We were playing it wrong: Twilight Struggle

Just as the penitent suffers missteps during their journey toward, so to do I make tread the familiar ground of old mistakes.

The other day Alan and I were playing a game of Twilight Struggle. In a game-ending mistake, we resolved our Headline Phase cards in ascending numerical order, rather than descending numerical order, such that I ended up triggering global thermonuclear war. Sorry guys, my bad.

We were playing it wrong: Twilight Struggle

Today's victim: Twilight Struggle!

Domino Theory, Schmomino Theory! Alan and I had occasion to play this gem a few days ago. Great game; perhaps even better once we start playing the rules correctly. Here's where we (which is to say, I) borked the rulebook.

1. Influence markers need to be placed adjacent to other influence markers. Alan and I had been playing a magical fairy game where we could lay down chits with wild abandon. Honestly, it seems like this would make it even harder for the US to make due in the Middle East and in Asia, which are two critical areas in early game. Further complication for the US was not something I anticipated discovering in my second reading of the rules--if anything, I had hoped to find errors that would make the US easier to play.

2. Space Race cards are discarded, not chucked in the box. Sigh. I knew I was getting away with too much when I chucked NATO and Bear Trap, never to return.

3. Any given Space Race benefit is eliminated when the other player achieves the requisite stage for the benefit. This will have the effect of slowing the Space Race down--also not something I thought would happen.

4. A successful Coup results in removes an amount of influence equal to the DIFFERENCE between the coup result and the country's doubled stability number; this ruling would have affected the games we played massively. It also makes sense--Alan and I had been triggering coups about every other turn because they way we were playing them made them far too good. We were ignoring the difference part and simply removing as many chits and adding as many as needed to meet the number rolled plus the card pitched. This resulted in things like 6 Soviet influence replacing 2 US influence in Egypt or Venezuela. Way too swingy!

That's all (for now).