Me & Keith arrange two games of Twilight Struggle the penultimate week before Christmas - nothing like a vicious struggle for global domination to put you in the mood of festive shennigans!
This is, at the moment, easily my favourite game despite my affection for Euros such as Pillars Of The Earth, Power Grid & Le Havre. Perhaps it has something to do with the elegant, yet ingenious card system as I seem to gravitate towards games that have cards for some reason.
Keith was new to Twilight Struggle & after a run-through of the rules, we decided he'd be the USSR in the first game since there is something more of a slight advantage to the USSR in the early stages. I was hoping that if I could hold out until the end of the Mid war, then the balance might shift to the US during Late war.
I don't remember a lot about the actually development of card play, but Asia was a massive tug-of-war for control of countries. I had started a build-up in SE Asia during the end of Early war, since I knew the SE Asia scoring would be coming up in the next 1-3 turns & this can yield quite a few points. Keith was countering a lot of my moves & soon swung control of the region in his favour - I began to wonder if he had been dealt the Asia scoring card on Turn 3, but it turned out he thought I had it! Oh well, this set him in good steed as he scored quite a fair few points when the SE Asia scoring card came up. I think Keith also had a slightly better position in Europe as well, so I wasn't feeling as confident as I'd hoped.
The second reason this was memorable is because twice, when Keith was 2 or 3 points shy of a 20pts victory, he played a card on the Space Race track & a separate event card which both needed a 50-50 dice roll to get the points... both times he rolled wrongly! I was feeling somewhat awkward for him as if the game ended in a victory for me, it was feel a bit of a lucky win iven his back luck. However, as we enter Turn 8 & Late war he was able to degrade DEFCON to Level 2 with 'Cuban Missle Crisis' followed by 'Wargames', of which the latter allows you to end the game after handing your opponent 6vps. He was comfortably in the lead, so did just that.
Excellent game, though not quite as good as his shortbread again!
We had a 2nd game two days later & Keith decided he wanted to try the US. This one seemed a much tenser affair with the USSR (courtesy of me!) aggressively attacking Europe & quickly rolling in the VPs. SE Asia was yet again closely contested although the USSR didn't quite get as many points this time. The USSR also took strong control over South & Central America, so Keith was understandably looking a bit edgy!He did manage to pull back control of Europe, which I hadn't notice under excitment of a wee bit of clever card play that would have let me be one card away from victory... then he played the Europe scoring card & scored about 9 or 10pts. I'm sure my face was a picture when I realised what he had done *tut tut*!
The game progressed until Turn 10, with mostly points slowly going to the USSR once more. We were hit by deja vu as the 'Cuban Missle Crisis'/'Wargames' combination ended the game yet again with a comfortable win for the USSR.
Ending the game on two consecutive plays in that manner was a bit bizarre for me because, in about 15 games, I've never had a game end like that - then it happens twice in a row!
Still, two excellent games played.
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