TL;DR -- Any interest in a top-rated card-driven strategy game of global domination? (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12333...t-struggle)
In the aftermath of the Second World War, United States did successfully drown Europe in Marshall Plan aid, but it was the Soviet commissars who got to the Nazi science elite first, capturing them even in the last minutes of preparation for a westwards getaway. The GULAG can have an amazing effect on the productivity of a most reticent and ideologically opposed inmate and the Red space program was off to a thundering start. Stalin threw out the ridiculous plans for a prohibition on the testing of nuclear weapons, and successfully supported a Tudeh coup against the unstable regime of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, causing the American to switch their attention from the nascent Atlantic military alliance to bolster the discredited shah. Alas, their efforts were for naught, the Marxists were entrenched enough that the desperate attempt of the army to seize key installations ran into mass popular riots, and the soldiers quickly turned their guns onto the CIA-sponsored generals. The successes of 'the people' in throwing off the shackles of a Western-imposed monarchy became a rallying point for decolonization movements worldwide, with the red flag raised up in Malaysia, Burma, Botswana and Morocco.
Emboldened by the failures of the West to protect its interests, the Egyptian government nationalized the country's greatest single asset, the Suez Canal. In an attempt to rebuild its collapsing credibility, the US joined in with the Soviet demands to repudiate the Israeli attempts, backed by France and Britain both, to seize the 'international' property back — this earned the desired points with the regimes of Jordan and Lebanon, but embarrassed and toppled the Western governments, as well turning Israel away from Washington. Unbeknownst to the American press, which widely saw the resolution of the Suez crisis a failure, US policy towards Egypt forced the Soviets to scrap their plans for promotion of a pan-Arab military intervention against Israel, instead turning to use their support base in Malaysia to organise a massive expansion of the Communist activities in Thailand, forcing the king to come to the table in Moscow in fear of losing the country altogether. In the meantime, the US took care to deal with the fallout of the Suez fiasco in the UK and engaged in deeper talks with Britain's North American Dominion in pursuit of a long-term strategic goal of establishing a continent-wide air defense system...
Just half a turn from this excellent boardgame, only slightly spiced up and made to fit a story. For those who don't know it, TS is a legendary card-driven strategy game of competition in superpower influence from the Second World War to the dusk of Gorbachev's reign. The gameplay goes soundly against the dominant 'everything should be fun' paradigm with about half the actions you take doing some very real damage to your position — the player's major choices are when to face that damage and what to do about it. The closest analogy I can think of is playing with a Magic deck randomly stuffed full of cards carrying mandatory life and sacrifice costs, which you are forced to play when drawn (only one card is carried from turn to turn and the hand is replenished full of lovely, lovely events every turn). The game has a variety of online implementations, from the stripped down to the visual. I don't think it's ever been discussed on RB, but TS strikes me as something that would work perfectly for these forums -- the strategy is quite deep (of course, you have to know the deck, but there isn't that much of it to know), the reasoning behind the choices made by the opposition is very fun to read post factum, and the thematic content just screams to be crafted into a narrative. There are, no doubt veterans of TS here (I'm not), but this is something that could played for fun and written about at any level. I'm not gonna lie, even a prospect of an RB demogame for TS and accompanying reportage makes me disconcertingly happy — that's probably unrealistics, but if anyone wants to play, I'd be happy to.
More here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFfVqRmDLkI
And some appropriate reviews:
"This game has no right being number 1. This game feels like I'm repeatedly punishing myself for choosing to play it. I'm not into that, I play games to enjoy myself. I can handle games where bad things happen to you when they are your own damn fault like Trajan or Dungeon Petz, however this is just a bad thing that happens to you and never lets up. Better off avoiding altogether."
"Brilliant theme and beautiful map, but too strategic and difficult for me. Also, don't think it's fun if you have to memorise cards to be able to play better. I didn't finish a single game."
"One of the few games that left me actually feeling angry about the game itself after playing."
(Also, Brass. Much less fun to report, though.)
In the aftermath of the Second World War, United States did successfully drown Europe in Marshall Plan aid, but it was the Soviet commissars who got to the Nazi science elite first, capturing them even in the last minutes of preparation for a westwards getaway. The GULAG can have an amazing effect on the productivity of a most reticent and ideologically opposed inmate and the Red space program was off to a thundering start. Stalin threw out the ridiculous plans for a prohibition on the testing of nuclear weapons, and successfully supported a Tudeh coup against the unstable regime of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, causing the American to switch their attention from the nascent Atlantic military alliance to bolster the discredited shah. Alas, their efforts were for naught, the Marxists were entrenched enough that the desperate attempt of the army to seize key installations ran into mass popular riots, and the soldiers quickly turned their guns onto the CIA-sponsored generals. The successes of 'the people' in throwing off the shackles of a Western-imposed monarchy became a rallying point for decolonization movements worldwide, with the red flag raised up in Malaysia, Burma, Botswana and Morocco.
Emboldened by the failures of the West to protect its interests, the Egyptian government nationalized the country's greatest single asset, the Suez Canal. In an attempt to rebuild its collapsing credibility, the US joined in with the Soviet demands to repudiate the Israeli attempts, backed by France and Britain both, to seize the 'international' property back — this earned the desired points with the regimes of Jordan and Lebanon, but embarrassed and toppled the Western governments, as well turning Israel away from Washington. Unbeknownst to the American press, which widely saw the resolution of the Suez crisis a failure, US policy towards Egypt forced the Soviets to scrap their plans for promotion of a pan-Arab military intervention against Israel, instead turning to use their support base in Malaysia to organise a massive expansion of the Communist activities in Thailand, forcing the king to come to the table in Moscow in fear of losing the country altogether. In the meantime, the US took care to deal with the fallout of the Suez fiasco in the UK and engaged in deeper talks with Britain's North American Dominion in pursuit of a long-term strategic goal of establishing a continent-wide air defense system...
Just half a turn from this excellent boardgame, only slightly spiced up and made to fit a story. For those who don't know it, TS is a legendary card-driven strategy game of competition in superpower influence from the Second World War to the dusk of Gorbachev's reign. The gameplay goes soundly against the dominant 'everything should be fun' paradigm with about half the actions you take doing some very real damage to your position — the player's major choices are when to face that damage and what to do about it. The closest analogy I can think of is playing with a Magic deck randomly stuffed full of cards carrying mandatory life and sacrifice costs, which you are forced to play when drawn (only one card is carried from turn to turn and the hand is replenished full of lovely, lovely events every turn). The game has a variety of online implementations, from the stripped down to the visual. I don't think it's ever been discussed on RB, but TS strikes me as something that would work perfectly for these forums -- the strategy is quite deep (of course, you have to know the deck, but there isn't that much of it to know), the reasoning behind the choices made by the opposition is very fun to read post factum, and the thematic content just screams to be crafted into a narrative. There are, no doubt veterans of TS here (I'm not), but this is something that could played for fun and written about at any level. I'm not gonna lie, even a prospect of an RB demogame for TS and accompanying reportage makes me disconcertingly happy — that's probably unrealistics, but if anyone wants to play, I'd be happy to.
More here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFfVqRmDLkI
And some appropriate reviews:
"This game has no right being number 1. This game feels like I'm repeatedly punishing myself for choosing to play it. I'm not into that, I play games to enjoy myself. I can handle games where bad things happen to you when they are your own damn fault like Trajan or Dungeon Petz, however this is just a bad thing that happens to you and never lets up. Better off avoiding altogether."
"Brilliant theme and beautiful map, but too strategic and difficult for me. Also, don't think it's fun if you have to memorise cards to be able to play better. I didn't finish a single game."
"One of the few games that left me actually feeling angry about the game itself after playing."
(Also, Brass. Much less fun to report, though.)
Added a TL;DR
