General Concept:

For the final project in this course, we designed a board game that we believe is both fun and demonstrates the risk that nuclear war and misinformation pose to society.  This game involves three to six players, who can play as any of six countries (USA, UK, China, Russia, India, and France) with powerful nuclear arsenals at the start of an all out nuclear exchange.  Each player must guide his/her country through this exchange by destroying all other countries ensuring the survival of their own country.  To make it to the end of the game players will be forced to make temporary alliances, betray those alliances, lie, and destroy their opponents.  Through this the game will be able to demonstrate the near total destruction that will accompany any nuclear war.  To win this game players will further be forced to rely both on information and misinformation as each player gets to see a small portion of their opponents cards which they can use both to make their own decisions and trick other players.  Because any player could reasonably have critical and confidential information, they will always be in a position to spread misinformation that cannot be verified by other players until it is too late.  Furthermore the fact that only one player can make it to the end of the game means that every player will eventually become enemies, further incentivizing them to spread misinformation.  Throughout this game players will have to strategically pick which cards to play based on the information available to them as well as what information or misinformation they should spread to other players.  This combination of strategic game theory along with the luck associated with which cards are drawn (which simulates the luck associated with what natural resources a nation has) will make for an engaging and educational game.  Included below is a complete list of the rules of the game as well as all of the card types that exist.   

Objective:

Be the last nation to survive by removing other nation’s nuclear strike points (7 nuclear strike points per nation).

Card Types and Game Board:

Three card types are available for use. These card types include missile cards, defensive cards, and utility cards. Each card has a unique ability that will benefit its user. More information of each card type is available below.

Missile Cards: These cards are used exclusively for offensive purposes. Most missile cards are nation specific, meaning they can only be used against one specific nation. Three types of missile cards exist including Nuclear Strike, Preemptive Strike, and Second Strike (See below for images of each card).

Defensive Cards: These cards are used for defensive purposes. In many cases defensive cards are a good alternative, as they do not harm other nations and may help to avoid creating enemies. Four types of defensive cards exist including Duck and Cover, Strike Repair, Pacifist, and Nuclear Accident (See below for images of each card).

Utility Cards: These cards can be used in a wide variety of situations. Utility cards aid the user in passive ways by either granting intel, or allowing for extra card pick-ups. Three types of utility cards exist including Advanced Warning, Secret Intel, and Economic Surplus.

The game board is divided into six sections, one for each player to play their cards. Each nation’s flag represents the player’s playing area (see below for an image of the game board).

Game Play:

To begin the game, each player has a one minute discussion, one on one with another player. These one on one discussions continue until each player has had a conversation with every player (should last 5 minutes in total). During these meetings game strategy should be discussed including the forming of alliances, potential targets, and sowing seeds of doubt in other players. Following the meetings, each player should draw three cards from the card deck. Once each player has drawn three cards, the first turn can begin. Turns are broken up into 5 phases detailed below.

Phase 1: Each player rolls a die to determine how many cards they will draw (if 1 or 2 is rolled, zero cards are drawn. If 3, 4, or 5 is rolled 1 card is drawn. If 6 is rolled 2 cards are drawn). If no cards are available to be drawn, the discarded cards may be reshuffled and a card should be drawn from the newly shuffled pile.

Phase 2: Each player again rolls the die to determine how many cards from another player’s hand they will be able to view. The roller decided who’s cards to view and which of their cards to view. (if 1, 2, 3 or 4 is rolled 0 cards are viewed. If 5 or 6 is rolled 1 card is viewed).

Phase 3: Players take a short time to discuss as a group. This time can be used to call out other players, tell the group what cards you saw from another player’s hand, or for any other purpose the players see fit. 

Phase 4: Each player can choose up to three cards to be played face down on the game board. Once every player has placed their desired amount of cards face down on the game board, the players flip their played cards face up. Following the flipping of the played cards, appropriate actions as described by the cards should be taken and all played cards should be discarded into a discard pile.

*Note that the Advanced Warning utility card should be played before players flip their cards in phase 4.

Phase 5: Any Player who wishes to use a Second Strike missile card may now play it (even if that player no longer has any nuclear strike points remaining). Following this phase, players with no nuclear strike points remaining are eliminated from the game and must place all of their cards into the discard pile.

Other Rules:

The player that takes the final nuclear strike point away from another player must choose ⅓ of their own unplayed cards to be discarded (round down if ⅓ is not possible). If multiple players deal the final strike, each player loses ⅓ of their cards.

Class Connection:

The point of this game is to demonstrate how the threats of misinformation and nuclear war exacerbate each other.  One of the primary issues with nuclear war is that there is actually a way to win which is to destroy all other nuclear powers completely.  While this may not feel like winning to the average person as the level of destruction would be enormous, a state that was able to accomplish this would be in a far more strategically advantageous position relative to other nations.  Most wars throughout history have hurt all parties involved but states have continued to engage in them with the hopes that their opponents will be harmed more.  This dynamic has not disappeared in the realm of nuclear warfare as almost every nuclear state is willing to fire their weapons, but the consequences are far greater.  The presence of nuclear weapons creates an already contentious international political situation where every nation is concerned with every other nuclear nation’s actions.  The introduction of mis-information into this environment makes this situation far deadlier as any nuclear power could easily receive misinformation that convinces them to start a nuclear engagement.  By their nature, nuclear engagements require nuclear powers to always be ready to fire their weapons at a moment’s notice, but this need for split second decision making could easily be taken advantage of by a malevolent agent spreading misinformation to these nuclear powers.  When designing this game we tried to capture these interactions.

Like a real life nuclear situation, the only way to win in Defcon 1 is to be the only nuclear power left.  This can only be accomplished by destroying all other nuclear powers before they destroy you.  To further simulate real life we added second strike capabilities to the game allowing for the circumstance of mutually assured destruction to occur in the board game just as it does in real life.  The presence of these cards, like real life second strike capabilities, allow any nation that is struck by a nuclear missile to immediately strike back regardless of if they have been destroyed.  To represent the issue of misinformation we further added several avenues through which players could gain confidential information about other players positions and use that information, or lie about it, to gain an advantage over their opponents.  Players can tell when another player learns something crucial, and that player can choose to share the real information to gain an ally, or lie about to gain an advantage.  The challenge of needing to destroy all players in the long term, and work with other players in the short term to find out information, creates a situation that incentivizes spreading misinformation in order to stimulate a nuclear exchange between opponents.  This simulates the real life situation many nuclear powers find themselves in today, where they could gain a significant strategic advantage by coaxing other powers into destroying each other.  

Through demonstrating these situations in a board game, we believe we can highlight to players the ethical and practical consequences of the current international nuclear situation.  No nation wants to be at the receiving end of a nuclear exchange but every nation is highly incentivized both to fire nuclear weapons at other nuclear nations as well as to create a situation where other nuclear nations come into conflict with each other.  Like the lack of a set number of turns in this game, there is no definitive time when the current nuclear situation will resolve itself in this way, however, in the long run it will have to resolve eventually.  Through this game we hope to demonstrate what that end will most likely look like.