My first wargame design, inspired by the obscure 1979 movie of the same name.
This game was notable for its small size and speed of play - 50 counters and under an hour, to cover both the planning and execution phases of a coup in an imaginary country. Play in the pre-coup phase is governed by running through a deck of ordinary playing cards (inspired by a scene in the movie where Peter O’Toole and David Hemmings play card tricks on each other while Hemmings sounds him out about joining the plotters). The cards are used to recruit or neutralize army, paramilitary or civilian units, stick it to the other player, etc..
In late 2011 I sent Decision Games my game design on a hypothetical, near-future Third Lebanon War for publication in Modern War magazine. One mechanic in the game was "Cascading Effects", where under certian circumstances players picked a random card from a deck of ordinary playing cards to see if there were additional effects - e.g. increasing the likelihood of Syrian intervention, Hamas uprising, Christiane Amanpour pops in for a visit....
In between submission and publication, DG made a large number of changes to all parts of the design, without informing me. I was not pleased.
But they did keep the concept of Cascading Effects, sort of, and in the game's counters included 18 counters representing a deck of cards: 4 suit markers, 10 numbers (1-10), 3 face cards (Jack, Queen, King), and an Ace for good measure in case you lost the "1", I suppose. This was the first time I could recall a magazine wargame using counter sheet space to make a substitute for a deck of ordinary cards. The rules suggest that you do use the actual Devil's Picture Book items, but if by some stretch of the imagination you don't have a deck of cards in your house/trailer/bunker, then you have the chits.
Meanwhile, I do offer the original, unaltered design for free Print and Play here:
But you do need to supply the deck of playing cards separately, as I did not use up counters doing that... I figured you would have one lying around, or could obtain one easily.