Fire in the Lake: Soverign of Discord Deluxe Edition

January 1961, South Vietnam: A month earlier, in Tay Ninh Province, bands of communist cadres, uprising peasants, and other armed groups formed the unified “National Liberation Front” insurgency against the Saigon Regime, an insurgency now more commonly known as the Viet Cong. After the passing of Resolution 15 in North Vietnam, assistance is flowing south, although the amount of assistance is hotly debated between Moderates and Militants of the Politburo in Hanoi.

The National Liberation Front’s opponent, the South Vietnamese government under President Ngo Dinh Diem, is intensely hunting both communist cadres and any enemies of the regime. In November of the previous year, Diem only narrowly outmaneuvered a coup by his own Airborne units and now faces rising violence in the countryside. A new US president, John F. Kennedy, assumes office facing a number of Cold War crises. There are currently 600 American personnel in South Vietnam, and the showdown is about to begin.

Building off of Mark Herman and Volko Runke’s legendary game Fire in the Lake, the Sovereign of Discord Expansion provides a prequel to the events depicted in the base game, covering the years 1961-1963. The expansion allows players to see how the war escalated from an insurgency between ARVN and Viet Cong, assisted by the US and North Vietnam, to the eventual conventional interventions by North Vietnam and the United States at the start of the base game. New scenarios allow players to extend the game backward to 1961 right after the formation of the Viet Cong, or to 1963 during the tumultuous last year of the Diem regime. Players owning both expansions, Sovereign of Discord and Fall of Saigon, will be able to experience the full Indochina War from 1961 to 1975. This allows players to see how the war evolved from the lower intensity insurgency of the Diem period all the way to the massive conventional offensives of the last years of the war. A copy of Fire in the Lake will be necessary to play the Sovereign of Discord expansion.

Contents:
Deck of 80 playing cards (Sovereign of Discord Events, Coups, Pivotals, and Diem)
Deck of 40 playing cards (new Fire in the Lake base game Events)
Deck of 14 playing cards (Sovereign of Discord solitaire system)
6 wooden pieces (ARVN Strategic Hamlets)
4 double-sided color 11x17” foldout player aids (Sovereign of Discord Faction sheets)
2 double-sided color 8½x11” player aids (Sovereign of Discord Coup Round and Fall of Diem sheets)
2 double-sided color 11x17” foldout player aids (Sovereign of Discord solitaire system)
3 double-sided color 8½x11” player aids (Sovereign of Discord solitaire system)
2 countersheets (Washington, Hanoi, Regime Stability, and 2-player Initiative track tiles, Sovereign of Discord counters)
Expansion Rulebook
Expansion Playbook
Non-player Rulebook
2" Game Box