GMT GamesTwilight Struggle Deluxe Edition

One-Line Review: Twilight Struggle is the game Risk wishes it could be as it cries itself to sleep at night.Welcome back everyone! This week, we're headed back to 1945 to kick off a game of Twilight Struggle; my absolute favorite game. Ideologies will clash, dictators will rise and fall, man will step foot on the moon, and one superpower will emerge victorious!It's been a long road, but World War II has finally ended. Humanity breathes a little easier as the world's nations begin to pick up the pieces, but the respite doesn't last very long. As the dust settles, two superpowers emerge from the wreckage poised at the start of a new age; a nuclear age. Armed with the power of the Atom, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics hold the fate of the world in their hands.It may come as no surprise to you that I'm a huge history nerd. The Cold War is a really interesting topic to study because the Superpowers weren't fighting for land or resources, but for influence; they were fighting for the hearts and mind of the people. Shadow wars, spies, dictators and coups litter the timeline of the Cold War, but the thing that's always really stood out most to me is the fear.For the first time, the threat of global thermonuclear war was hanging over everyone's head. People built bomb shelters under their homes, children grew up learning to duck and cover, and most telling of all, there was a Doomsday Clock. Every new piece of foreign policy, every troop movement, every new technological advance, every day had the potential to move us closer to complete and utter destruction. I didn't live through the Cold War, but I can tell just from reading about it that it was terrifying.Twilight Struggle brings this feeling to your tabletop. Playing Twilight Struggle, you feel like you're balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff with no easy way to back down. You feel the stress of what it's like to lead a nation during a time when everything you do can be viewed as an act of war. It is in creating this feeling that Twilight Struggle completely succeeds.Twilight Struggle is a game of influence and ideology. There's no fighting and no conquering; not directly, anyway. Each player tries to spread their influence among world nations, scoring points when their influence in a region outweighs their opponent's.Each game of Twilight Struggle begins with the setup phase. The US and the USSR each start the game with some influence spread across the globe. Each player also receives some influence they get to place where they think it will benefit them the most based on their starting hand (in Western Europe for the USA and Eastern Europe for the Soviets). In this, Twilight Struggle resembles the many aggressive and defensive setups seen in Chess. There's a whole slew of articles over at BoardGameGeek that simply cover the merits (or lack thereof) of each setup.Each player maintains a hand of Event Cards that get replenished each turn. These ards are separated into three decks (Early War, Mid-War, and Late War) that are added to the game as play continues to simulate the passage of time. On each Event Card is printed an event and an Operations Value. On a player's turn, they may play a card for its event (removing it from the game if it's a one-time event like Castro taking power in Cuba) or for its Operations Value.Events usually have an effect that occurs immediately like the USSR gaining influence in Cuba or the USA advancing in the Space Race. Operations Values, however, allow players to gain influence in three ways: (1) Players can add influence to any country they already influence or adjacent to a country they influence, up to the Operations Value, (2) Players can attempt a Coup in any country in the world to remove opponent's influence and potentially add their own, and (3) Players can attempt a Realignment in order to weaken their opponent's influence over a country.Players can also discard cards from their hand to try to advance in the Space Race. The Space Race provides advantages to the player that's ahead, but also functions as the game's discard mechanic.There's more to the rules, of course, but those are the basics.Twilight Struggle really is a brilliant game. Each of its mechanics adds something great to the experience but I think that the best thing about TS is the tension that it creates.For both players, there are fires all over the world that need to be put out, and many problems are calling for your attention at once, but you only have so many turns to solve them. The USSR player might agonize over whether to commit more influence to Europe before the region is scored or to focus on the Middle East instead where the US is threatening to cut off access to Asia. The US player meanwhile fears the Soviet incursion into Latin America but is conflicted over whether to protect his interests in Asia or South America.You'll find yourself feeling like the President and the director of the CIA all rolled into one as you attempt to coup an opponent's regime or build up influence in Africa so your opponent doesn't expect your sweeping realignment of Europe on your next turn. I'm not sure that I've done justice to Twilight Struggle in this review, but I find that I can't recommend this game enough. If you're a history buff or a fan of strategy games, Twilight Struggle is a must but I encourage everyone to give it a try if you get a chance.Twilight Struggle is game for two players that takes between one and three hours to finish. It's sitting pretty in the #1 Board Game spot as ranked by players over at BoardGameGeek.

This is one of my favorite board games. It gets you involved, it gets you stressed, it gets you jubilant at things that go well, and crushed when the situation is bleak. In other words, it's the Cold War, all over again, on a board! Besides that, this game will mention neat things about history, and the strategy will get you thinking. This isn't a "win by the rules" game. It isn't a "win by the people" game. It's a "win by compromise" game.This truly is an excellent game. However, it is involved to learn the first time, so if you're playing for the first time you should be determined to put in the effort. It's best to learn with an experienced player who goes a bit easier on you to teach you, or, if you know how to play (or can put a solid hour in to read the rules), pull a friend in and go easy to get them hooked into learning it!The goal is simple. Score 20 points. Or, score the most points by the end. And whatever you do, don't start nuclear war.The actual method of doing that is more complex. You have a deck of cards. Cards are essentially of 4 types. Soviet events, US events, Neutral events, and Scoring. Scoring cards when you play them let you score a region (and they must be played during the turn). Apart from that other cards can be played one of two ways: for the event, or for the points.Here is where the most clever mechanic of the game comes in. I'm the US player. I have a Soviet event card in my hand. Hey, I'll just play it for points instead of the event! Except that when you do this, the event happens anyways. The game literally forces history to happen as you play. The events are split into three decks - early, mid, and late war (and each is shuffled in throughout the game).But that's also where the genius of the game lies, and the stress of the game. You have to compromise. You have to do things which benefit your enemy. And yet, you still have to find a way to mitigate, and hopefully come out on top, even as you play the event that brings your enemy to the brink of victory. Have I played turns where the US player had entirely Soviet events, and the Soviet player had entirely US events? Yes, yes I have. Those are the most interesting rounds, and the most entertaining. The other dilemma: what if you need the operations points (and it's the max amount), but the event is yours and also really good? The game is a game of compromises, and balancing.Think - if people played this, and were used to a give-and-take with their opponents, compromising and yet still achieving, how would discourse look between people? How would politics look? If only we realized, as you must in this game, that the ideal and the perfect are out of reach and aiming for them ends only in disappointment. Instead, we must work together and do our best. And this game - despite you and your opponent being enemies in the Cold War, teaches you to work together even which fighting each other.Again, it takes some time to learn. But every person that I've taught the game (you don't need to read the rule book to learn the game if you play with someone who knows it already) has enjoyed it and become hooked, even if they weren't previously incredibly interested in detailed or complicated strategy games. By mid-war, they're giving me a run for my money (or countries!).Incredible game. Recommend 10/10.