Main Lines Shuffling the Deck with “Insurgent Algeria” I

t’s not uncommon for students to be deeply inspired by a college course, but how often does a course inspire the creation of a card game? That’s what happened for Matt Denton ’24.

Over the COVID-19 lockdown, Denton had become deeply immersed in playing all kinds of board games and was considering creating his own. He’d also developed an interest in the Algerian War of Independence in Associate Professor of Political Science Susanna Wing’s “African Politics, African Novels, and Film” class, and began to think about how he might base a game on that subject.

With the help of a $5,000 microgrant from the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for Arts and Humanities, Denton spent the summer of 2022 immersed in research and development. He then decided that, instead of a board game, he would create a card game, which tend to require less time to play.

“One of my main goals of the project was to keep it accessible to an audience that would not necessarily pick up a historical game as their first choice on a game night,” he says.

The game Denton eventually created is “Insurgent Algeria,” a two-player card game based on real events and people involved in the Algerian War of Independence, which took place from 1954 to 1962. A conflict between the Algerian National Liberation Front and the French, it was part of the Cold War and the decolonization of Africa, and resulted in Algeria gaining independence from its French colonizers. Denton says he was inspired not only by what he learned of the war in Wing’s course, but also by the movie The Battle of Algiers, which was screened in the class.

In “Insurgent Algeria” (which features graphics and art created by a freelancer who is Algerian), each player takes a side in the war, drawing cards that are based on real events and people. Players, he says, are “trying to accrue public support in three different areas: military, political, and diplomatic. Each card gets played to one of these three fronts, so over the course of the game all the people that you’ve played kind of stack in each of the fronts, and you’re basically trying to accrue the most support across the fronts.

“There are actions you can take to attack your opponent—bomb them, capture them— things that would’ve happened during the war, but there’s also rallying action for public support and things like that as well,” he adds.

After that grant-funded summer spent developing the game, Denton, who is a member of the men’s cross-country team, continued testing “Insurgent Algeria” with the help of his teammates. He was thrilled that they were enthusiastic about it. “One thing that was really cool to see was that they were really interested to read the text at the bottom of the cards, which gave a bit of historical context,” he says.

Based on that response, he went on to further develop the historical background of the game. “[It] made me realize that l have a real chance here to make people aware of a pretty important conflict when you talk about the end of empires and the Cold War,” says Denton.

And it looks like he’ll be getting the chance to expand that awareness. The game won third place in the 2022 Wargame Print and Play Game Design Contest, hosted by BoardGameGeek, one of the biggest board game websites in the world. ln late March, “lnsurgent Algeria” was signed by the board game publisher Catastrophe Games, which plans to have it on sale late this year or early next year.

For updates on “Insurgent Algeria,” go to Denton’s game design newsletter at: finbargames.substack.com —Zhao Gu Gammage ’25 and Eils Lotozo

The Grass is Greener

Over a span of two weeks this spring, Walton Field underwent a major face-lift that involved stripping off all of the old turfgrass through a process called “fraise mowing,” which leaves behind a clean and level soil surface. Next, the field was laser graded to ensure proper drainage and an even playing surface. Then, roughly 94,000 square feet of Kentucky Bluegrass sod—delivered in 4-by-40-feet rolls—was rolled out onto Walton Field just like a carpet. Finally, the sod was put on an intense overnight watering schedule. “We do this because the sod is very susceptible to heat and drought stress while new roots are being established,” says