Description

"The year is 2027 and the federal government of the United States, hobbled by the second great depression, is on the edge of collapse. A number of Insurgent factions have sprung up hoping to undermine the government and send the country into a state of anarchy, in the belief they stand to gain power or wealth in the coming lawlessness.

Choose your side: Become one of three insurgent factions bent on sowing chaos by launching ever greater terror events, or make one last stand on behalf of the United States. If you can stand firm and keep this country from descending into anarchy you will restore the people's faith in its government and keep the American dream alive."

Threat Level Red is a game for 4 players where three players play the role of insurgent factions attacking from within the united states, and one player takes on the role of the hobbled, fading federal government.

As an insurgent faction your goal is to increase the anarchy level in the US to 20 by launching insurgent events. Each turn begins with a hidden token deployment phase where you must secretly plant sleeper cell and insurgent event tokens in major cities across the country. Once all the insurgent player's plans are set players then take turns revealing one secret token at time. Each sleeper cell token you activate increases the action points available to you to play your event cards, but also gives the US player more information about where you are planning your next event. Do you carry out small safer operations to draw additional event cards, cell tokens, and earn resources, or do you try to go all out and launch a major, but risky offensive by playing one of your major event cards? Once your organization has grown strong enough anything is possible- from a simple bomb threat, to hacking the nation's closed circuit TV network, or for the most powerful and violent factions building the dreaded suitcase nuke, but if the american player can deduce where your next event is taking place you stand to lose everything.

As the government player you seek to foil as many insurgent events as possible. If you can foil 12 insurgent events, or survive 5 game turns without the anarchy level rising to 20 points you are victorious. Unfortunately you are understaffed and nearly out of resources to face the burgeoning threats facing the nation. You begin the game with a small number of agent units that you must allocate between the major geographic "zones" of the united states. At the start of each turn you gain a small number of reinforcements: additional agent units and counterplot cards. Your counterplot cards will let you set up wiretaps, border patrols, undercover agents. Each time it is your turn you may send up to one agent token per "zone" to investigate a face down enemy token. If you correctly select a location of an insurgent event that event is discarded and you gain 1 stability point, but if the hidden token you reveal turns out to be an enemy sleeper cell the agent will most likely be lost in the ensuing gunfight. Since you have far fewer agents then your enemies have sleeper cells if you were to send your agents in to investigate every hint of insurgent activity you would soon be out of agents and quickly overrun. So instead, watch closely, let the insurgents overextend, give them enough rope to hang themselves before making your move. If you wait too long you risk letting another terror attack slip through your fingers, but if you strike at the right time even a small handful of well-trained agents can topple these immense terror networks.