One of the indie skirmish games I’ve been enjoying this year has been InCountry, from Enemy Spotted Studios. This was a surprising one for me, but in hindsight, after binging on Seal Team last year, I could have seen it coming. InCountry is a small scale (1-2 teams on a 2×2 board as a default) skirmish game of modern combat – think any of the endless conflicts (or cinema based on the same) from 2000 on. Stat line is minimal, and there’s a lot of action/reaction in addition to alternating unit activation. In 2023, InCountry (INX) has topped my play chart actually, and most solo. Most games run 30 minutes, if that.
Yesterday I set up and played through the first mission of the (free) Deniable Operations mission. As the HVT is data in a server room, I added a little sketched map for the server building objective. Less than 30 minutes later, scenario was over with a BlueFor win.
Game play with InCountry is pretty smooth in my experience. There’s not too many moves (Measures or Reactive Measures), and there’s not a ton of numerical detail to weapons, systems, etc. It’s very streamlined for play. I find it feels like a good episode of Seal TV, and delivers a fast, cinematic experience.
The digital version of the rules are free, along with some supplements (like the Deniable Operations pack) and the more competitive-based InCountry Recon. The default rules are non-points based, so coming up with scenarios and forces is easy as long as you don’t have a desperate need to have “points balance” (in which case, Recon may be your speed).
I’ll talk more about the ESS minis for InCountry and KillWager (their near sci-fi setting and game) in a separate post.
Be well, and good gaming!
House of the Jade Lantern 
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