Twilight Struggle 4/27
Heh this picture about sums it up for my childhood, legos and worrying about the Russians.Just a future note for everyone. Apparently the Dragon's Lair closes at 9pm on Thursdays. Just a heads up. Anyway, Ben and Jon called their game of Twilight Struggle with the store closing, and as Ben had to get home, Jon and I headed to his place for a game or two. This was my first time playing the game and I can understand the hype.
Since I was a newbie, Jon let me be the USSR. Our first game didn't last long. My first turn saw both of us draw a ton of pro USSR europe events, while avoiding any of the similar US events. By the end of the turn, I was teetering on the brink of control of Europe, and when my second hand was similarly blessed with lots of european help and a Europe scoring card, Jon's fate was sealed.
We set up for another game. Again I was the USSR. Not drawing the bountiful harvest of Europe cards this time, I decided to concentrate more on Asia this time. The early war saw us seesawing back and forth as neither could gain much of an upper hand. There were a couple of cards that seemed to have extremely far reaching impacts from what I could see (sorry for not remembering card names, I really loved the theme and the cards do support that theme, but my memory is pretty much shot at this point):
The Fidel card that got me a foothold in Cuba.
The neutral card that lowers your opponents opps by 1 this turn to a minimum of 1
The USSR card that raises all your ops this turn by 1 to a maximum of 4
The China card
The US and corresponding USSR card that can totally hose the opponent for a whole turn if they can't roll below a 5 ever. When I got this one I thought I was ruined until I got:
The USSR card that lets them completely arrange the US's hand in the order the cards should be played this turn (this one was completely and utterly insane and had I been paying attention at all should have ended the game on turn 8 with global thermonuclear destruction caused by the US foolishly starting the Korean war)
We were pretty back and forth all game, until turn 8 when I got the last card on that list and the neutral card that lowered Jon's opps by 1 for the turn. So not only was he playing all the best cards for me, he was getting next to no points for doing so. That turn saw me take a commanding lead and on the next turn when I had both the Asia and Europe scoring cards, succesive plays of those during the headline and first phase brought me to -20 and ended the game.
I gotta play this again! My wishlist is very rapidly nearing the free shipping territory. Yay!
Labels: session report
posted by Michael @ 4:06 AM
8 comments
8 Comments:
If anyone wants to get a copy of Twilight Struggle, you better do it today! The last few copies are selling out, and the reprint is probably 3-4 months away. In the mean time, we now have plenty of copies to play with in the group. I'll bring mine again on Monday.
I was totally bummed my game with Jon had to be cut short. We were two turns into the mid-war with me as the US having a score of +15. Jon had a solid lock on a good portion of Asia after winning both the Korean War and the India/Pakistan War, but I had South America almost totally locked up. Anyway, it could have gone either way, and I commend Jon for his solid play.
Sick and tired of hearing how good this game is.
(just jealous that I haven't been able to play...hehe)
I'll probably wait for the reprint...not just because it will have some errata fixed, but mainly because I can delay digging again into my coffers. I already have plenty of preorders waiting.
Yeah I'm thinking about waiting for the reprint. Having the errata fixed visually would be nice for someone forgetful like myself (for instance last night I don't think that either of us ever put any presence into Saudi Arabia despite the battleground status and high stability). This might have been different had the battleground status been marked in red. Plus cardhaus does not have the game and thoughthammer needs 125 for the shipping. I'm only at 90 so far. Maybe if I'm patient Cash and Guns will be out too?
Ben said: "...and I commend Jon for his solid play."
I wouldn't recommend doing this as you'll hear about that particular game for the rest of eternity.
By the way, I was going to pick up TS until I heard the reprint would fix a lot of embarrassing typos. What are these forestated humiliations pray tell?
The two biggies are:
The People's Replublic of China should actually be the People's Republic of China and Chili should be Chile. I think the typos add a certain charm to the game. By the way Jon, I think we were screwing you over last night on headline stuff. Apparently, headlines should go higher ops value first with ties going to the US. If I'm remembering correctly we were basically doing the USSR headline first 100% of the time which now looks like it was a total hose job.
Michael, that might have changed some things, but with that card that let you order all of my cards most likely would have still been the death of me.
The typos are barely even noticable, and do not matter at all towards game play. Beside the reprint is going to be around 4 months away and I can get by with a few typos.
That card seems insane I agree. Although reading on BGG, there doesn't seem to be a huge uproar about it in general. Maybe it is really hit or miss depending on what type of hand you catch your opponent with.
Man I really want to play again as soon as possible.
There's no uproar on BGG, but I'm a bit sour on the the cards. I've mentioned it on my blog a few times. I'd still play again, but I think that some reasonable fraction (10-25%) of the games are decided by the cards.
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