Twilight Struggle Board Game First Impressions

The Twilight Struggle box says 180 minutes, only takes me 10 minutes to lose.

Rack ’em up, let’s go again!

In 1945, unlikely allies toppled Hitler’s war machine, while humanity’s most devastating weapons forced the Japanese Empire to its knees in a storm of fire. Where once there stood many great powers, there then stood only two. The world had scant months to sigh its collective relief before a new conflict threatened.

Unlike the titanic struggles of the preceding decades, this conflict would be waged not primarily by soldiers and tanks, but by spies and politicians, scientists and intellectuals, artists and traitors.

This 2 player game is best known for being the top-rated board game on Board Game Geek. Twilight Struggle is a card-driven war game based on the Cold war. Players play either the USA or USSR superpowers.

Gameplay

The game is played over 10 rounds (if it gets to 10 rounds). Each round starts with the DEFCON level going up by one. (up is good, not bad) Players can make the DEFCON level drop towards an all-out Nuclear War. If that happens, and it’s your turn, you lose.

Then cards are dealt and while cards have multiple uses, each player simultaneously reveals a card for its effect in the ‘Headline phase‘ which only uses the event portion of it. The cards themselves are aligned with US, and USSR or can be neutral. As the US player, I often had a hand full of USSR cards so you always have to be careful how you play your hand.

Action Phase

The action phase consists of players taking turns to play cards and depending which of the 5 actions you take will depend on how the card is used.

You can use the Ops value of the card to Place Influence Markers in a friendly territory or adjacent to one helping you control countries. You can pay extra to influence a country your opponent controls should you wish. If the card you play for this action is aligned with your opponent, they will get to use the ability on the card so that can suck really bad.

Coup

You can Make a Coup Attempt by adding the Ops value of the card to a D6 roll and removing 2x the stability of that country. If you’re left with a positive number the Coup succeeds, yay! Influence is added/removed accordingly and if the country is designated a ‘Battleground’ the DEFCON track moves towards nuclear disaster.

Similarly, you can Make a Realignment Roll in a country in a D6 vs D6 roll (with modifiers) to remove influence and not affect the DEFCON track.

I said you can end up with a handful of cards which may not be on your side but there is a way to get rid of them without using their ability. If the card has the right Ops value you can try and move up the Space Race track. This ‘race’ gives you points and abilities but most importantly helps you get cards out of your hand you don’t want to play.

Events

Lastly, you can just play the card for the Event, easy. But not easy as when a card is played for the Event on it it’s usually removed from the game. That’s a card of your alignment out the game and it won’t shuffle back in…

There’s a lot to take in.  The first game lasted about 15 minutes, just two rounds due to me not having a good enough overview of the board. I was holding the scoring cards for two regions but I didn’t try to put any influence in those regions, oops!

Twilight Struggle Summary

The second game was a real game, getting to round 7. My opponent controlled Europe and played the Europe scoring card.

You need to think “what scoring cards are available and how am I doing in those regions? Do I need to ditch a card to the Space Race? Do I play this awesome event card but remove that event from the game? Have I made a military action this turn? Can I coup? Where is the DEFCON track?…” this every action, every turn…

Even the simple action of placing influence in a country makes you think “Is it enough? Can I control it? Do I need to control it? What might my opponent do?”… Controlling battlegrounds with the minimum need value is efficient but makes those areas weak to Coups. What do you do?

Twilight Struggle, in its very basic form, is a very advanced Courtier. You play cards to influence and try and control. A lot of the big fans of this game won’t like that comparison but whatever 🙂

A much better comparison would be Divided Republic which is very similar but playable with 4 players. There’s also a lot less going on so it’s easier to get on with.

Overall, Twilight Struggle is a good game, by far the best game, but it’s pretty good.

Jesta ThaRogue