Burn the Fort Wins the Spiel of Approval Award!
The land many think of as the United States was taken by force from hundreds of indigenous tribes. The so-called Indian Wars were waged for over 300 years, spanning well into the 20th century and their result was genocide for millions. The majority of these once thriving civilizations have been utterly crippled, conquered, or simply destroyed.
Within this greater conflict, Burn the Fort focuses on a specific era - the western invasion of indigenous lands in the latter half of the 1800s. The construction of the transcontinental railroad accelerated expansion and colonization. Military fortresses were built to provide stability to the conquering army and encourage more settlers to move west and claim land.
Players in the game take on the role of historic indigenous warriors resisting colonial invasion. Use cards to enhance your tribe's ability to fight back. Gather and trade arrowhead tokens to unlock abilities. Manage alliances with other warriors, knowing colonial powers are actively working to erode them. Time is short. If the Golden Spike is laid and the railroad connecting the coasts is complete, mass colonization will be impossible to stop. You must attack relentless lines of wagons heading west to slow expansion, hoping to collect enough fire tokens to burn the colonizer’s fort to the ground.
Read on to learn why we love Burn the Fort.
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Burn the Fort Wins The Spiel of Approval!
Designer: Klee Benally
Art: Klee Benally
Publisher: Indigenous Action Media
2-4 players |1-2 hr | ages 14+ | MSRP $45 | BGG Listing
Time to teach/learn: 10-15 minutes
Game Synopsis
The land many think of as the United States was taken by force from hundreds of indigenous tribes. The so-called Indian Wars were waged for over 300 years, spanning well into the 20th century and their result was genocide for millions. The majority of these once thriving civilizations have been utterly crippled, conquered, or simply destroyed.
Within this greater conflict, Burn the Fort focuses on a specific era - the western invasion of indigenous lands in the latter half of the 1800s. The construction of the transcontinental railroad accelerated expansion and colonization. Military fortresses were built to provide stability to the conquering army and encourage more settlers to move west and claim land.
Players in the game take on the role of historic indigenous warriors resisting colonial invasion. Use cards to enhance your tribe's ability to fight back. Gather and trade arrowhead tokens to unlock abilities. Manage alliances with other warriors, knowing colonial powers are actively working to erode them. Time is short. If the Golden Spike is laid and the railroad connecting the coasts is complete, mass colonization will be impossible to stop. You must attack relentless lines of wagons heading west to slow expansion, hoping to collect enough fire tokens to burn the colonizer’s fort to the ground.
Why We Love Burn The Fort
Gameplay in Burn the Fort captures the tension, pressure, and outrage that must have fueled the warriors leading resistance efforts. Every turn is bookended by negative effects and actions caused by the colonizers. First, you must deal with persistent card effects and rebuild alliances that have been broken between tribes. At the end of each turn, each settler wagon on your tribe’s land will move closer to the fort based on a die roll. Each wagon that reaches the fort pushes the game closer to a collective loss for all. The sense that the odds are stacked against any form of resistance is palpable.
Sandwiched between this opposition, you fight back using cards, then by trading or attacking. Cards, arrowheads, and fire are the currencies of the game. Cards will strengthen your resistance or weaken the colonizers. Matching color arrowheads unlock your warrior’s special abilities and are necessary to lead an attack on the fort. Accumulating fire is the ultimate goal. Each fort has a strength based on the historical general who commands it. You must eclipse this strength with fire tokens individually or collectively to win.
Burn the Fort is enjoyable and incredibly challenging as a game but the challenges and goals it places before its players span far beyond the table. The game is not an attempt to simulate a specific detailed historical battle. Instead, players must face a fort that, in some sense, represents all forts, a single example that comes to represent the greater struggle of indigenous culture fighting for survival as a whole. Win or lose, players are given a chance to reflect, adapt, and learn from history as seen from the side of the oppressed instead of the oppressor.
Play can provide such a powerful venue to explore and understand history. Reading about history, watching a movie or listening to a lecture - those activities are passive. History is happening to someone else. You get to be a dispassionate observer. Isn’t that horrible what happened to them? But when you play Burn the Fort, you are part of the conflict. You are on the side of the oppressed. History is happening to YOU. The game gives you agency to fight back. But it also shows you how stacked the rules are against you, no matter how well you play. The game is semi-cooperative, so one player can win. But a not so subtle lesson you learn quickly is the collective action of all warriors gives everyone the best chance to burn the fort. Of course, no game can truly capture these shared centuries of suffering, but what the game can do is open a door to empathy and understanding. A game that tells a powerful story like this can change the way one sees the world, and for the better. Designer Klee Benally leaves a legacy in Burn the Fort that challenges and encourages players to engage with and respect indigenous history and to strengthen future cultures of resistance and liberation.
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Congratulations to Klee Benally and everyone at Indigenous Action Media!
More information on Burn the Fort here!
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