If your name is ibavly and we haven't finished our game, turn back now

Twilight Struggle is an amazing asymmetrical boardgame that has been no. 1 on boardgamegeek for many years.

I will be playing on the app vs ibavly, my first game vs a human opponent. I have played the AI (Artificial Idiot) lotsa times and (s)he sucks.

In this thread you will see a live report of what happens.

USA gets +1 influence this game (the game appears to be slightly USSR favored, so that's the reason of the handicap), sides were randed.

I am randed the USSR and this is my opening hand



My opening setup is 5 East Germany / 4 Poland

USSR headlines Red Scare/Purge
USA headlines Duck and Cover.

DEFCON=4
Score= 1

I don't mind to see that card. He collects only one point from it. I am happy to not see Containment.

AR1
USSR coups Iran with US/JAPAN MDP and roll a 4!
That's Nice, Iran is now 0/2 under my control.

ibavly responds by couping back with nothing other than the Marshall Plan!
He also rolls a 4, so Iran goes to 1/0

Since he couped with the Marshall plan I am quite sure that he does not have any other 4OPs in hand (NATO, Nuclear Test Ban), so Germany will be evacuated this turn.

Now I have to ponder my next move.

Is there a decent Twilight Struggle for dummies link out there?

I am surprised that he has Marshall Plan. Why didn't he headline it? Italy would have been quite safe at 4 influence, no need to protect Europe with D&C.

Anyway, after this event I decide to be less ambitious about Middle East and hope to score just presence while he has not.

AR2
I play East European Unrest and place 1 influence into Iran, 1 into South Korea and 1 into Syria.

Now I have presence in Middle East while he has not and I keep various options open in Asia.

There is twilightstrategy.com and there are various youtube videos and playthroughs.

AR2 ibavly plays Arab-Israeli War, allows the event to occur first and survives the 50% flip. Then he places 1 influence into Egypt.

This is a mistake, if he wants to place influence in Egypt, he must allow first the influence to be placed, then the event to trigger. Now, if he loses the flip, he cannot place influence in Egypt. Luckily for him, he won the flip.

He seems to be scrambling for OPs, because placing only 1 in Egypt is dangerous because of the Nasser event. I do not have Nasser, so I cannot punish him for this play.

Currently I am the only player with presence, so I quickly play the Middle East scoring card as my AR3 and add 3 VP.
So now the score is 2

The rest of my turn plays itself. Blockade comes next, then CIA Created and my last event will be Decolonization. Hopefully his plays do not interfere too much with that sequence of events.

AR3 ibavly plays Nasser*. So he had Nasser himself and that made his play of playing only one influence in Egypt a safe move.

I probably should have guessed he had Nasser himself.

He seems to be stuck with smallish communist events or he is keeping the good stuff for last.

I'm happy I scored ME in my previous round. Even though I might have arranged domination, he could easily have acquired presence in e.g. Lebanon and I would have scored the same points.

Now I have decided to just get rid of CIA Created. If he has bad communist cards, he might have Fidel and that is a card I do not want to see played before CIA Created.

That is my AR4 play and I have choosen the event to resolve first, so now ibavly is looking at all the stuff in my hand and can spend 1OP.

I think Blockade is a card that I need to play on my last AR this turn. That forces him to play into Germany in his last AR or I might simply fill up Germany in the next turn with NATO or Nuclear Test Ban and solidify my position in Europe forever.

My AR5 play will probably still be Decolonization. It is a bomb. One influence will go into Thailand for sure, the most important battleground in the game and 1 into Algeria, the second most stable African battleground, providing me access to France and threaten Europe. The other two will be a mix of African battlegrounds and Indonesia.

My prediction is that he will use his CIA Created OP to place one into Malaysia.

ibavly puts 1 infuence into Malaysia indeed
I place one in South Korea (1/2 now)

I wonder if I have taken the correct line. I could have played Decolonization earlier and be the frist in Thailand. The problem is that I will have to keep CIA created in hand and I will have to allow him the first turn coup somewhere - and he will probably have African targets.

The AR4 play of ibavly is Independent Reds* and he places one influence into Pakistan.

My AR5 is Decolonization and I place 1 influence into Thailand, one into Algeria, one into Indonesia and one into Angola.

ibavly plays Fidel*! it seems I have just been in time with my CIA Created. He places another one into Pakistan and now has Asia Domination. I get to fill up Cuba.

That is actually something I should not have allowed. I should have played one influence into Laos/Cambodia with Decolonization and not into Angola. If he has Asian Scoring in hand, he is going to rack up 5 easy points.

A blunder.

Anyway, no choice now, I have to evacuate Germany and play Blockade.

His line of plays seems to suggest he has Indo-Pakistani War in hand.

Lets see what he does and fingers crossed he does not have Asian Scoring as the last play of the turn.

His last play is Vietnam Revolts*. He really was stuck with a hand full of 2-OPs cards and the Red Scare has hurt him a lot (for 5 OPs in total).

He places one influence in Thailand.

That is the end of turn 1!

This is my turn 2 hand:

Containment* (3)
De Gaulle Leads France* (3)
Defectors (2)
Europe Scoring
Formosan Resolution* (2)
Socialist Governments (3)
Suez Crisis* (3)
Truman Doctrine* (1)

17 OPs

And of course I also still have the The China Card (4)

I thought about my plan for a great while.

Socialist Governments looks like a great headline, but in fact it only creates a small fire that can be put out with a single OP in Italy. He will have 1-2 4OP cards most likely and can make my life difficult in Asia and if possible, I would like to sit on my China card and still gain control of Thailand.

So using a 3OP headline that can be repaired with 1OP seems -EV. Kamikaze seems to headline Socialist Governments and play Europe scoring right away for 5VP. He will grab Thailand and has me cut off from India, so he will score domination in Asia to get all those points back.

So my plan is to play Europe Scoring, gain 1 VP and AR1 take Thailand. He will be obliged to place influence into France, because with Thailand secured, I will not hesitate to grab it.

I don't think he will fight for South Korea and I will have three stable battlegrounds in Asia.

So I headline Europe Scoring and ibavly headlines Asia Scoring. We both gain +1 VP from our play so the score stays at 2.

I play Suez Crisis for 3OPs, placing 1 into South Korea and filling up Thailand.

Getting Thailand is a good result for USSR. Unfortunately he grabbed Pakistan, which I didn't know how to avoid in turn 1. I blame the CIA.

But I will have three stable battlegrounds in Asian while he has to fear Indo-Pakistani war all game to keep Pakistan and India under his control.

In AR1 ibavly uses COMECON* to coup Iran!
He rolls a 1- unlucky. So Iran stays at 1/1.

I think this is a pretty large mistake. He needed to secure France. All the scoring cards have been played and we need to be taking battlegrounds now and France is an important one.

So AR2 I play De Gaulle and place 3 influence into France. Now he is cut off from Germany and Europe domination becomes a threat. Imagine me headlining Socialist Governments, taking 2 from Italy and in my AR1 filling Italy up. That's game over, if Germany is out of his reach.

His move is going to cost me 4VP. He has achieved his military ops and I have no way to get military ops, so end of turn I will lose 2 VPs. If he had played OPs into France, I would have been the one to coup (Iran probably) and then he would have been the one with difficulties getting mil OPs and might have scored -2 at end of the turn.

I happily lose those 4 VP, because I get a great board position in return.

Meanwhile I place the 4 influence from Comecon into Poland East Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia.

ibavly plays Indo-Pakistani War. He places one influence into Pakistan, so that I cannot flip it with the China card and one into Austria, providing access to Germany.

I already have three BG's in Europe, so Germany nor Italy are of immediate interest and I play Formosan Resolution to place two influence into Libya. That is a key BG in Middle East, that usually ends up in USA hands, unless USSR can play a very early Nasser.

ibavly brings a big gun: Nuclear Test Ban. He places 2 influence in Iran and now controls Iran, a sensible move as it protects Pakistan from the IP War he played in the previous AR (Action Round) and that will be shuffled back into the deck on the following turn.

The other two influence is placed in West Germany. He obviously realized the danger of Europe domination and makes sure I cannot fill up this country in one turn. Problem with this move and it is a direct effect of his error in AR1 is that he has now used 3 OPs in Austria and West Germany and none of them provide VPs.

Now that Europe Control is no longer a good game plan for me, I can play Socialist Governments and fill up Iraq and South Korea, giving me domination in both Asia and Middle East. That is my AR4 play.

The AR4 play of ibavly is Captured Nazi Scientist* and he skip the event but prefers to place one influence in Panama to shore it up.

I think this is a mistake. CNS ought to be played as the event almost always. It is worth 2 VPs and the first step on the space track is important, because it is one that you only reach 50% of the time with a space roll.

AR5 I play Truman Doctrine. A good event to get rid of at a low price. I secure another battleground: Zaire.

I'm not sure how many OPs he has left, he could have a card as good as NATO* or as bad as Romanian Abdication*. So I have no idea what plans he is hatching, but if he makes an AR7 play that forces me to respond and forfeit the coup in the following turn, I want to make sure I have both Angola and Zaire so he cannot coup me out of both battlegrounds.

Truman Doctrine removes my 1 influence in Yugoslavia.

Now ibavly plays Romanian Abdication*, he surely had meagre OPs this turn.

He plays one influence into Colombia, which is a weird play, as this is much more effective as your last round play. I get to fill up Rumania and now I dominate Europe as well.

Since I don't have any military OPs yet and will lose 2 VP if I don't coup, I take the bait and coup Colombia with Containment as my last round play. I roll a 3, so his 1 influence is replaced with my 3 influence in Colombia.

ibavly plays UN Intervention. Under Containment worth 2 OPs. He had a hand with 3x1 OP cards.....

Twilight Struggle is a game with much luck involved, in rolls and cards and you hope that it evens out at the end of the game. When luck goes your way, you take it, when it goes his way, you suffer it.

He coups back and rolls a 4, that is just enough and he replaces my 3 influence with 1 USA influence in Colombia.

That is the end of turn 2! I keep the China card in my possession and Defectors. I will space or play Defectors turn 3, so I won't see any headline cancelled for a long time.

For the same reason he has De-Stalinization* in hand, that is sure. He did well to keep it until now, so he can get rid of it after the reshuffle.

We reshuffle! I draw another very good hand for turn 3:

Captured Nazi Scientist* (1)
Defectors (2)
Duck and Cover (3)
Five Year Plan (3)
Korean War* (2)
Middle East Scoring
NATO* (4)
Red Scare/Purge (4)

And of course I'm still sitting pretty on The China Card (4)

Of the cards he has in hand, I know the following:
Warsaw Pact Formed*
Olympic Games
De-Stalinization*

He will know I have NATO, Korean War and Five Year Plan. He doesn't know I have drawn RS/P again and he will be sick to the stomache if he sees it.

This is the state of the map:

There is a chance that he will headline Olympic Games and if I headline Duck&Cover, the game is over and I win by DEFCON.

But he has other potential good headlines: Marshall Plan, East European Unrest and Independent Reds. So it is cute to try, but don't do this when you are ahead by a large margin.

Another line of play is to headline ME Scoring and rack up 3 points and go about business elsewhere.

But obviously I just headline RS/P again. After that I have several possible lines of play: I can coup Colombia with Duck & Cover and the DEFCON goes down, so he cannot coup me in a battle ground. That however, gives him 3 VP. The other option is to coup Iran, I have the scoring card in hand, don't I. That will turn D&C into a DEFCON suicide card. Luckily he doesn't have Five Year Plan for the random win. I plan to play the Scientist for the event and space D&C. Depending how things go, I also space Defectors or I might play it for 2OP's

Read Scare it is again. Sorry ibavly

ibavly headlines Olympic Games
He wins the roll and gains 2 VP. We are even in the score!

I suppose he doesn't have the Marshall Plan.
Lets go and do some business: I coup Iran with NATO and roll a 5!
Boris runs g00t. Iran is now mine at 0/3

We both couped 3 times this game, my average roll is 4, his is 3.

I have my military OPs this turn. He will need to scramble for his. The only card that can get him mil OPs is Indo-Pakistani War, because I don't plan to play into non battlegrounds in Africa or the Americas this turn.

Now he needs to move quickly into Venezuela and if he is smart, he will also put one into Lebanon for ME presence.

There is a play available that will guarantee me another Asian battleground. I can spend the 2 OPs from Korean War and put one influence into Pakistan. This gains me access to India. With only 3 OPs he cannot stop me from getting either Pakistan or India with the China card.