Yesterday my wife and I went hunting for a new board game.
We have been playing the likes of Risk, Ticket to Ride and, our old fall-back,
Carcassonne for many years now. We wanted something that worked well for two
players, as those other games seem to be more fun when you have a larger group.
We did some research on the net and this game turned up everywhere:
We picked it up a Games Paradise in Sydney and cracked it
open as soon as we got the little ones off to sleep. After a solid 3 hours of
play, obviously drawn out as we learned all of the mechanics, I feel like I
know enough to give a quick review.
Firstly, Twilight Struggle is not about vampires that
sparkle in the sunlight (thank goodness). It is a simulation of the Cold War
years that utilises a Risk-like atlas and a card based system for “combat” and
events. I hesitate to say those last couple of things, because it goes so far
beyond the global context of Risk and “combat” in such an eloquent and
sophisticated way, that I may as well come up with an entirely new vernacular.
Play it and you will see what I mean.
The board has a few different features that allow you to
track progress through the game. It has a Turn Record Track for the ten turns
of the game (3 early war, 4 mid-war and 3 late war). The turns get longer and
the deck of cards evolves as the game does, which keeps you on your toes. There
is a Round track which records which round of the turn you are up to. Each
player gets 6 rounds per turn, which increases as the game progresses (7 mid-war,
8 late war). As players spread their influence across the globe and combat each
other’s influence, the DEFCON Status track (below) records how close you are to
triggering a nuclear holocaust. It is amazing how quickly this thing can
escalate! In one round we cranked it all the way up to DEFCON 2 (and suffered
the consequences) before I played a Nuclear Test Ban event that cooled things
down.
Instead of playing cards as Events you can use their Action Points value
to increase your influence in countries, reduce your opponents influence, incite
a coup de tat, or make advances in the Space Race. Coups will move you up the
Required Military Operations track whilst successful research moves you up the
Space Race track (unlocking various benefits). Finally there is the Victory
Points track, which can be manipulated in various ways and is set up like a 40
point tug of war.
The value of all of these things, including the historical
events on the cards, is so much more than the sum of its parts. It is
down-right eerie how this game reflects such complicated history and
geopolitical struggle. You find yourself trying to influence countries just
because your opponent is trying to. You cut off ideologically different states by
influencing their neighbours, then try to unsettle them. You incite coups in
unstable states because it is easier to make a difference there (Afghanistan,
Iraq, Vietnam, Panama, Argentina, Pakistan etc.). You avoid provocative attacks
in some states in favour for attacks that will not raise the DEFCON level. You wait
for opportune events to make changes in stable states. You perform military operations
just to keep up with your enemy’s number of operations (not because you value
the actual outcome).
Interestingly, triggering a nuclear war ends the game (and
severely punishes the person who “pulls the trigger”). The designers state that
this most accurately reflects the consequence of nuclear war and within the
boundaries of this mechanism, the game is truly scintillating. I would give it 4/5, but only because I don't know what the endgame is like. This could very well be a 5/5 game.
After 3 hours, my wife and I are tied on points despite the victory point track
getting a tremendous workout. The Ruskies are, however, hammering me in the Space Race. Who knows what tonight will bring…
M4cr0
