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Hello all, I talked about doing a Twilight Struggle AAR in the prior posting about the game. I've started a game and thought I would show how awesome this game is. Just looking at photos of it on Steam doesn't do it justice.
I'll throw in notes of what is going on and why I'm playing certain cards. If any of you TS experts out there want to point out alternate ways of playing these cards please feel free to give me your insight. I would love to hear other options and ideas on game play!
I'll try to explain the game as I go along. Once you read through the first round, I believe you will see how the game plays out. If anyone has questions about a certain event or choice I've made please feel free to ask, I'll do my best to answer your questions.
***In addition, I'm going to go through my postings from time to time to make corrections on my poor spelling and grammar or clarify things I think are confusing or I thought I missed. It might be wise to wait a bit for make a complete reading of the AAR for a day or two after I've posted things.
***I've made a lot of grammar and clarification changes up to Post 46. From that point on, I'll put more care in ensuring what I'm writing is easier and more clear to understand.
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After you start the game you have a preliminary setup to go through. I didn't have enough room on the picture to explain the reasoning for the influence placement. This really depends upon the cards you have in your hand. The safest setup is to put 4 points in West Germany and 3 in Italy. Italy is really vulnerable in the early game due in part to the Soviet influence in Yugoslavia. This allows the Soviets access to attacking Italy in the opening moves.
The stability of Italy is only 2, which means in a weak to outside forces. View as how unhappy the people are or how weak the political situation is in the country. The higher the influence your side can put into a country, makes that country more stable. Therefor harder to take it over in a multitude of different ways.
If I started out with a card called "The Marshall Plan", that would allow me to have a diffenent point setup. I could of then placed 3 in West Germany, 2 in Italy, 1 in both Greece and Turkey. Marshall Plan allow the US player to put down 7 more additional points on the opening turn. This would then lock out the Soviets sphere of influence, except Finland, in Europe.
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World SITREP, "The Calm Before the Storm"
The card draw below lists all the cards I have available for the first 'Headline' action play of the game. Headlines are a card events that played out first in a round before any other activities take place. They help shape the direction of where the round will go.
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This is the best choice I have with the cards in my hand for my Headline. I won't go through the cards one by one since you'll see them in most cases as I play them out.
Operation points are the numbers on the cards in the upper left. These points allow you to do many different things. However all the points must be spent on one type of action. Influence, Coup's, Realignments are the actions you can do.
The type of star behind the number denotes if the action labeled on the card will trigger. If its white, its a US card. If its red, its a Soviet card. If the side opposite of the cards affiliation plays it, that sets off the event on the card. So playing cards is sometimes a catch 22. The player can also use the cards event, they then lose the option of using the cards Ops points for any actions
I should note that the word 'turn' on the picture should say ROUND. Each round has 6-7 turns in it. There are 10 Rounds in total.
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This is the Soviets Headline for Round 1. In honesty I feel that is poor choice on the AI's part after the round has played out. As I get better playing the game, I'm starting to see the cracks in the AI.
I can still see the reasoning for most of the cards and the order the AI is playing them in. That doesn't mean the AI is incompetent, it does put up a challenging game for a novice like myself. This isn't a bad card, I can see that maybe the AI wants to use a low value card as his Headline and save his higher value cards for actions.
I think that against a human this game can be more intense and challenging for both sides. It probably favors the Soviet player IMO, but I have to test that up with live play to make it a fact.
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I'm sure you can argue the AI card play is questionable sometimes, but the AI does a stellar job of point placement. This is a great play by the AI in preparing for the future rounds. Its also a good test for a human player to do to see if I waste my points in those areas countering him. I usually don't worry about it at this early stage of the game. You'll see my reasoning as the game plays out.
Another side note, 'whip' should of been 'wiped' In a sadistic way, it still works right?
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This move has opened up France for the Soviet menace!
This a brilliant move for the Soviets first turn in the round. It places a lot of pressure on the US player to respond. It could of been worse for the US player, having 3+ points in Italy would of made it painfully hard to put that many points back into Italy.
In a lot of ways the US play is playing catch up the first few rounds. The Soviets always has the initiative in the rounds, playing first. The US does have the last move each turn so they can use that to break Soviet scoring opportunities or place pressure on the Soviet player to counter on his headline and/or first turn next round.
The game, IMO, plays out a lot like chess. You have to plan ahead and try to maneuver for future moves and counter moves. The game really does a great job of representing the political atmosphere of the Cold War.
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I need to do damage control early in Europe. My hand is filled with a lot of damaging cards that work against me. So I need to start weeding out the worst of them at the right moments. Its wise to do damage control early in the game when your in a position to counter events on the cards. Otherwise if you keep them or orbit them, you may find yourself in a pickle at the wrong times. I did this mistake a lot in my first few games. Card play sequence is very important! This is a good case of how to play this card out.
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As you see, I'll mark out where events are happening in the world. From time to time I'll show how the situation around the globe is unfolding with the influence markers.
If your wondering why I didn't counter back into Italy this turn, its because DEFCON 4 doesn't allow for anyone to do direct actions in key battlegrounds in Europe. Also I had no influence adjacent to the country. Therefore I had to start influencing France.
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Here is where I'm questioning the AI in hindsight. I feel that this turn is probably not a great time to venture off to Asia when I can counter by taking over Italy. I've read somewhere that avoiding situations where its a 'tit for tat' is a better use of resources. But to me this play doesn't make sense. I guess you can argue that the AI is hoping I burn out some of my cards high value cards early so it can counter them?
As I've stated before, I can see a lot a reasoning on why the AI is doing what its doing. The AI doesn't know what I have in my hand, for all it knows I could have Asia Scoring card and its making moves to secure points.
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This turn I feel as if I'm getting the initiative back, only due to the amount of Ops points in my hand. I'll have to focus on different regions other than Europe since I don't know when the Scoring Cards will appear.
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I failed to mention the 'COMECON' event. I allowed the AI to place 3 influence points into any Eastern European country. You can see those results in the picture now. 1 point in Poland, 1 in both Hungry and Austria. The 'Warsaw Pact Formed' card will allow him to place 5 more points into Eastern Europe. You will see those results in later postings.
This seems like a good stopping point. So far I've played out to Round 4. I have most of my slides done too. I'll try to get the rest of round 1 posted by the end of the night.
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This works out well for us. Since it was one of our cards randomly discarded we get to use its benefits before the Soviets make their moves and before its put in the discard pile.
As I explained on the slide, I don't want the Soviets to completely control a country next to Italy. For every country next to a targeted country that the enemy controls, they get a +1 bonus on die rolls.
DEFCON levels always raise by 1 at the end of the round, allowing the Soviets a chance to coup Italy.
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When I click on the European influence bar, it gives us the status of the situation in that region. As you can see, the status is even for both sides across Europe.
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After I see what the AI did on this turn, I'm more than convinced he's not holding a European Scoring Card. I'm also wondering if he even has the Asian one in his hand too.
I need to think about damage control in Asia for turn 2. Africa can wait till round 4.
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For this turn I need to limit what this event does against me. This is the best of the 2 Soviet cards in my hand to play at this time. In the next slide you'll see what De-Stalinization is a bad card for us!
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Now you know why I held this card back. At this point in the game it doesn't seem that bad, right? The Soviets have already spread influence into Africa and Asia. But I want to limit them on access to Central and South America too. This is one of those Dandelion effect cards, allowing the Soviets to spawn seeds of Communism across the world.
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Its turn 6, the final one this round.
This is one of those areas the AI shines at. Blockade card is so dangerous for the US if played properly. The AI held back this card till the end and used it as an event in hopes that I would not be able to counter it. Luckily I still had the 3 point De-Stalinization card. It hurts to ditch it in this case but the alternative is far worse. I can't lose control over Europe!
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Since no scoring card was played, I'm banking influence in key areas for future conflicts in Europe and Asia. This slide shows what the world situation after 6 turns of play. From here, the political scene only gets messier!
A final note for this turn. As I mentioned in the slide, Containment really made a huge difference in what I was able to do this round. With so many '3's' that were essentially '4's' I was able to keep a hold of the Bear by the tail. I was very fortunate in my card draw. Normally the US is not sitting this well in the world at the end of Round 1.
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I see I misspelled sense...LOL
Okay, to explain one thing about this slide. Why did I not coup or realign any countries my turn? There was little to no benefit in my eyes to doing any of those actions this round. One major factor was I would rather have secured areas in Europe and strength my hold in the Middle East then to dabble in Asia or Africa. It would of been wasted action in most cases.
One area I could of tried is in Iraq. With my control over Iran, it would of given me a +1 bonus to any action I brought against them. I thought about using the Suez Crisis Ops points for a coup in Iraq but if I failed because of poor die roll, it would of been a wasted turn. By gaining firm control over Egypt and buffing up Israel, I gained an advantage by planning ahead for future cards that haven't yet been played.
Even though I lost 4 points, this was a great round for the US. I'm sure I could of done things a bit different here and there. Maybe someone of more experience could point out more optimized plays?
Round 1 is finished, 9 more to go! I'll start posting Round 2 tomorrow.
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Marcus the leper
Absolutely love this game. One quick question, is there a way to save the game while in progress?!? My only complaint thus far. Great AAR!!
Yes, I have 2 separate games saved right now, my AAR game and one for fun. You should note that you can't go back and try something different, once something has been done its done. But you can leave the game when you want and it will save the progress you made. So, yes you can save, you just can't go back and do turns over.
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New Round, New Headlines!
With the cards I drew this round I can only effectively use 'CIA Created' and the 'Olympic Games'. My 2 highest Ops Points cards are to valuable this round to use as a headline. I probably could use 'Duck and Cover' to lower the DEFCON to 4 but I'll take my chances with Europe.
The 1 point CIA card for a headline is just to good to pass up this round.
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