Spoiler TS#1 B4cchus is CIA's latest success

[Bacchus]

Twilight Struggle is the world's greatest game of pain and risk management, themed around the appropriately chosen topic of the historical contest between two superpowers — The United States and the Soviet Union.

A Martian reader of our history may conclude that we were strongly obsessed with "unity", or that this "human history" was written by a third-tier genre fiction hack who couldn't even come up with real names for his major protagonists.

The game is played out on a simplified political map of the world, which shows a set of countries divided into six regions: Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa, South America and Central America. The countries are the map spaces which the players seek to influence and control, whilst the regions define the boundaries within which majorities are checked for scoring purposes. The entire game, including scoring, is played out via cards. The players get a handful of 8 for the early turns, and then 9, and each turn will play out their hand consecutively one card at a time, alternating between each other and with the Soviet player going first. One card is always chosen at the start of the turn as a Headline, these are revealed simultaneously, and one card can normally be held over on the interturn.

Cards serve three roles. Some are scoring, and simply say that the balance of control is checked in a certain region and players collect points accordingly. Nothing else happens and the side that actually plays the scoring card doesn't receive any advantage, besides having some control on the timing and the knowledge that a certain region is up for scoring this round. Scoring cards, for this reason, may not be held over for next turn. Other cards have a dual function: they are a source of action points, which can be expended on the standard actions available to players, and cards are themselves events which affect the game state in some way. This is where it gets fun. Events have a "loyalty", they can be Soviet, US or neutral. Now, for neutral and loyal events the player can choose how to use them -- for the event, or for action points. An event loyal to other side, however, will always happen if the card is used for its action points.

To give an example, here is one of the game's nastiest Soviet events:




If I, as the US player, play this -- I will get 2 action points, but the Soviets will get to place 4 influence. As you might imagine, placing 1 influence normally costs 1 action point, so already this event sets me back more that it advances my agenda. It's actually even worse -- normally placing influence is governed by adjacency, we are playing on a map, after all, and you can't just plonk down influence in a random country in Africa because you feel like. Except, with this card, you can.

Now, the deck is about 35% Soviet and US, and about 30% neutral, so you get to see the opposing side's cards a lot. With all of them, you must make painful choices. This goes right against all the guidelines for modern game design, and indeed for many people it kills the fun entirely. It also what makes the game great, but you have to have a fairly realistic and robust mindset to appreciate this approach. Numbers growing by themselves and giving you that "accomplishment" feeling this isn't.

Let's briefly cover the standard actions for the sake of the following write-up. Placing influence you are already familiar with, for 1 action point you can place 1 point of influence in any uncontrolled country adjacent to a country where you already have influence. Once your influence reaches the country's "stability rating", normally ranging 1-3, you gain control of that country. Control has two functions: one is scoring, the other is blocking -- placing a point of influence in a controlled country costs 2 action points.

The other two standard actions manipulate influence that is already placed. Re-alignment (rarely used) lets you expend 1 action point to choose a country and take an opposed die roll with your opponent. Whoever rolls less, after some modifiers, has to remove the difference in influence points from the targeted country. Re-alignment strictly reduces influence and is relatively rarely used. Coups are the last standard action, are more fun and frequently used. All action points from a card are targeted to one country, where the opposing side has at least 1 influence points, and which now experiences a coup. The active players rolls a die and adds the card's actions point value to the roll, then subtracts double the target country's stability rating and gets to change the influence by the resulting amount. You will see this happening very soon in practice, so I won't dwell on it too much.

Finally, cards can be discarded towards the space program. This is a safety valve and the only way to get rid of a card, if it holds an event that you don't want to trigger. Normally only one card per turn can be spaced, but developing the space program gives access to various perks, including the ability to space two cards per turn. Decolonization, for example, will be getting spaced.

Let's get to the game!

[Bacchus]

Here is our starting situation:



I wanted to give a wholesale view of the map, so apologies for unreadable country names, albeit you can kinda see the flags. The blue and red numbers you see around the globe is the influence, the core of the game. A lot of this starting influence is pre-placed and driven by balance considerations. You can see that US has a worldwide presence, whilst the Soviets are quite limited in scope at the start -- this will quickly change with events and coups, as those are not governed by adjacency.

At the start of the game, after seeing our cards, the Soviets place 6 influence in East Europe and US 7 in West Europe. In a game this much played, there are well studied choices -- Sareln went for the very orthodox 4 in East Germany and Poland each. I'm not sure whether this is still widely known among the forum populace, but for some 40 years of the 20th century Germany was two countries, one under control of the communist party and the other a democracy, which hilariously meant that in 1969 a socialist was elected to power there, something we may well see in the course of the game. I placed 4 influence in West Germany, which has a stability rating of 4, so just enough to gain control, 2 influence in Italy, again just enough for control and 1 in Greece. The major alternative to this placement is to put 3 in Italy to better protect it against a coup, but I am more of a Greece man.

My hand is awkward, but good. Europe Scoring is the weakest card, but there are 3 scoring cards in the early game deck and you are pretty likely to get at least one of them. Timing on Europe Scoring can be quite important, as there are big events that change the balance of power, so I'd rather hold this than Asia or ME scoring. Decolonization and De-Stalinization are two of the greatest events for the Soviets, as they provide much needed global access. I am really glad that I got them both -- I can't play them, to be sure, but neither can Sareln, which will really affect him on a strategic scale. You can see that De-Stalinization has a little asterisk by its name -- this event only happens once in the game, if it resolves, the card is removed from the game. Decolonization, on the other hand, just goes into the discard pile, which will be eventually reshuffled, so we can see it again and again. Because De-stalinization is so powerful, I will try holding it in hand until at least the first re-shuffle, to limit the chances of it coming back, but this means I have to send Decolonization into space this turn.

Suez Crisis is a nasty event that I am happy to see early. As an event it removes 4 US influence from the Soviet player's choice of Israel, France and UK. France and Israel are both "Battleground" states which are important for scoring, but whilst this card is in the deck any plays to France and Israel are at risk — if played early, however, there simply isn't 4 influence available to be removed, as the card limits the Soviets to removing 2 from any one country. Plus, you get peace of mind of not having this sprung on you at a key moment.

The other cards are too boring to describe. The key take away is that my hand is relatively "red" and relatively low on action points. Cards range in value from 1 to 4, and I have no 4's here. Moreover, one of my two 3's I can't even play, because it's too good for the Soviets. However, I am in a relatively comfortable place strategically. My headline, selected in the top left, will be the von Braun, who automatically advances me on the space track and gives 2 points for being the first country to launch a satellite. Next step of the space program is "Animal in Space", which will let me space not one, but two cards per turn.

[rho21]

I can't see the images. No idea why.

[Bacchus]

The Opening
or where US gets shafted, but then recovers somewhat

Soviets opened with a strong headline:



Both sides start controlling no countries in the Middle East, so the roll is umodified. Sareln rolls a 5, and US is knocked out of Israel. This is a real problem, as Israel is US's sole outpost in the Western Middle East. Without it, I have no access to Egypt and Libya, two important battlegrounds. It's even worse, as my other initial presence in Middle East is Iran, which is normally couped on USSR's first action round. Sareln duly obliges and starts the coup with a value 3 Soviet card -- Comecon, for a -1 resulting modifier. He rolls a 6, however, modified to 5, so 1 US influence gets turned into 4 USSR influence. This means Iran is effectively lost to me, I can't conceivably re-coup it back and I now have no presence in the Middle East at all. Best do something about that, as just having "presence" in ME, that is one country under control, brings 3 points when the region is scored. Thankfully, I now have no influence at all in either France or Israel, so the Suez Crisis really isn't that much of a crisis -- I will only lose 2 influence in UK, so here is out response to the red wave in the Eastern Med:



Nature tells me that the US intelligence is on its best form (I roll a 6), so now I have a stronghold in ME, with 4 influence in Syria. Sareln proceeds by playing Marshall Plan, a 4-point US event, which lets me put 1 influence in 7 West European countries. A really key event for the States, and Sareln playing it will tell me a lot about what his priorities are. He puts 3 influence in Israel, getting control of this battleground country with a stability rating of 4 (expensive, but uncoupable), and 1 influence in Lebanon, a highly unstable, but easy to control country with a rating of just 1. I am pretty sure that Sareln is holding ME scoring now -- after his play he has domination of the region, as he controls more countries than me (3 vs 1), more battlegrounds than me (Israel and Iran vs nothing) and he controls at least one non-battleground state (Lebanon). Fortunately, this last can be fixed pretty easily due to Lebanon's low stability, and I think playing into it was a bit of a mistake by Sareln. I also get the Marshall plan resolution in consolation, and really timely too -- 1 influence lost due to Suez is restored in UK, 1 goes to Canada in anticipation of NORAD, 1 gives me control of Greece, 1 goes to France to help me dominate Europe should I try to do so, 1 goes to Spain, and 1 each to Italy and West Germany, reinforcing those battlegrounds. Now our attention can turn back to ME.

The worst thing about couping 1-stability countries such as Lebanon is that you feel bad about overspending good cards on them. Fortunately, I have just the thing for it, a 1-point US card that I really want to remain in the deck as it's super-annoying for the Soviets: CIA Created. I roll a 6 again, and get 4 influence in Lebanon. We are tied on countries, so if Sareln wants to dominate ME, he will have to spend another card doing so. I have no doubt that he will.

Sareln plays Defectors, a 2-point US event, which gives me a VP for being played, and he takes control of Jordan. As I thought, he is angling directly for ME scoring. My question is whether I should make a play for Europe right now. This is difficult -- fortunately I have played Suez, but we still have this in the deck:



Yes, the leader of Free France was not a fan of the Americans or their meddling in Europe -- he even withdrew from NATO's military command structure and told the US to remove all its military personell from French soil. France, conveniently, was not on the border with the communist bloc, after all. Eventually only Sarkozy returned France to integration with NATO's military structures. For all that, De Gaulle has a statue in Moscow, and the French have built us a lovely hotel in the best human hive style:



Now, if Sareln has De Gaulle in hand, then playing 2 influence into France would be stupid. What are the chances that he does? Well, there are 36 Early War cards, but we know our 8, so Sareln is drawing 8 from a base of 28, and there is only 1 card we are worried about. 28.57% says the hypergeometric distribution. What would I get for controlling France when I play Europe scoring? 5 points. 5 points is a lot. Whilst I'm thinking about this, I send Decolonization to space.

[Bacchus]

I can't see the images. No idea why.

Still?

[Mardoc]

I can't see the images. No idea why.

I can see them, so I suspect it's a problem on your end, rho. Maybe you're behind a work firewall or something?

[BRickAstley]

I can see them.

This game is fascinating to read. Definitely a masterpiece of design.

[picklepikkl]

What BRick said. I am now seriously tempted to pick it up in paper for my friends.

[rho21]

I've worked out the picture problem. It's because I'm using an old (but good) browser, which doesn't support something some sites have started doing recently with https. Apparently your image host is serving its pictures over a secure connection for some reason. Anyway, the links work over http, so that's an easy thing for me to work around.

[Bacchus]

DEFCON
Or that one really important thing he failed to mention completely

Rules explanation via a wall of text just doesn't work very well, which is why I've been pretty laconic in the posts above. There is something we should talk about though, as it will presently become very relevant — DEFCON.



One of the crucial FUN aspects of this game is that it can end suddenly as the rivalry degenerates into a nuclear war in which there are no winners. Well, actually, for the purposes of the rules, whoever triggered the war is a loser. Our proximity to nuclear war is measured by the DEFCON track, where DEFCON 1 is war itself and we start at DEFCON 5 -- peace. DEFCON degrades, that is moves closer to 1, every time somebody coups a battleground, and as a result of several events. So far we had a coup in Iran, so DEFCON is at 4. The first important takeaway is that at DEFCON 2 no-one can coup battleground countries -- they would trigger nuclear war and lose. Also, those events that degrade DEFCON, well they become literally unplayable at DEFCON 2 -- not just unpleasant, but immediately game-losing. This is why CIA Created is such an awful card: if played by Soviets, it lets the US player conduct operations, including a coup, when the Soviet player is the active player, so if US can find a valid target, Soviets would lose the game. Even worse, CIA cannot be thrown into space, as its a 1-point card, and even on the beginning of the space track only 2+ point cards qualify to help the space program along. The cost then increases to 3+ eventually.

Now, as with most aspects in TS, DEFCON track plays a couple of additional roles. Firstly, as you can see from the picture above, as DEFCON degrades, certain regions are locked down for coups and realignment, actually serving as a means of protection. I currently control Italy, a battleground with a stability rating only of 2, is I don't want that couped, I better ensure DEFCON never rises back to 5 again. Moreover, I actually want DEFCON to degrade further, so that I can expand safely out of Australia:



I need to get to Thailand, but I have to go via Malaysia. Until DEFCON is at 3, all this is open to be couped, but if its at 3 or lower, I can safely expand out. Do note -- until I have influence in this region, the only way for Soviets to get there is via special card play. Well, actually there is a way to come in from the north, via Pakistan, India and Burma, but it takes a while.

Finally, there is the issue of Military Operations. Every time you carry out a coup, the point value of your card goes towards MilOps, which you are said to have "conducted" this turn. Some war cards, like the Arab-Israeli war also give superpowers MilOps for this turn. MilOps score victory points at the end of turn and reset, but they do so in a weird combination with DEFCON. DEFCON's final status at the end of the turn is that turns "requirement" for MilOps -- every point of the requirement that is unfulfilled, you lose a point. Both sides can lose points, but of course that would have 0 net effect, because the game is 2-player. Basically, if we are at peace, the game gives a very strong motivation to conduct coups (currently we need 4 MilOps each, and I only have 3, so -1 for me).

After all this is done, at the start of a new turn, DEFCON improves 1 level. In most games, DEFCON spends its time going from 2 at the end of turn to 3 at the start and immediately back to 2 as USSR uses its first-mover advantage to coup a battleground. US, consequently, has to find a coup targets over the course of the turn, sometimes in tactically irrelevant places in LatAm or Africa, just to make up the MilOps requirement or lose 2 points.