Moving And Twilight Struggle 4/30

Jon graciously agreed to help me move some stuff using his truck today. So as to not make the day a total waste we also played a game of Twilight Struggle. Before I go much further in this report, I think we also screwed up a couple more rules today. I believe in the space race, as soon as you reach a level, you can immediately use its benefits in the next action round. We were playing it as next turn so that could have made a difference as Jon led the race for the majority of the game. Also in my readings it seems that 5 year plan only triggers US associated events, not neutral events, so the point to make later may be moot, but I still would like to know about the situation replacing the Olympics with Drop and Cover.

I tried my hand at the US this time. Jon jumped out to a quick lead in vps and the space race over the first few turns and I was scrambling to hold on against the overwhelming communist expansion. By midgame, things had stabilized for the US with the scoring situation, but there were some critical issues that were not resolving in my favor. The middle east, which during the early war was a hotbed of activity for both of us, with a constant back and forth between the two of us, shifted dramatically to Jon's side with a flurry of anti US sentiment in the Muslim world. On the flip side though, Asia developed to become a bastion of freedom with nearly all countries south of North Korea enjoying democracy. Similarly Europe had stagnated favorably for me. The other three regions of power remained solidly up for grabs and were the main source of contention between the two powers.

Around this time, Fidel came to power, and the USSR had its much needed entry point to the Americas. Communism established a dominant presence in Central America, while I clung to a tenuous position in South America. Things were looking bad and a few scoring cards brought Jon to around -12 or so. I played a few vp cards, and a well timed "How I learned to..." to stabilize the VP situation, and began to go about the business of freeing Central America. This process took time and led to our late game rules question.

The situation in this example was this. Jon worked his hand down to two cards: The Olympics, and Five Year Plan. We were at Defcon 2, so he played the Five Year Plan, handed me the Olympics and said he was boycotting. The rules about who should be the phasing player are not 100% clear here, and not having an faq in front of us, we could not resolve the issue. Now knowing that the Olympics would not be triggered by Five Year Plan at all would help, but if it had been Drop and Cover, it would be nice to know who will be held responsible for causing the resulting armageddon.

Anyway, we agreed to continue the game with a caveat that Jon possibly had already won the game. I continued to pour resources into Central America, working hard to free Cuba and Mexico from their communist opressors. It was an arduous process, but finally, on the last turn of the game, I was able to install "free" governments in both of the hotly contested states, and thus ensured a victory for all of the God fearing free people of the world.

There were some interesting positions that happened in this game. India of all places was one of our most hotly contested territories throughout the whole game. So when I initiated the Indo-Pakistan war and won in the midgame, I was all of a sudden holding a territory in south central asia with 15 influence on it. The cows are mine!

I also learned that the middle east is just horrible for the US. I invested way too heavily in the muslim states and ended losing almost of my investments due to some very vicious mid game events. Anyway, still looking forward to playing again with some more rules being correctly applied.