Twilight Struggle against Peter. I'm Soviets. It's turn 9. Defcon 3. He's up 11 points. My board position is horrid; he dominates every region except Central America (where I have control).
Headline phase. He plays Soviet Union Shoots Down KAL-007. I play Aldrich Ames. They're both ops 4, so he goes first. While he's figuring out what he wants to do with it exactly, he picks up Aldrich Ames and asks, "So what does this card do, exactly?" I laugh evilly. What it does is, it lets me look at his hand, put it in a specific order, and then he has to play it in that order!
Well, crap, he says. He had planned to use Duck and Cover[0] to go down to defcon 2, then play Wargames[3] and win. Well, I put a stop to that! I put Wargames first, so it won't be defcon 2 and he'll have to play it for ops. I begin by making a coup attempt on Iran... no! Shit! If I do that, it's defcon 2, and he can play Wargames and win! No, no, what I want to do is... not put the cards in that order at all! No, I'll put Duck and Cover first! I'll do a coup attempt on Iran, bring the defcon down to 2, and then he'll play Duck and Cover, start nuclear war, and lose!
So Peter lets me take that bit back, and I do this, and I win, and I make a big deal about "You started nuclear war! You've killed us all! You bastard!" and "They have Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East! But we have their intelligence agencies, and with that, we win!"
Only... wait... no... that doesn't work at all, because he doesn't have to play it for the event, he can play it for the ops. Uh... Peter lets me take it back again.
So I go back to the order I had before. And, idiot me, I begin by making a coup attempt on Iran. Peter can now play Wargames for the event and win the game, but instead he plays it for the ops.
Then he realizes what he's done. "Uh... can I take that back?" "No! Well, only if you let me take back my coup attempt on Iran." He does, and we do it right that time. I make a coup attempt somewhere else entirely, he plays wargames for the ops, and nobody wins that turn.
(The game eventually ended up going to final scoring, with Peter winning with more than 20 points.)
-Harry
[0]US card, degrade defcon 1, then US gets (5-defcon) VP.
[3]Neutral card, usable only at defcon 2, enemy gets 6 points, then game ends w/o final scoring.
