All internet images removed from this post, sorry.
Over the years I have read online posts by miniatures gamers who talk of putting the coup phase of Junta on the table with toy soldiers. That amuses me because Junta stems from a couple toy soldier battles played back in the 70s.
We were using the WRG 1750-1850 rules. A review of the rules
can be found here.
The two games were based on my
imperfect knowledge of the 1848 revolutions. Our game presumed the rebels had
to dislodge the government forces. Years later I found that if most of the
populace stayed in the streets that the government would back down in time. Then
the rebels would fall out, working-class radicals against middle-class
nationalists and such. In time the government forces would return and reduce the radicals,
applauded by the nationalists, until the time came to deal with the
nationalists, etc. Most actual fights saw government forces attack barricaded
rebels. Our games had it the other way around and the forces of law or
repression (depending on your point of view) triumphed both times. We usually
had one government player with regular troops and three rebel players with
large mobs, poorly trained and treated as 1 in 4 armed with carbines,
representing bricks, stones and the odd firearm. The three factions were Nationalists, proto-communists
and Anarchists. Our table was the capitol city of the fictional province of
Snurdia which desired freedom from the Habsburg yoke.
During the second game, my red
mobs were shot down in heaps while failing to storm the post office. The Anarchists
briefly wiped out a horse artillery battery before falling to a charge of
uhlans. The Snurdian Nationalists had been stymied in an uneven firefight. The Habsburg
player offered to make the Nationalist player a prince if he changed sides. That
player, a Diplomacy fan, was not happy to find the game had no rules for
switching sides. He was disappointed enough to cause me to think about making
such rules.
Some time later I came up with a
board game that had a hex map of a city and small forces for each player. It had
simple ranged combat and melee rules, very much a standard hex and counter
game. Changing sides was a given. The guys liked it. Each coup took up most of
the evening. I noted that what people really liked was the skullduggery. The coup
needed to be shorter.
An area map pretty close to the
current board and counter mix did that. By now there was hardly any game
there at all. First came the money deck and then the political cards to beef it up. A few
years of testing yielded the first edition. It was always a howl. One friend’s
wife became so proficient at assassination we termed her Evita. I don’t have
proof but do believe that Junta was the first board game to include
assassination.
The game was published by Creative
Wargames Workshop in 1979. A few years later the game was purchased by West End
Games. I’m not sure who is publishing it these days. My absolute favorite game box cover is the one for the German edition, seen below.
All internet images removed from this post, sorry.
I’m unable to answer rules questions about other editions of the game. The rules were changed and the rulebook is a bit longer than the first edition. First edition rules were laconic, the new ones a bit chattier. My attention span is short and getting shorter with age.
I do find it amusing that folks talk about turning Junta into a tin soldier game when it started out as a tin soldier game that didn’t allow for betrayal and morphed into a board game.
