. The player whos turn it is is refered to ask "The Speaker" and in phase 4 only the speaker may purchase cards, play mission cards, deploy peackeepers, launch nukes, and manage trade agreements. After the Speaker is done purchasing cards and doing other actions they open the floor up to the other players to buy trade agreements. When a player purchases a card its not refilled until phase one of the next players turn. There are a couple of exceptions to this as Inda may purchase infrastructure cards, France may buy missions and Pakistan can buy nukes during this phase.

After all players are done purchasing cards it is now phase six. Phase 6 is the collection phase, in this phase the collection card for the turn is revealed. This will determine the conditions to collect GDP. GDP is made up of permanent Infrastructure, purchased infrastructure and trade agreements. It is possible for some player not to collect their GDP during this phase. However all players will collect at least 3 Economic Points. Nuclear Winter Tokens and Saction cards will affect players ability to collect their full GDP.

"...a real fun time for those who are interested in a modern cold war game that can explode into full on nuclear winter."

The final phase is the Summit phase (7). This is the phase that the Speaker can bring up votes on imposing and lifting sanctions or clearing the floor (discarding all the cards left out to purchase that were not bought in phase 4 or 5) The votes pass on simple majority. However if Russia is being played they get two votes. the Sanction card only comes into play for games with 3 or more players. It has a real good chance of preventing a player from collecting any EP in the Collecction phase. The player will roll a die and take teh result off of the Sanction card rather than being affected by the Collection card.

Thoughts

There is a lot of push and pull in the game Proliferation. Players will steadilly build up their engines and either use them for an economic victory or use it for outright nuclear war. The pacing at the bigining is a little slow until players get their engines up and running but then things escalate quickly as nukes and sanctions are passed around the table. The game takes about 90 minutes with more than a couple of players and is a real fun time for those who are interested in a modern cold war game that can explode into full on nuclear winter.

The games ability to acomodate up to 9 players makes this a great game to showcase at a big game night. The game also scales down to two players but when playing a two player game you lose the Sanction card and all the trade agreements. I think the two player game is still fun but I very much thing the game is best at 3+ so that you can get some daynamic trading and voting. This makes the game seem more like a simulation of real life nuclear strategy to me.

Proliferation is a great war game that has no map. Is it a war game? I say yes, Its a war game. It may not have that map but it does have a lot of strategy and very assymetric playable countries. It buils the suspense like a war game does. You do not need to have a map with soldiers on it to have a simulation of a war game. Proliferation puts you in the hot seat runing a nuclear country on the brink.

Players: 2-9

Year Published: 2023

Recommended Ages: 14+

Time to Play: 60+ minutes