Roll the Dice

Jan. 6 Takeover Has Its Own Board Game Now

Build your very own insurrection.

Make your own Jan. 6, 2021. Now, the infamous day in American history has its very own tabletop game—Capitol insurrection and all. Players get to choose which side they’re on: the red team, whose goal is to take over the Capitol and hunt down Vice President Mike Pence; or the blue team, aka the police officers fending off the MAGA army. Creators describe the large-scale, 20-player game—which had been in development for a year—as “a live performance installation that merges art, game design, and immersive storytelling.” The creators, the american vicarious [sic], hosted a successful gameplay in New York City in late January, with the installation’s next stop in London. The game features a 14-foot-wide and 5-foot-tall Capitol building and has 10,000 hand-painted protestors alongside 2,000 police officers. The game, designed by Alessio Cavatore, “is not just to win but to confront the fragility of democracy and the challenges of unity in a polarized society.”