Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore

Create an account  

 
Spoiler TS#1 B4cchus is CIA's latest success

Sareln scored the Middle East, getting 4 points and I went for the gamble with France.

[Image: 1BqsyazZ.png]

This is mostly for a lack of alternatives and a low-scoring hand. Now, even without de Gaulle, Sareln could fight me in Europe directly by placing influence, but he would have to spend a lot of points, as Marshall Plan helped me reinforce and overprotect my battlegrounds in Europe. Remember, placing 1 point of influence in a controlled country costs 2 action points, and control is only broken once the difference between our levels of influence is less than the country's stability rating. The biggest problem is that my last remaining playable card is The Cambridge Five, themed after the UK spy ring -- a 2 pointer (weak) and a Soviet event, which make me reveal scoring cards in hand, if I have any, and lets the Soviets place 1 influence in any one region named on those scoring cards. So, if he does fight me in Europe, my only response is this card, which is effectively a 1-pointer, as 1 of its 2 points would have to be spent counteracting the event's influence placement.

Bottomline, I don't really expect to score domination in Europe, but Sareln would have to spend a lot of action points to prevent me from getting it. If I do get it, however, it would be fantastic — US is not meant to be scoring points at this stage in the game. Ideally, I would like Sareln to pursue some other objective (maybe in Asia?), play my Europe Scoring, and then use the Cambridge Five to coup a random battleground, reduce DEFCON to protect from coups in Europe next turn, and get MilOps.
DL: PB12 | Playing: PB13
Reply

No De Gaulle. Sareln seems a little screwed on cards. He played Truman Doctrine, a 1-coster US one-time event which lets me remove all Soviet influence from one uncontrolled country in Europe. One of those potential bombs that actually gets defused with little effect most games, in this one, however, I get to throw the Soviets out of Yugoslavia, and if you look at the map above, you will see that this denies them all access to Southern Europe -- not a bad result, albeit they will soon get the Romanian abdication event, which will give a somewhat quicker way back into the Med.

Sareln used his 1 point to coup Panama -- the lone country in Central and South America that starts with any influence. Panama has a stability of 2, so the coup proceeded with a large -3 penalty. Sareln rolled a 4, so now nobody has any influence in these two regions -- but US is adjacent to Mexico, so I could start working south from there, whilst Soviets will get Fidel, giving them control of Cuba. There will be more region oriented events in the "Mid War" cards which are shuffled in at the start of Turn 4.

With these events making Panama neutral, I am again very glad to be holding De-Stalinization.
DL: PB12 | Playing: PB13
Reply

Great thread, thanks for going through the various mechanics along with discussing your plans!
Reply

Time for a strategically big decision, and I am at a bit of a loss. This is the last action round of the turn, before our hands are refilled and DEFCON improves 1 level. We will also then play a new event as a headline. As US moves second, this is normally the time to do something annoying, to present USSR with competing priorities on their first action round. For his part, Sareln played Korean War, a one-shot USSR event which "conquers" South Korea for communists, turning all US influence into USSR influence on a successful roll of 4-6, modified by US controlling Japan and Taiwan. Sareln chose to keep the event in the deck and just played the card for points, placing 2 influence in South Korea. Here are some things to consider for us (we have the 2-point Cambridge Five to play):

DEFCON: currently at 3, will improve to 4. At DEFCON 4, two battlegrounds coups are possible in a turn, which takes away the urgency of doing on. Conversely, if we degrade DEFCON to 2, there can only be one battleground coup and thus somewhat of race to get it.

Thailand access: we spaced Decolonization and are holding De-stalinization, this means that USSR has only one way into south-east asia -- Vietnam Revolts. We could place some influence in Malaysia now, which would give us the ability to take Thailand directly on the first action round of the next turn, but that would also make Malaysia a sweet coup target for the Soviets. If we do this, we need to create some other urgent situation to make sure that if Sareln gets Malaysia, we get some compensation elsewhere.

SK protection: now that Korea War is in discard, we could just pile 2 points into South Korea. Sareln will still be able to take it on his first action by playing a 4-pointer (and as USSR he is holding "The China Card", which gives 5 points if spent entirely in Asia, but gets passed to the opponent once played)

Control-breaking: something that's fun for the US to do is pay the penalty for playing into a controlled country, just to break that control. The the USSR has the choice of either fixing that, or doing whatever it is they planned to do. In our case, we have a decentish target for that action in Israel -- placing influence there will give us a pathway to Egypt (and through it, Libya), but even better, if USSR doesn't fix control, we can conduct realignment rolls in Middle East with a decent bonus, first in Jordan (at +1) and, if successul, in Israel itself (at +1 again). Realignment rolls in Jordan are particularly fun as they will be completely riskless. In Israel too, USSR's downside (4 points lost at max) is much bigger than ours (1 point lost max). The biggest issue with this approach is that ME has been scored already and might not be scored again until the mid-war, whilst Asia will be scored within the next two rounds.

So, practical options:

1. Break control in Israel. DEFCON goes to 4, coups and realignment in Asia will be possible until a battleground coup occurs. USSR could choose between taking South Korea and suffering massively in ME, or fixing Israel (only costs 1 point after all), and placing more influence elsewhere, but in any case not enough to take Korea. He will probably choose the latter, which would open fun possibilites with regards to Asia, but actually there aren't either good coup targets for us, nor realignment targets.

2. 2 influence Malaysia, or 1 in Malaysia, 1 elsewhere. DEFCON goes to 4, Malaysia will be open to a coup, but if he spends points on a coup, we can take South Korea. If he takes South Korea, we can coup something to lower defcon (maybe even South Korea), and then take Thailand at leisure.

3. Coup Iran. We would have a -2 modifier, and he has 4 influence -- so no chance of us getting into Iran, but bear with me. Defcon will be lowered to 2, and then improve to 3. This means only one battleground coup next turn, and we roll 4-5, there will be only 2-1 influence left in Iran, it would be very coupable. So USSR will be forced to coup itself, but there aren't actually good battlegrounds that we hold that are worth couping: only South Africa would be eligible and it has stability 3. Even if USSR coups SA successfully, we will have the chance to take South Korea, and then Thailand over the course of the turn. Even better, Duck and Cover, a US event which degrades DEFCON is still in the deck -- if USSR draw it next turn, and DEFCON starts at 3, they can't even coup anything, nor let us degrade DEFCON further, for the risk of suiciding.

4. Two points in South Korea. USSR can spend 4 to take this battleground on his first action around, and what do we do then? DEFCON will be at 4, so we can't play into Malaysia (open to coup). We could coup Iran with a high-value card, but even we roll a 6, we would only have 2 influence and USSR will have a good chance to coup in back.

Lowering DEFCON seems to be a priority, but I still don't know...
DL: PB12 | Playing: PB13
Reply

What's the MilOps situation? (Does that influence your choice?)
Reply

After Sareln coup'ed Panama, MilOps requirement for the turn lowered to 3, which we both have already fulfilled, so this wasn't a consideration.

The coup failed, I only got a 1. Moreover, in Turn 2 hand I have neither Asia Scoring nor Vietnam Revolts, which is worrying. There are 32 cards in the early war deck, and 30 of them have been drawn, so I pretty much know that what we haven't see yet has to be in Sareln's hand. I had the luck of picking up both neutral 4-pointers -- Red Scare/Purge, which I'm headlining, and Nuclear Test Ban. The event text on the first is huge -- it will give -1 action point value to all cards played this turn by Sareln. The event text on NTB is pretty much non-existent, it improves DEFCON 2 levels, I've never seen that played given that the alternative is 4 ops points. I also got Fidel, so I have the choice of not letting Sareln into Central America, Nasser (gives control of Egypt to USSR, I actually could have conceivably headlined that to threated a coup in Egypt), Olympic Games and Formosan Resolutions (2-pointer non-events both) and finally independent reds -- a powerful card which puts as much influence in any south european country as the USSR has in it, happy to play for its 2 ops points now, to keep it in the deck.

Sareln is left with things like Duck and Cover (3-point Defcon degrader), US/Japan Mutual Defense Pact (4-pointer which give me control of Japan), Five Year PLan (3-pointer with the event forcing USSR to discard a random card, if US event is discarded, it occurs) and of course Asia scoring. Ouch.
DL: PB12 | Playing: PB13
Reply

Sareln headlined Vietnam Revolts, but despite having the +1 modifier on any card using its points entirely in SE Asia, and despite holding the China card (5 points if used entirely in Asia), he decided to spend the first action round scoring Asia, not expanding to get more battlegrounds. My guess is that his hand is really atrocious, even if that's quite unlikely, most of the 2-pointers were given to me. Anyway, to keep the pressure up I played Formosan Resolutions, a 2-pointer US event, to place 1 influence in Malaysia (getting access to Thailand) and 1 in South Korea. The idea is that this gave him a tight choice of taking one battleground but losing the other. Sareln decided to play the China card and tried to overpower me in BOTH places -- he placed 3 in Thailand, over-controlling it, and 1 is South Korea. I responded with Nuclear Test Ban (4 points) -- completing my control of Malaysia (1 point) and putting 3 into South Korea. South Korea now stands at 5-3 to me, it has stability 3, so a majority of 3 is required to take control. I only have 2-pointers remaining in my hand, so if Sareln chooses to continue fighting me in Korea, he can, my hope is that he will chicken. Otherwise, there really is very little to do on the map until the Mid-War. Maybe reinforce my holdings in Europe. If Sareln plays Duck and Cover, degrading Defcon, I may start crawling into Libya via Algeria and Tunisia.
DL: PB12 | Playing: PB13
Reply

The entire second turn was spend as a points-race for control of Asia, with a focus point in Korea, which ended up 9-6 in my favour. My narrow win was mostly due to Sareln needing to decrease DEFCON. He partly had to do it for points from MilOps, partly due to the risk of losing a Middle East battleground to a coup next turn. If DEFCON was allowed increase to 4, coups in Asia would be possible, and I am holding the China Card, which is worth 5 points if played entirely into Asia. So the first thing Sareln would have had to do next turn, is decrease DEFCON to prevent me from couping Thailand with a +1 modifier. However, the only coup available to him is South Africa, with a stability, so not exactly lucrative. Moreover, even after that DEFCON decrease, it would be at 3 and coups would still be possible in the Middle East, and I would go after it actively. So, Sareln decided to coup South Africa right this turn, even though he is under a Purge. He played "De Gaulle Leads France", making me quite happy, and went after SA with a -4 modifier. He managed to roll a 6, actually getting him his first point of influence in Africa. This is actually kinda good for me -- there are now no battlegrounds that I hold that he can coup AT ALL from a DEFCON of 3, so I can safely go after Middle East. Additionally, I have to let this historic event happen:

[Image: 1JiLv6Z3.png]

This isn't too bad. In the Mid-War, US will get a similarly historic "Sadat expels the Soviets", which takes ALL soviet influence out of Egypt. I'm quite happy to let Nasser resolve on my terms, and the sole point of influence, after some thinking, will be spent on re-alignment rolls -- I will try to get Sareln's influence out of South Africa with a 27.8% chance. Either case, Sareln won't have a battleground to coup next turn, but he maybe holding Duck and Cover, which would let him reduce Defcon to 2 on the headline. If he doesn't, my first action will be to coup something in ME.

[Image: 1Jjn4Rqw.png]

I rolled less, so no effect. To get Sareln out of SA, I would have had to roll at least 2 higher than him.

Besides fighting for Korea, Sareln played Blockade*, a nasty 1-point USSR event, which makes me either discard a 3-ops card or higher, or lose all my influence in West Germany. As you may remember, I've been holding onto De-Stalinization, to send it to space on T3 (that way it wouldn't have come back into the deck during the re-shuffle we are about to have). Now, that card got blockaded, so Sareln gets a 50% chance to draw it over the course of the next five turns. A bit annoying, but too bad.
DL: PB12 | Playing: PB13
Reply

On the start of T3, I drew a seriously epic hand:

[Image: 1Jjz3QWy.png]

Firstly, you can see the enormous amounts of points there. Even better, I have "Defectors", a simple but powerful even which, if headlined, cancels the opponents' headline. However, I have something of a tough choice here -- I re-drew the Red Scare/Purge after the re-shuffle, as you can see, but I also have Containment* which would add +1 to all my Ops card to a maximum of 4, which would be just perfect for this hand full of 3-ofs. Not sure what I will play yet, but Defectors seem a likely candidate due to their low opportunity cost.
DL: PB12 | Playing: PB13
Reply

Just as a note, here are cards we haven't seen yet that Sareln must have in his hand:

Warsaw Pact -- 3* (adds up to 4 influence to East European countries, no more than two per country, played as Ops by USSR, as also has the effect of removing ALL US influence from East Europe.)
Socialist Governments -- 3 (removes up to 4 influence from West Europe, massive headline)
NATO -- 4* (prevents coups and realignments in Europe, a non-event most of the time)
US/Japan Mutual Defense Pact -- 4* (gives me enough influence in Japan for control, removes all Soviet influence)
Romanian Abdication -- 1* (does the reverse for Romania)

Conversely, Sareln knows I have Duck and Cover, Containment, East European Unrest and NORAD.

Now, if Sareln has drawn Europe Scoring, he will headline Socialist Governments and score Europe at +1 to himself. There is also some WIFOM with Defectors, so he might headline a scoring card (which would also be cancelled). Hmmmm.... I think I will headline Defectors -- a chance to cancel Soc. Governments or many of the nasty cards he may have re-drawn, such as Decolonization or ME scoring is significant.
DL: PB12 | Playing: PB13
Reply



Forum Jump: