<aside> 🛠️ Designed by Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews
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<aside> 📊 My Number of Plays at Time of Review: 16
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<aside> 👥 2 Players
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<aside> ⏱️ 180 Minutes
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Twilight Struggle is a deep and strategic tabletop simulation of the Cold War released in 2005 from designers Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews. Two players go head-to-head as they take on the roles of the US and the USSR during the tense historical period from 1945-1989, jockeying for influence across the globe and making tactical decisions to turn the momentum of the war in their favor.
Twilight Struggle is primarily a card-driven game, with players taking turns choosing cards from their hand to play. What makes this basic mechanic much more interesting is the fact that certain cards are better for one player or the other (US or USSR), and players inevitably will need to sometimes play cards that help the other player. Every card specifies an operations value (1-4), an event (famous historical headlines from the Cold War era), and then a color specifying if the event belongs to the US or the USSR, or if it is neutral. When playing a card, the player must choose to either use the operations points to take actions on the map, or play the card for the event. The big catch is that if you use a card that has your opponent’s event, it is forced to trigger. So if you have one of your opponent’s really powerful events, you will likely be forced to play it eventually (there are some ways to avoid it, which will be discussed later), so it all comes down to controlling the timing and mitigating the negative effects that it has on your position.
There are a few ways that players can use operation points:
Placing Influence – Every country represented on the map has spaces for each side to play influence counters in that country. Influence is the primary goal of the game: everything is about strategically getting a majority of influence in key regions on the map. Using a card to place influence allows you to add points of influence up to the operations value of the card, with a few key rules:
Influence can only be placed in or adjacent to countries where you already have influence.
If you control a country, or it is not controlled, you can add 1 influence per operations point. If the country is controlled by your opponent, you can only add 1 influence per every 2 operations points.
Operations points can be split between countries; for example, you could use a 4 point operations card to play 1 influence in four different countries that you control.
What does it mean to control a country? Another key mechanic in Twilight Struggle, both in providing historical realism as well as interesting gameplay, is that every country has its own stability value. A very stable country like the U.K. has a stability value of 5, while unstable countries like Nigeria and the Sudan have values of 1. To have control of a country, a player must have influence in that country that exceeds his opponent’s influence by at least the stability value. So if your opponent had 2 influence in the U.K., you would need 7 influence there to gain control. Controlling countries is crucial (especially in scoring which is described later), because it forces your opponent to pay twice the amount of operations points to place influence in that country. So naturally, an unstable country like the Sudan is much easier to swing control, because there is a smaller spread to overcome in placing influence.
Coup Attempts – A Coup Attempt allows a player to try and reverse their opponent’s influence in a country in a more aggressive fashion. This is resolved by rolling a die and adding the operations points of the card used to the result. This value is then compared to twice the stability of the selected country. If the difference is positive, the player can remove that much of the opponent’s influence, and if there is still excess, he can add that much of his own influence into the country. Especially in a country with low stability, this can allow a player to completely reverse control of an opponent-controlled country. There are some consequences to Coup Attempts though. If the targeted country is a “Battleground” country, then the DEFCON track must be reduced by one, moving one step closer to triggering nuclear war. If the DEFCON track ever reaches 1 (it begins the game at 5), the active player immediately loses the game. Additionally, regardless of whether the country is a Battleground or not, the active player gains “Military Operations” equal to the operations points of the card used for the Coup. This is important because at the end of every round, players will compare their military operations for the round to the current DEFCON, and if the DEFCON is higher, they give up the difference in points to the other player. This ensures that there is a steady use of Coup attempts throughout the game, and that the DEFCON is constantly increasing the tension. The DEFCON track is increased by one at the start of every round, allowing for additional Battleground Coup Attempts throughout the game. Also, as the DEFCON falls, it begins to restrict which regions allow Coup Attempts, blocking such operations in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East depending on the current level.
The Space Race – Once per round, a player can also choose to commit a card to the Space Race. This is an independent track that players need to manage throughout the game, as the first player to reach squares on the Space Race track is rewarded with extra abilities and victory points. More importantly though, is that committing a card to the Space Race is the one way to play a card without triggering the opponent’s event. This means that if you have a nasty opponent’s event that you really want to avoid putting into effect, you can strategically play it for the Space Race to keep it from activating. The card will get shuffled back into the deck, but you can at least delay the impact, and possibly keep it out of play indefinitely if you are able to draw it again later in the game.