This Guilty Land

About this board game

This Guilty Land is a two-player, 45-minute card-driven game about the political struggle over slavery in the United States before the American Civil War.

One player represents Justice, while the other represents Oppression. A third, non-player faction called Compromise can help or hinder both sides as it insidiously works to preserve the untenable and abhorrent status quo.

The game uses an Events Display containing cards belonging to both players, giving the struggle a shared pool of public information. Cards played from the display have effects based on their type, while many can be moved into a player’s Reserve for additional actions throughout the game.

Your Reserve is limited by Organizational Capacity, a value that can increase during play. Capacity also affects the strength of your actions, the minimum number of cards drawn into the Events Display, and opportunities to score victory points.

• Asymmetrical card mixes support each player’s strengths and expose their weaknesses.
• Tempo and momentum matter in a race where advantages can multiply over time.
• Players score by passing laws and forming political parties, while Justice also scores for growing support.

Deadlock is central to the design, with each side countering the other until one player makes a potentially irrecoverable mistake. The game can end through an instant victory, including domination of the laws or reducing an opponent’s support to zero.

Otherwise, play ends when the victory point supply or card deck is exhausted, and the highest score wins. When This Guilty Land ends, the American Civil War begins, presenting the game’s argument that the conflict was both inevitable and necessary through a tense, deeply strategic play experience.