Twilight Struggle

 The GMT game of Twilight Struggle is an amazing two player game that has a lot of strategy. Every action matters as it teaches about the history of the world from the end of WW2 to the end of the Cold War in 1989, through focusing on the struggle between the USA and Soviet Union. It also rarely plays similarly the same way twice providing for lots of re-playability. Sometimes I have won or lost within a few turns and a few games have lasted until the late war period. It takes anywhere from an hour to three hours to play. The game will end after the tenth turn is played or when someone reaches 20 victory points. During each turn, starting with the Soviet player, a card is played until seven cards are played by both players upon which the turn marker will advance and more cards dealt out to bring the hand up to eight cards.

Below is the map. Each region, like Europe or the Middle East, is subdivided into different countries that have a number in the upper right. This number is the amount of influence one player must have more than the other player in order to have control over it. If the country name is a dark blue-ish colour, then it is also a battleground country. This is important for when regions are scored and for the required military operations. In the map is also the starting influence in each country for both sides. Each side also gets additional influence that can be placed in Europe, West for the USA player and East for the Soviet player. 

The cards in the game are the most important part, as they will determine how the player conducts operations (realignments, places influence markers, stages coups, conducts space race actions) or important events. The cards are divided into early, mid, and late war categories depending on when they occurred in history. New era cards will only be added once the turn they begin occurs (turn four for mid war and turn eight for late war). The card is either a scoring card or a regular card with a number in the upper left (with a background in red for Soviet or white for USA) and an event action in the main body. When a card is played the player must decide if they are using the points or the event, if it is an event in their colour. They cannot do both their event and use the points. Regardless if the player uses the points if the event is for one of their opponents, then event must occur but the player who played it can decide what happens first. Other events are placed in the discard pile and can be reshuffled and become the new deck. This means that as the game progresses all the events are played, with some being played more than once, thus showing the unfolding of historical events. Some cards say that if the event is used, the card is removed from play. If the event has an * and underlined in red, it will either allow a certain card in the future to be played as an event or requires a card to have been played as an event in the past. 

Some samples of early war cards are below:
-The upper left card is The China card, which the Soviet player starts with. It grants a bonus to the operations value in the upper left of the card if all points are used in Asia. The card when played gets handed to the other player to be used next turn. Whomever holds it at the end of turn 10 gains a victory point. The Soviet player shouldn't mind playing it, as there are normally other cards that the Soviet player does not want to play, like those that have events the Soviet player does not wish to happen yet.
-The upper right card is an example of a Soviet event card that allows another card to be played in the future, the Warsaw Pact Formed. It is a very beneficial card that allows five Soviet influence to be placed in Eastern Europe and all USA influence to be removed from four countries in Eastern Europe. It also allows play of NATO. When playing this, the Soviet player has to decide if using this for operations points or the event. The USA player will choose operations points but the event occurs anyways, but determines what happens first.
-The middle row cards are events for the USA player (Special Relationship) and Soviet player (Cambridge Five). As mentioned if the card has the same player's event, they must choose what they want to do: the event or operations points. If another player's event, the event must still occur but they choose what happens first.
-The bottom two are dual player events, Captured Nazi Scientist or Red Scare/Purge. Each player may use it for the event or the operations points.

Here are the scoring cards for the Early war turns. They must be played if they are in a players hand during the turn they are dealt it. If not, they automatically lose. Both players are able to score points when the card is played and can gain a large amount of points when played at the right time, as each side only needs 20 to win. Presence means the player controls at least one country, Domination means they control more battleground countries than the other and at least one non-battleground country, and Control means a side controls more countries and all of the battleground countries. As can be seen below, control of Europe is an automatic win. 

When a player has influence in a country that is more than the opponent by at least the value in that countries upper right corner, they gain control of it. At that point the token is flipped to indicate a solid colour rather than the white box. This makes it easier to determine for scoring and card play.

The space race option is a good way of using up cards with beneficial events for their opponent. The play of that card must have operations points equal to or more than what is indicated below the event. You can also get victory points based on if you are first or second on a space. The card goes into the discard pile without the event taking place, if it is an opponent's event, so it will be coming back into play at some point. Only one space race attempt may be done each turn, unless otherwise mentioned with a card or a space race ability. You only get the ability under the space race location that you are at.

I purchased the acrylic counters for the game, as I see myself playing this for many years to come. The cardboard ones it comes with are tough but the acrylic ones stand out more. 

There is also a computer version on Steam, where you can play the computer player or a friend. The computer version is quite slick and has recordings of news and historical figures playing as the game progresses.