Здравствуйте! (Twilight Struggle)
Posted by Rob Herman at July 22nd, 2007
To my surprise I got to try out Twilight Struggle last night. (Thank you J.K. Rowling for distracting the others.) Long story short: Playing as the USA, I lost in turn 4 (like 1955 or so) so we’re all speaking Russian now.
I definitely made some serious mistakes; there’s a lot going on and a lot you have to think about. The theme works surprisingly well. I only caught the end of the Cold War during my conscious lifetime (born 1980) but I really felt like I was watching freedom and democracy slip through my fingers as I lost.
I had read the rules enough to be pretty familiar with them (although I still needed a couple clarifications and made errors, like forgetting to update DEFCON when staging coups), and managed to get the first (and only) half of the game over in not much more than an hour and a half. So the three-hour stated time is accurate; if we had more experience I think we’d spend more time planning things out, and a game that actually lasts until the end would take the full three hours.
There’s definitely going to be an enormous learning curve on this one, not in terms of rules (actually pretty easy) but in terms of being familiar with the cards and events and what you need to watch out for. I think it’ll be worth it in the end, though.
Don’t worry, comrade! Try not to think of it as death of democracy - think of it as the unification of all humanity into one great dictatorship of the proletariat!
According to boardgamegeek, over a 170ish game sample, the USSR wins about 63% of the time. The USSR does have an advantage in the Early War segment, and it’s been suggested that the US start with 2 points, so that they may better survive until the 60s. It’s also been suggested that the Aldrich Ames card be errated or removed, since it can knock the US player out instantly by forcing him to degrade to DEFCON 1, and often there’s not a damn thing he can do about it…
The theme does certainly work well! As the Soviets, I got to win the Korean War, successfully blockade Berlin, cripple America with a Red Scare, turn France communist, and sponsor a coup in Iran!
Alderich Ames looks downright devastating if USSR headlines it or plays it early; even if the Soviets can’t make the Americans degrade DEFCON to 1, they should be able to put the Americans in a horribly bad position and maximize any scoring cards.
It’s one of those strange “for the rest of the turn” cards, like Containment/Brezhnev Doctrine that’s harmless if you play it on yourself as an event (you play it too late to cause any harm) but massively powerful if headlined.
Short of just pulling the card, what suggestions are offered? Even turning it into a plain old Red Scare would be a lot less damaging.
One suggestion was that it lets you look at the US player’s hand and program just one action (in which case, it’s probably better used for the 4 ops).
Especially in mid-late war, I don’t think the end of turn cards are only useful if headlined - in fact, if the US player might have Defectors in the Early War, it’s probably better for the USSR player to headline something else and play the till end of turn card as the first action - it only misses 1/7th or so of the turn.
Not necessarily headlined, but the difference in playing, say, Ames, Quagmire/Beartrap, Containment, etc. in an early action, versus the end of the round when it can’t do anything at all, is enormous.
(Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You is another reason to play Ames in the first action instead of as a headline.)