“Making friends and uniting communities one influence marker at a time.”

Good day gamers,

I want to thank my friend Josie for coming over on Memorial Day late afternoon and evening and indulging me with a game of Twilight Struggle.

Twilight Struggle is always tough to get to the table, for a few reasons:

• It’s a tough game to teach with so many intricate interactions in order to score points.
• Someone who is experienced in the game generally will have some advantages.
• It can be a long game. If it’s not ended early with someone getting to 20 points, it could go three hours or more.
• It’s only a 2-player game, so you can’t play with a group of friends.

However, it is probably one of my top twenty favorite games for the following reasons:

• It can be classified as a wargame, since it deals with the Cold War. (I like wargames.)
• There is a lot to learn about history from the game. Each card represents an actual event that happened during the Cold War. ( I like history.)
• It’s difficult to learn, play, and win. I like a challenge in my board games.
• It’s one of those games that epic events can happen that you talk about for years to come. (Like my one point win in Avalon Hill’s classic Advanced Civilization or like my friend losing his entire large fleet in Twilight Imperium only because he lost a council vote.)

My friend Josie came over on Memorial Day and not only did he teach us the latest iteration of a game he is working on, but he didn’t flinch when I suggested Twilight Struggle, even after I gave him a rundown about the game.

In our game, Josie played the USSR and did very well in Asia and Central America. I had the USA and controlled most of the Middle East and was starting to gain in Europe. Interestingly, the USSR had control of Japan almost the entire game as well as Mexico and Cuba and the USA never got control of Israel. So weird. Every game can be so different.

Anyhow, in Game Turn 10, Josie was ahead by 6VP. Once all regions are scored at the end of the game, wherever the victory point marker has swung, they are declared the winner. It looked like Josie was going to win the game with control over more regions than I had. So, I went for domination in Europe and was getting very close. Domination in Europe would be an auto-win. With two cards left with 4 and 3 operations points, I figured out that it was possible I could pull this win out from the ‘jaws of defeat’.

And then Josie played the ‘Wargames’ card. Wow…just wow. Wargames lets you end the game at the play of this card as long as you give your opponent 6VP. So, the VP marker was moved down to zero and the game ended in a draw. Wow! Good play Josie!!!

Great Fun! Epic Game! Down to the wire. Congrats to the USSR in making it out of the Cold War on equal footing with the USA.

Check out the photos below.

See you soon,

• Game Master Dave