Tips for first time COIN player? (Fire In the Lake)

I read the rules to Fire in the Lake, watched the tutorial video, and am now going to start the playbook. Having never played a COIN game before I'm a bit...strained.

I get the rules for the most part (I'm sure there will be many little mistakes as I go), but damn there are a ton of options/rules and Operations for each faction are totally unique. Reading through the non-player faction rules started to make my head spin with all the bulleted lists about how to handle events and the like. I think most of the non-player stuff is pretty straightforward and can be summed up as "make the best moves for the NPC", but damn the specifics are lengthy.

Any tips/suggestions? I think I'm going to play the U.S./ARVN first and let the Communist Bot kick my ass. Ironically it seems playing this solitaire is more complicated than playing with others as you need to be familiar with all factions Operations. Hoping to play this on Wednesday with my group so I just need to bite the bullet and dive into solitaire to learn what I can.

I'm working through Andean Abyss myself. Got about half to two-thirds of the way through the tutorial and then got sidetracked. Hopefully the long weekend will allow me to finish some night. Also, once I get going I plan on just running all four roles solitaire - That's what I've heard works a bit better rather than trying to learn the game then learning how the AI functions. The amount of rules and slight variations is a bit overwhelming, but as I worked through nothing individually seemed that bad, just trying to piece it all together into some sort of coherent flow is the battle I'm about to have.

Go through the entire playbook.

Try playing solo without the bots (play as multiple personalities). There is very little hidden information so this is doable. Once you have the main options sorted out in your mind, then try replacing a player with a bot (you continue to play the other three). Variations on this will help you get the idea.

The coherency of flow and how to achieve your objectives in the long term are the main difficulty. Always keep in mind the victory conditions for each side.

It's not a bad idea to use VASSAL for these type of learning games because it will track all moves (set it up to record all movement of pieces) and hence it is easy to reset when you make a mistake. I do like to set it up on the table but it is bloody frustrating when I make a mistake and realise I can't remember where everything was so I can't reset. Also you can add a 'notes' section to VASSAL where you can write down what you were thinking when you did the last move. This is really helpful as well.

+1 for playing solo without bots.

It will help you learn the systems better without distraction.

Also, remember that at its heart it is El Grande. So if unsure what to do, just get more dudes on the board (unless you're the US).

I'm in the same place, with FitL being my first COIN. (I'd, in fact, stayed away because I hadn't much cared for Labyrinth, but this series is quite a bit different, obviously.) The rulebook was intimidating, but once I realized that about half of it was bot rules that I could avoid by either playing open-handed solo or finding other people, I relaxed a bit. I've found most solo-with-AI games to be too intimidating to try to learn, at least initially, because first you have to learn the multiplayer version and then mod it to add the solo version on top. Better to start with no bots and then maybe add them in once the multiplayer becomes ingrained.

I should probably add that FitL is probably not the best COIN game to start with, as it is very complex with many subtleties especially the alliances between factions. This is something you don't get with Andean Abyss or Cuba Libre, both of which are excellent.

AA and CL still have the asymmetric win conditions and other mechanics but this complexity of the US using another faction's resources, which occurs in ADP and FiTL, does not happen.

Labyrinth is not a COIN game at all and isn't part of the series.

Finished a Short scenario playing all four sides and it went well. The ARVN came out on top, likely due to poor VCR and NVA play on my part. Thanks for the suggestions and looking forward to my next game.