It is the hottest day of the year and I am standing in a converted chapel in central London chugging a can of Budweiser, for freedom. Or rather, a Jan. 6 rioter is. I am one of 20 people who have bought tickets to tonight’s edition of a tabletop role-playing-game event based on the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and I have been cast as Eduardo Nicolas Alvear Gonzalez, a QAnon acolyte and real person whose stated aim on the day was to smoke a joint in the Capitol building.

Chugging the beer gains me an extra card to deploy in the game: a so-called Second Amendment bonus, which lets me pull a concealed firearm at a moment of my choosing. Other participants gain their cards in other ways: singing “We Are the World” on a microphone, as the player assigned the role of Ohio school therapist Christine Priola does, or reciting an oath of office to protect the United States, like the half of the participants assigned to be the members of law enforcement tasked with defending the Capitol from invaders.

The game, which is running for a month over this summer in the heart of London’s theater district, is called Fight for America!, and was designed by the much-revered tabletop RPG developer Alessio Cavatore, the man behind Warhammer as well as The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. In Warhammer style, every one of the roughly 7,000 figurines that make up units for the red team (the insurgents) and the blue team (law enforcement) has been hand-painted, as well as, in this case, given tiny little riot shields or Trump 2020 flags. And in the center of the room stands a 1:64 scale model of the U.S. Capitol, complete with grounds taking up a space of just over 500 square feet.

 Easy E wrote:
I first heard about this on the 20-sided Gamified Podcast, where Alessio Cavatore and others were interviewed about the game and art show related to it. However, I was surprised to later see an article about it online.....

https://slate.com/culture/2025/07/trump-jan-6-capitol-insurrection-play-game-london.html

I Attended the Show Where People Reenact Jan. 6. It Played Out Very Differently.

It is the hottest day of the year and I am standing in a converted chapel in central London chugging a can of Budweiser, for freedom. Or rather, a Jan. 6 rioter is. I am one of 20 people who have bought tickets to tonight’s edition of a tabletop role-playing-game event based on the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and I have been cast as Eduardo Nicolas Alvear Gonzalez, a QAnon acolyte and real person whose stated aim on the day was to smoke a joint in the Capitol building.

Chugging the beer gains me an extra card to deploy in the game: a so-called Second Amendment bonus, which lets me pull a concealed firearm at a moment of my choosing. Other participants gain their cards in other ways: singing “We Are the World” on a microphone, as the player assigned the role of Ohio school therapist Christine Priola does, or reciting an oath of office to protect the United States, like the half of the participants assigned to be the members of law enforcement tasked with defending the Capitol from invaders.

The game, which is running for a month over this summer in the heart of London’s theater district, is called Fight for America!, and was designed by the much-revered tabletop RPG developer Alessio Cavatore, the man behind Warhammer as well as The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. In Warhammer style, every one of the roughly 7,000 figurines that make up units for the red team (the insurgents) and the blue team (law enforcement) has been hand-painted, as well as, in this case, given tiny little riot shields or Trump 2020 flags. And in the center of the room stands a 1:64 scale model of the U.S. Capitol, complete with grounds taking up a space of just over 500 square feet.