Twilight Struggle (1 November 2009)

Anne is happy because she won game 3. For the third time she got the scoring cards but this time she managed to mostly make them useful to her. She got to 18VP in turn 4 before I pulled back 4VP from her. But in turn 5 she got to 20.

Twilight Struggle (26 October 2009)

Anne and played again yesterday. This time the game ended at the beginning of turn 4. I was aiming for control of Europe as a way to a quick victory, which I didn't achieve. The Europe score card came up twice (in Anne's hand) which annoyed her as it was a nett 5 VP to me each time. Anne was doing well in Asia and while we were evens points-wise in the ME, she probably had the better long term position. I was getting a lot of her events so I rushed up the Space race for another 7 VP (man in Earth Orbit) and as turn 3 came to an end I speculatively grabbed a bunch of weak African countries.

At the start of turn 4 I was on 16 VP and was dealt the Africa scoring card. Anne felt a bit jipped at how quickly it ended. Nett 7 VP for me.

Obviously quite a bit of luck was involved!

Twilight Struggle (18-20 October 2009)

We started playing Twilight Struggle on Sunday night and played 2 moves on Monday night and finished on Tuesday.

The game went the whole 10 turns, and I (the USA) won with 9 points.

The final regional scores were:

Asia 7-6 to USA
Middle East 3-10 to USSR
Africa 3-3
Europe 8-3 to USA
Central America 5-2 to USA
South America 4-3 to USA
(The US finished with the China card and had 5 VP before the final scoring)

Anne thought it was easier to understand than 1960 and she is keen to play again now that she understands it.

At the end of the 9th turn I had control of Europe (but no Europe Scoring Card) but even though NATO was in play the USSR clawed back to the point where neither of us had domination. Nobody had domination in Africa or South America either.

Apart from one or perhaps two scoring cards very early on in the game Anne had all the scoring cards, some of which she used quite well but in other cases I could deduce she had them and concentrate my efforts to minimize the effects. She found the scoring cards limiting as it was an action she couldn't use for gain position.

She dominated the Space Race almost getting to the end while I only got half way. I think she only failed one roll whereas I failed at least 66% of my Space Race rolls.

Through the mid-game we were playing the Influence rules wrong in that we didn't use 2 Ops points to add influence in countries controlled by our opponents. From turn 6 we realised our mistake and reverted to the real rules.

I found the Realignment rolls the most random feature of the game, whereas I liked the Coup mechanic (the idea that it is easy to do a coup in a country with a stability of 1 or 2 but very difficult in a country with a stability of 3 or 4 makes thematic sense).

The USSR scored well early and then the US made a comeback. Neither of us got close to 20 VP but that might have been due to the mid game where we were playing a rule wrong. It is also possible that we played a scoring rule wrong occasionally. For some reason at one point we both thought that Domination meant that you had to have at more Battle ground states and more non-Battle ground states. On the whole I don't think it made much difference.

I think it is harder to pick who is doing well compared with 1960, but Anne thinks the reverse, she finds it hard to pick who is winning in 1960.