Twilight Struggle

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Twilight Struggle

Twilight Struggle
Designer Ananda Gupta
Jason Matthews
Publisher GMT Games
Players 2
Age range 13 and up
Setup time 5–15 minutes
Playing time 3 hours
Random chance Medium (Dice, Cards)
Skills required Strategy
Card Management

BoardGameGeek entry

Twilight Struggle is a card-driven board wargame for two players, with its theme taken from the Cold War. One player plays the USA, and the other plays the USSR. The game takes its title from a John F. Kennedy quote:

"Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle..."

Contents

[edit] Gameplay

The victory point system in Twilight Struggle is very innovative in that there is only one victory point track and one victory point marker for both the US and the USSR. The track extends from -20 (complete USSR victory) to 20 (complete US victory), and the victory point marker starts in the middle at 0. The goal for each player is to have the victory point marker reach their extreme on the track or by having the victory point marker on their side of the track (negative for USSR, positive for US) at the end of the ten turns. A player can also win the game by having control of Europe when the Europe scoring card is played. Additionally, either player can also lose the game by, intentionally or not, starting a nuclear war and thus instantly forfeiting.

The 103 cards in the game have two main features, events and an operation points value. Each card can generally only be played for one or the other effect, not both. The operation points value allows the player to either place influence in one or more countries, attempt a coup in a country, attempt to realign the status of a country, or advance the Superpower's position in the Space Race. The events represent a specific historical event such as the creation of the CIA, the Berlin Blockade, or the Cuban Missile Crisis, or might stand for a more general situation such as a nuclear test ban, anti-war protests, or the Olympic Games.

Influence is used to align countries to favor one Superpower or the other. Each country has a number that represents the country's stability, and a player must have this many more influence points in the country to control it. For example, India has a stability of 3, so if the USA player has 2 influence points and the USSR has 5, the USSR controls India, but if the numbers were 2 and 4, the difference would be less than 3 and neither player would control India. Coups and realignments serve to reduce the opponent's influence in an area. Coups are usually more effective but supporting a coup in certain key states will increase nuclear tensions. Having enough influence to control a country does not instantly score VP, but contributes toward "presence", "domination", or "control" of an entire region (Middle East, Central America, Europe, etc), which will score VP when that region's scoring card is played. Advancing along the Space Race to higher levels of space technology will also periodically score VP. Some events will also score VP.

Events will help either the USA or the USSR. If a player plays a card with an event associated with the opponent for anything other than the space race, the event occurs for the other superpower, so a player may be forced to help his opponent in order to help himself. Both players must also keep a watch on the DEFCON level. Should a play be made that drops DEFCON to 1, it ends the game with a nuclear release, with the responsible player losing the game.

The cards in the game are separated into three categories: Early, Middle, and Late War. Only Early War cards are dealt out in the first few turns, later on the Middle and then the Late cards are shuffled into the draw pile. This organizes the historical events into a general timeline, so that the US-Japan Mutual Defense Pact is likely to happen several turns before the Cuban Missile Crisis, which usually happens before Ronald Reagan's " Evil Empire" speech, but the specific order will vary from game to game. Sometimes even these general timelines will change, because players may use an Early War card as operations instead of as an event, only to have the card resurface (most cards recycle through the deck after play) late in the game.

[edit] Awards

Twilight Struggle won the 2005 Charles S. Roberts award for Best Modern Era boardgame,[1] and the 2006 International Gamers Award for Best Wargame and Best 2 Player Game.[2] It was the first game ever to win two International Gamers Awards.[3] Twilight Struggle also received a 2006 nomination for the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming.[3][4]

[edit] See also

Cold War Portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ Charles S. Roberts Award Winners (2005).
  2. ^ Twilight Struggle. BoardGameGeek. Retrieved on 2007-07-17.
  3. ^ a b Best Boardgames of 2006. About.com. Retrieved on 2007-07-17.
  4. ^ The Diana Jones Award 2006. The Diana Jones Award. Retrieved on 2007-07-18.

[edit] External links