Twilight Struggle

With my wife out of town and me up most of the night with a sick child I didn't feel much like painting anything today. However, once my son was feeling better and taking a nap, I opened up and punched my copy of Twilight Struggle and read through the rules and played a turn solo.





I can see why this game is so well received. Even though I was playing by myself I really enjoyed it. It probably helps that I like anything to do with the Cold War, but I think just about anybody would like this game.

In the game the US and USSR attempt to gain control of countries through "Influence." Influence markers are placed by spending operations points which are gained by playing cards. Cards are either played for operations points or as events, such as the Soviet blockade of West Berlin. These events usually result in one player gaining or losing influence in particular countries. One twist though is if you play a card for ops points but the event depicted is your opponents event (denoted by a white or red star) then the event happens as well. For example, when I was playing the Soviets' cards, I played Marshall Plan which gave me 4 ops points. However, the event also happened which resulted in the US gaining influence in all of the countries of Western Europe. However, the ops points spent resulted in the Soviets gaining control of France, a "battleground" state. Some countries are battlegrounds which come into play when scoring and effect the Defcon level (coup attempts in battlegrounds move the Defcon marker closer to nuclear war).

Anyhow, without going too much further into a detailed explanation of the rules, the Soviets were one country away from an automatic victory in the first turn.

Seems like a great game.