So after a week holed up in my room not writing about projective planes, today was the day of Nexus Ops and Twilight Struggle.
Mickey wanted to pull out Die Macher, but Nick and I were rather tired and didn't think we were up to it, so, Nexus Ops. It's odd, because while you try to play it kind of strategically, your "strategy" really has to be dictated by the cards you draw; how am I supposed to win an offensive battle in a crystal spires when the only ones nearby are the ones I already occupy? Get a dragon to the monolith and go from there? Mickey and I made the big mistake of letting Nick sit on the monolith for a long time at the beginning, with just a single rock strider; neither of us wanted to attack it because we were afraid we didn't have enough force to take it. In hindsight, the risk of losing our men would not nearly have been as bad as the enormous number of energize cards Nick racked up as we did nothing.
Anyway. The real point of this entry was Twilight Struggle against Mickey. I was Russia, he was US. This was the first time he had played. This was easily the strangest game of TS I've played so far. Early on, Mickey started falling behind in Europe. Now normally it's hard to really make much progress in Europe as everyone's watching it so closely and you're rarely at Defcon 5, but Mickey let me get away with a coup in Italy, and he didn't even have control of France, and, well, hey, Willy Brandt is letting me make all these realignment rolls against West Germany... oh, look at that! Europe is mine!
He saw it coming, of course, though not till I had everything but West Germany, but he wasn't able to do much about it (not when I played "How I Learned to Stop Worrying" to allow my realignment rolls, which also cost him a good 4 points).
Meanwhile, Africa was about even, Mickey having a slight lead; in Asia, I controlled the battlegrounds but he controlled the other countries, preventing either of us from achieving domination; but the Middle East was rapidly slipping out of my grasp, and I had hardly even bothered with the Americas.
But you know what? I controlled Europe. Now I haven't played a lot but it's pretty obvious that a controlling-Europe victory is very hard, and I only got that far because Mickey wasn't paying attention to it. But, I controlled Europe.
Of course, in order for me to actually win this way, someone was going to have to play the Europe scoring card. It was turn 6, I believe, when I actually turned Europe red, but there was no Europe scoring card in my hand, and of course there was none in his, either. But while I secured my Communist Europe, he went and threw me out of the western hemisphere. And a Middle East scoring and a South America scoring tipped the score in his favor.
But I controlled Europe, right? The scoring card would eventually come up (and if not, we would eventually get to final scoring), and I just had to hang on long enough.
Turn 7 didn't turn up Europe scoring, but it did turn up South America scoring again, in my hand. I managed to do some damage control, but with all the points he had accumulated this way, he still went up to 18. 18! I had to do something; anything to just reduce his score, so I could hang on long enough for Europe scoring to come up.
Turn 8. The late war. The reshuffling of the deck decreases the chances of drawing Europe scoring, but there it is! In my hand! To play it during the headline phase is the obvious thing to do, but those damn capitalists had managed to launch a lunar probe, while I still didn't even have an animal in space; he'd be able to see it before picking his own event. So, I figure, I'll just play it as the first action round. Instead, for my headline, I play Pershing II Deployed. I gain a VP from it, but who cares? I have Europe scoring! Of course, Mickey gets to pick his headline now, and he picks Soviet Union Shoots Down KAL-007.
It gives him 2 VP.
And it has ops value 4, beating the ops value 3 of the Pershing II Deployed.
...and that wins him the game.
See title.
-Harry
Mickey wanted to pull out Die Macher, but Nick and I were rather tired and didn't think we were up to it, so, Nexus Ops. It's odd, because while you try to play it kind of strategically, your "strategy" really has to be dictated by the cards you draw; how am I supposed to win an offensive battle in a crystal spires when the only ones nearby are the ones I already occupy? Get a dragon to the monolith and go from there? Mickey and I made the big mistake of letting Nick sit on the monolith for a long time at the beginning, with just a single rock strider; neither of us wanted to attack it because we were afraid we didn't have enough force to take it. In hindsight, the risk of losing our men would not nearly have been as bad as the enormous number of energize cards Nick racked up as we did nothing.
Anyway. The real point of this entry was Twilight Struggle against Mickey. I was Russia, he was US. This was the first time he had played. This was easily the strangest game of TS I've played so far. Early on, Mickey started falling behind in Europe. Now normally it's hard to really make much progress in Europe as everyone's watching it so closely and you're rarely at Defcon 5, but Mickey let me get away with a coup in Italy, and he didn't even have control of France, and, well, hey, Willy Brandt is letting me make all these realignment rolls against West Germany... oh, look at that! Europe is mine!
He saw it coming, of course, though not till I had everything but West Germany, but he wasn't able to do much about it (not when I played "How I Learned to Stop Worrying" to allow my realignment rolls, which also cost him a good 4 points).
Meanwhile, Africa was about even, Mickey having a slight lead; in Asia, I controlled the battlegrounds but he controlled the other countries, preventing either of us from achieving domination; but the Middle East was rapidly slipping out of my grasp, and I had hardly even bothered with the Americas.
But you know what? I controlled Europe. Now I haven't played a lot but it's pretty obvious that a controlling-Europe victory is very hard, and I only got that far because Mickey wasn't paying attention to it. But, I controlled Europe.
Of course, in order for me to actually win this way, someone was going to have to play the Europe scoring card. It was turn 6, I believe, when I actually turned Europe red, but there was no Europe scoring card in my hand, and of course there was none in his, either. But while I secured my Communist Europe, he went and threw me out of the western hemisphere. And a Middle East scoring and a South America scoring tipped the score in his favor.
But I controlled Europe, right? The scoring card would eventually come up (and if not, we would eventually get to final scoring), and I just had to hang on long enough.
Turn 7 didn't turn up Europe scoring, but it did turn up South America scoring again, in my hand. I managed to do some damage control, but with all the points he had accumulated this way, he still went up to 18. 18! I had to do something; anything to just reduce his score, so I could hang on long enough for Europe scoring to come up.
Turn 8. The late war. The reshuffling of the deck decreases the chances of drawing Europe scoring, but there it is! In my hand! To play it during the headline phase is the obvious thing to do, but those damn capitalists had managed to launch a lunar probe, while I still didn't even have an animal in space; he'd be able to see it before picking his own event. So, I figure, I'll just play it as the first action round. Instead, for my headline, I play Pershing II Deployed. I gain a VP from it, but who cares? I have Europe scoring! Of course, Mickey gets to pick his headline now, and he picks Soviet Union Shoots Down KAL-007.
It gives him 2 VP.
And it has ops value 4, beating the ops value 3 of the Pershing II Deployed.
...and that wins him the game.
See title.
-Harry
