Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition

Customer Reviews

A Real brain burner!! Review by Garth

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Twilight Struggle is a game of constant evaluation and area control. It takes all your focus to plan your moves and is not for the feint of heart. This game can and will make your head hurt, but I think it is a terrific game, the best two player game I have ever played.

Game Overview: The theme is just dripping in Twilight Struggle. It recreates the Cold War to a point where you do not like your opponent, and do not trust your opponent. The cards that you play in the game are all historically bassed, and so the whole game long you feel like a central cog in the Cold War. I have never been so immersed in a theme as I have in Twilight Struggle.

Game-play: Twilight Struggle plays out in 3 wars, early, mid and late. Each war has a set number of rounds in which you play. The cards are tied to historical events, most benefit either the USA or USSR, some will benefit either or. As you play your hand, you are constantly assessing the potential damage that your cards will cause you, because you will have events for your opponent, and you will have to play them. The game also turns on it side quite frequently, which again causes you to completely re-evaluate your game plan, and your card play plan. All in all, your brain gets a true mental workout. The cards are well balanced between the two super powers, and so it comes down to who negates the bad the best and takes advantage of the good the best.

Contents: The mounted game board in the Deluxe edition is huge, and a must have. The cards all good quality, however I had some of the tokens partially tare on me, which I was able to fix, and because tokens are not played secretly it does not affect play whatsoever. Contents are good, but could be better.

Overall: An incredible recreation of the Cold War and the best 2 player game I have ever played. (Posted on 3/23/12)

An amazing game, but is not for everyone Review by Murray

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Twilight Struggle is, without a doubt, one of the best board games out there. However, I still find it hard to recommend it to everyone for several reasons.

First, let's discuss the game itself. Twilight Struggle is a game only for two players. One side plays USSR and the other plays US. The game is played over a set number of rounds that is broken up into the Early, Mid and Late War. During each round, both players are dealt a hand of cards and will need to use almost all of them. First, they both pick a "headline" card that they reveal at the same time and carry out the event noted on the card. After that, players will take turns playing cards, starting with the USSR player.

There are several types of cards. Scoring cards will immediately give VP points to one of the players based on their influence and control over the region noted on the card. There are also US and USSR event cards and neutral event cards that can be used by either side. When playing your own event card, you must choose to either play it as an event or play it only for the Operation value, which is used for other things.

When playing your opponent's event card (which will happen since you don't know what hand you'll be dealt and you will play most of the cards each round). The event on the card will happen regardless, but you can use the Ops points. You can, however, avoid using opponent events by playing the card for the space race or by holding on to it for the next round. Usually, however, you'll only be able to hold onto one card.

Ops points can be used in various ways. You can use them for a coup and try to take over another country, you can also realign a country using nearby countries that you control to help. Both of these actions require a bit of luck through dice rolls. Finally, you can simply add influence markers using the ops points. Ops points cannot be split among different tasks. That is, you cannot throw a coup and then add influence markers, you must use all the points on one task.

In the Early war, you will only be using the Early war cards. Most events, once used, are discarded from the game. The rest are reshuffled when the deck runs out. In the mid-war, additional cards are added to the early war cards, making it less likely that the deck would be reshuffled. This make a big difference as USSR is stronger in the Early war while the US is stronger in the Late war, where their monster cards appear.

There are several ways to win: If you control all of Europe, if you or your opponent drops DEFCON to 1 during your opponent's turn, if you get 20 VP, or if you use a special game ending event card while you have more than 6-7VP. The VP track is a push-pull track, like a number line. For example, if the USSR has 15 points and the US earns 10 points, instead of moving the marker so that it shows 10 US points, you would subtract from the points USSR currently has and end up with 5 USSR points.

Surprisingly, Twilight Struggle is an easy game to learn. Trial by fire is the way to go and after a few rounds, new players should have a pretty good grasp of the game. However, the learning curve is steep and veterans will have a huge advantage with their knowledge of upcoming cards and understanding of the flow of the game.

The main con of Twilight Struggle is the length of the game, which will be at least 2 hours even for vets and more than 3 hours for your first game. While this isn't long for a war game, it is a turn off for casual players. However, the game is intense and you won't really feel the time tick away. Still, because of the length of the game and because the need for a player of the same level, it can be hard to get Twilight Struggle to the table.

Nonetheless, the game is deep and very fun. There is a lot of variety and replay. The components for the deluxe edition (the one here) is REALLY good. Still, I would recommend getting an experienced player to teach the game to you and your main gaming partner before deciding to buy. (Posted on 4/21/10)

A game of (agonizing) choices Review by Philippe

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Twilight Struggle is a card-driven political game where the objective is to place foreign countries under your influence through persuasion, realignment or outright coup d'état.

Gameplay
Each player is dealt a hand of cards that are either USSR or USA aligned. Each card can either played for the operational value (allowing you to place influence, etc) or the text which represents an historical political event (like the forming of NATO or the Arab-Israeli war).

The crucible of choices begins there as playing an opponent-aligned card means the event happens automatically and you MUST play every card in your hand except two.

Points are scored when a "scoring card" is played by either player. This is a really good idea as you're often forced to match your opponent whenever he tries to expand just in case he has a scoring card for that region.

There is not a lot of dice rolling, but randomness is a major factor nevertheless because of card play. This makes for a really great replay factor because no two game will ever be alike.

All in all, I highly recommend this game as it's easy to learn and quick to play. A really nice addition is that every card event is explained in the rulebook. This game is not only a great strategy game, it's also a great way to learn history and geography, and each play will allow the exploration of a number of "what ifs" scenarios. (Posted on 3/9/10)