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 What is Twilight Struggle? 2 player card-driven cutthroat boardgame about launching Pope John Paul II into space, and then blowing up the planet and blaming your opponent. The less stupid answer is that it's a game about the cold war, where each player represents one of the superpowers. Unable to attack each other directly, you compete for influence in the rest of the world. The basic rules are quite simple. For the most part, you just play a card to spread your influence, perform military operations, or activate the unique event on the card. In practice, mastery of the game requires you to understand what all the events can do to you so that you can defend yourself against the danger of sudden defeat, or take advantage of opportunities. That doesn't explain much at all. Yeah, but I'm a lazy gently caress. Here, go read the game TheOneAndOnlyT ran in the LP forum. It's got a rad detailed summary and it's a good example of how the game goes.  I want to play but I don't want to fiddle around with cardboard! Good news! An app version of the game was just released on steam, introducing the game to a whole big new market. If you wait long enough, they're going to release it as an iOS/android app. One of the nice things about the app is that it's asynchronous play, so you don't have to get through the whole game in one sitting. It also comes with a kind of servicable tutorial that will teach you just enough to not understand why you lost, and a braindead AI that eagerly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. What the gently caress? Why did I just lose? If you've learned to play just by skimming the rulebook to yourself, or by playing the app's tutorial, you haven't been prepared for how sudden death works in Twilight Struggle. Here is the important rule: If it is your action, and nuclear war is triggered for any reason then History or God or whatever blames you for destroying the earth and you lose. There are two major ways this can catch you off-guard that you have to be prepared for. 1) You trigger an event that lets your opponent perform operations on your action. Your opponent can use those operations to perform a coup in a battleground country and trigger nuclear war, and you take the blame. 2) Something makes you discard a card, which forces you later in the turn to play a card that degrades DEFCON. There's a few more gotchas that you need to be aware of. You lose if you ever still have a scoring card in hand at the end of a full turn. Also, there's a card in the Late War that can let a player instantly win if they're at least 7 VP ahead. If you're too far behind in the last stretch of the game, you need to be wary of Wargames. I want to get better at this game! The best way to get better is to play more games, obviously, but there's also plenty of strategy discussion out there. They talk about the game a lot over on Boardgamegeek, but for my money the best in-depth resource is the Twilight Strategy blog. Or you ask questions here, if you trust goon wisdom! I need someone to play against! If you've got the app, then it's easy! If you'd rather not play against randos and don't have any friends that play, just use this thread to arrange a playdate with a lucky goon. For whatever reason, the app doesn't use your Steam friends list at all, so you need to provide your in-game name, not your Steam name. To add someone to your in-game friends list, you need to be logged in, then click on profile and then the + button. Tendales fucked around with this message at 03:28 on May 1, 2016 |
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May 1, 2016 01:36
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I am so pumped about the app version of TS. I've been playing the board game for years, but a couple of the folks I used to play with all the time moved across the country. Do we know which platforms will be carrying the app? Also, nice OP. Now I want to
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May 1, 2016 13:32
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The current app is PC/Mac, the next release will be iOS/Android, then Linux, then PS4. After that I have no idea!
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May 1, 2016 21:33
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I'm all in on this thread. TS is my favourite board game and now it's online, I've been playing it a whole lot more. Nice to be able to play beyond my friendship group, too. I'm quickly learning that I'm not as good at this game as I thought I was (particularly playing as the U.S.)
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May 2, 2016 03:36
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Tendales posted:The current app is PC/Mac, the next release will be iOS/Android, then Linux, then PS4. After that I have no idea! Oh, hell yeah! Looks like I know what I'm doing after I grade all these final exams. elgarbo posted:I'm all in on this thread. TS is my favourite board game and now it's online, I've been playing it a whole lot more. I usually have a harder time playing the U.S. Or, at least, I have an easier time with the Soviets because their early game stuff meshes better with the aggressive way I tend to play the game. Playing the U.S. is more about buckling up and holding on for dear life in the early war. I know how to play responsibly as the U.S., but I tend to ignore all that and overextend myself when I should be consolidating things and planning in the long term for the mid war cards.
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May 5, 2016 11:53
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Just won as the US against some rando, went to final scoring, I won by 1 point 
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May 8, 2016 12:32
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Twilight Struggle: Sending the Pope to Space Since 2005
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May 8, 2016 18:51
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I dunno why but I enjoy playing the US a lot more than the USSR. USSR is just kinda boring to play 
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May 9, 2016 12:54
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Tekopo posted:I dunno why but I enjoy playing the US a lot more than the USSR. USSR is just kinda boring to play I think it's because at this point in development the AI is much better at making threats and setting a tempo than it is reacting to one. The USSR player is the one in the driving seat and can coup AR1 pretty much every turn if it wants to, and the AI just doesn't seem to be able to cope with that, leading to some pretty lopsided shutouts. At least when you are playing as the US you are on the back foot for the majority of the early game and are having to fend off the USSR while playing from an event and ops disadvantage, so when you get into the mid/late game you haven't already got everything pretty much in the bag. I'm hoping the AI gets improved at some point, I would like to play it since the developers have indicated they are going to implement the commonly played moves by human players into the AI's learning.
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May 9, 2016 17:48
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MikeCrotch posted:I think it's because at this point in development the AI is much better at making threats and setting a tempo than it is reacting to one. The USSR player is the one in the driving seat and can coup AR1 pretty much every turn if it wants to, and the AI just doesn't seem to be able to cope with that, leading to some pretty lopsided shutouts.
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May 9, 2016 17:59
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There's an interesting thread going on over at boardgamegeek right now: https://boardgamegeek.com/article/23002826 Basically, it's about the difference in high level play between the metagame in China and in the West.
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Jun 21, 2016 00:14
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The new build is up on Steam.Twilight Struggle Patch Notes posted:Build Notes v1.0.4
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Jun 23, 2016 03:30
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