10-12-2012, 06:41 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: The Hall of Fallen Columns
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Twilight Struggle?
Hello all,
I recently heard about this game on BoardGameGeek. I'd seen it in stores a few years ago and I liked the premise, but I wasn't sure if it was worth picking up as an impulse buy and I never thought any more of it. Then I heard that it has topped the BGG ratings tables. It's a 2 player game and my household is just me and my roommate, so I'm thinking now may be a good time to get it. How have you found the game? Are the two sides fairly well balanced? How easy is it to pick up in the first place for two complete newcomers? How much of a role does luck (either in dice rolls or drawing cards) play in the game? Thanks for any and all input. |
10-19-2012, 06:06 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Oct 2012
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Re: Twilight Struggle?
Absolutely worth it. From my perspective it hits a very good balance between powers, alot of maneuvering and jockeying for power in regions to sustain your overall power base, and yet has a decent element of randomness (the universe plays dice in every war/conflict) thru the card driven system.
definitely pick it up if you find it for a reasonable price, then be prepared to spend quite a few weekends obsessed with friends trying to destroy you while you tinker with what you thought were good policy/political decisions. |
10-20-2012, 08:19 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: The Hall of Fallen Columns
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Re: Twilight Struggle?
It seems like there are several mechanics that work in... odd... ways. Perhaps they were mechanics that the creators had not initially intended, but decided were acceptable evolutions of the game direction.
1. The powers on most of the cards - even friendly or neutral cards - are generally less useful than the OPs. Most hostile card effects can be counteracted or neutralized just by playing the card for OPs. 2. The most dangerous cards in the game are typically the 1 OP hostile cards, because they are usually useless for Space Race. 3. Space Race is very rarely used. Even a bad card which could be burned for the Space Race would have to be really horrible in order to use it for that. The further you get along the Space Race, the more demanding the OP requirements are, and thus the more exclusive it becomes. The minor advantage in dodging a hostile card's power is usually not as great as the advantage of simply eating the power and then spending the OP to rebalance. The Space Race square that allows "two Space Race cards per turn" is actually a poison pill, because it means two turns with no OP activity on the board instead of one. 4. Realignments are not nearly as useful as Coups. On the first turn it behooves both sides to rush the DEFCON meter to 2 as soon as possible, and from then on it behooves the Soviets to keep it there forever, thus preventing the US from battlefield Coups, and encouraging a minor stream of VPs. 5. For Influence, the best cards are the ones that allow a scattering of 1- or 2- influence points in a number of regions regardless of connectivity. These are best played early in the turn so more conventional OP-based influence can build off that. 6. One of the worst possible handicaps is to be left without a chance to spend OP in an action phase. Allowing your enemy even two consecutive unbroken action phases is a huge disadvantage. I get the impression that the designers of the game had a certain goal in mind and the process of the design resulted in unexpected mechanics surfacing, which reversed or negated some of those goals. I could be wrong though. They admitted it was their first game design ever, and it shows - not necessarily in a bad way either. Just in a way that the game supports several ways of playing it which seem at odds with the apparent initial focus of the card powers and the various other pieces of the game board. I have, needless to say, been playing the game obsessively the past week. Last edited by SolemnGolem; 10-20-2012 at 08:26 AM. |
10-26-2012, 08:44 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Mar 2008
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Re: Twilight Struggle?
My favorite game that i rarely get to play - it's hard to get 3 hrs for just a two player game. I so look forward to the iOS version of it that will eventually come out.
I find that Space Race is essential. You dump the best of your opponent's cards from your hand into it every turn so that it will not affect the rest of the board. I find that the early part of the game favors the USSR, and if the USA player can survive, he can come back to win by the end of the game. But it's easy for the USA player to get caught up in his own agenda early and then have the early war scoring heavily against him. Lots of things to balance out in playing the game - how can I minimize the effect of cards that I play that will help my opponent, should I use a card for influence or for the event, should I try to coup or realign or spend influence, where should i spend military operations so my opponent can't do so, how to minimize the scoring for my opponent when I have to play a scoring card that benefits him more than me, etc. Here's a great teaching summary for the game. I think reading this gets you a good feel for how the game plays. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepag...e-from-the-how Last edited by paulfish1963; 10-26-2012 at 08:57 AM. |
01-16-2013, 11:20 AM | #5 | |
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: The Hall of Fallen Columns
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Re: Twilight Struggle?
Quote:
For those who like to go deeper, here is a strategy site dedicated to discussing the game. They just (as of Jan. 14) finished their analysis of all the cards. Twilight Strategy And finally, here are a couple of my own gaming group's houserules, mostly born of discussions about official rules ambiguities, with a few half-hearted attempts made to justify them:
It's a fun game and it's clear the makers took a good amount of time in making it work. However, they admitted that it's their first attempt at making a game at all, and I think the ambiguity of the language shows this. Last edited by SolemnGolem; 01-16-2013 at 11:37 AM. |
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10-10-2019, 08:00 AM | #6 |
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: The Hall of Fallen Columns
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Re: Twilight Struggle?
Late bump, but thought I'd post it in case there's anybody still reading this.
The proper rules for the points I mentioned are:
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03-21-2021, 02:24 PM | #7 | ||||
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: The Hall of Fallen Columns
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Re: Twilight Struggle?
A few updates, including answering some questions of my own from nine (!) years ago.
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As with any game, the longterm solution to a "bad luck tilt" is to play many more games so you can see the results in the aggregate. Twilight Struggle, with its steep learning curve and very significant time commitment per game, does not make this easy. If you're the sort of player to get tilted at a row of bad luck experiences, you may find this game frustrating. I am one such player (having played thousands of games against the AI as well as against live players) and I've started making custom cards to try to rebalance the game somewhat. The game can also be played remotely and online. Playdek has an implementation (largely bug free, though some little ones remain) on Steam, and VASSAL has a freeware implementation. |
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