Yeah super stressful for sure. Once you memorize all the cards and can easily keep track in your head of which big ones have been played (Scoring cards, that rough Germany one where you need to hold a 4+ card to prevent it, etc) then the game becomes much less stressful cuz you’ll feel more in control or prepared, at the very least

I'm 4-0 right now. I was nearly lost in my last game - I had no idea how to bid for influence adjustments so I wound up playing US at +0, which is apparently a serious disadvantage. I made things worse by playing badly and giving my opponent free access into South America. But the luck of the die roll saved me as opponent got stuck in Bear Trap for four turns and had to discard Wargames to it while up 16 VP. Hell, because they got stuck for so long I won again with Europe control. That's 2/4 of my games ending in Europe control.

It's scary I'm nearly 1850 rating now because I am not that good. Losing a game will help, I suppose. It's bound to happen eventually, and hopefully sooner rather than later so I don't hyperventilate so much ...

yeah, anytime you win by Europe scoring, your FIRST instinct should be, "this opponent was way too easy" cuz it should basically never happen. That's amazing you pulled it off twice.

Losing games is how you get better so it'll be a good thing when it happens. I still have never lost a single game which is crazy (and I've never won by Europe scoring unfortunately), but my opponents have always been soft. I mostly only play as the US too with no handicap, which is nuts.

That's awesome that Bear Trap lasted four turns, love it, lol.

Glad you're having fun! I'm sad they never brought it to Xbox One. I'm sure I would have played it a ton and gotten better from all the eventual losing that might happen.

I played against an actual good player and got smashed twice. Opponent pointed out quite a few errors in my gameplay, and I embarrassingly committed suicide via Defcon once too. On the bright side it means my rating has gone down a lot, and it does show that TS is a very difficult game where good players can reliably beat not-so-good ones.

Frankly my only problems with TS is how stressful it is (I play a lot more games of Storybook Brawl than TS for that reason), plus how long it takes to find & play a game. If only there was a ladder ...

Yeah no ladder is big omission:(

Congrats on your first losses and the start of the road to getting even better!

Boy am I terrible at this game. At first I was like "I win every time, I must be pretty good", and now I just keep losing and can't figure out why. It always feels like my hands/rolls are poor, yet I've had several opponents self-Quagmire or self-Bear Trap and I'm unable to capitalize. I've also had several hands where I hold one card I'd really rather space (like Nixon) and then next turn, draw even worse cards and have even more of a hand management problem.

Previously my blunders are immediately obvious (like not paying attention to where the scoring cards are), but now I'm actively factoring that into account and it still feels like the game is always against me. The consequences of my earlier decisions are so far into the future, it's not easy to tell where I'm going wrong. There's definitely a lot of work to be done.

Yeah, it's an uphill battle. The more you lose, the better you get. Knowing ALL the cards is so important cuz there are several you need to track or mitigate the risk of coming out. Hand management is super important. IRL I'd put my hand in the order I want to play the cards at the beginning of each turn. It's so important.

Most of the game, it's a risk mitigation exercise.

I get severe analysis paralysis in this game, but I got better after several games under my belt and made more confident choices.

I still don't really get the point of alignment actions, for instance. I see the value in coups but alignment is something I don't think I ever used once. There always seemed to be a better action to take somewhere.

I've lost faith in my ability to play this game. It's not that I don't know the cards - I know what most of the cards do by heart. But there is something wrong, something I am missing that makes me unable to take advantage of the openings my opponents give me, and makes it awkward for me to defend when my opponents press me. I lose even to players who make obviously bad plays (like using NATO before Special Relationship as the USSR).

I've got to be doing something wrong, I just can't really tell what. How do you decide when to go on the offensive and when to overprotect your battlegrounds?

Re: alignment - I think the idea is to kill the opponent's access with it. For example if opponent Destalinization's into a South American battleground with the rest of the continent empty, you could attempt to realign out of there and they would not be able to go in again. You can also realign when Defcon is at 2. There's a guide to it here: https://twilightstrategy.com/2013/01/11 ... lignments/ I've read everything on that website multiple times, and I still can't tell what I'm doing wrong, so maybe I should work through the annotated games a few more times.

yes, you're right about alignment, it's for those rare opportunities where your opponent is ALMOST out of a region and you can lock them out


I know that this isn't a game about strategy as much as it is about tactical play. You HAVE to play reactively to your opponent's moves and not allow them to build momentum.

In fact, this is what is most awesomely thematically correct about the actual cold war. There were times when the USSR or the USA started paying attention to and taking actions in certain regions ONLY because the other side was doing it, even though they had ZERO interest in the area. This part gets reflected really well in Twilight Struggle.

So yeah, just react as much as possible when necessary and when the opponent does nothing of consequence, it's YOUR opening to take actions that force them to react (which is ideal probably).

If you do hand management properly, your reactions SHOULD be more powerful than their actions so you will slowly inch progress more than they are.

Ok, I've finally started winning again. It seems the biggest issues with my play were:

- If Defcon was >2, I felt obliged to coup. Doing some math, any coup on a 2-stability country is "ops-negative" in the sense that you are likely to gain fewer ops than you gain by direct influence placement. This also neglects the possibility of a failed coup. Coups on 2-stability battlegrounds are still not necessarily a bad thing, because they can flip control; however the more conservative route is just placing ops. Therefore the main purpose of coups is 1) mil ops and 2) controlling Defcon. Conversely, 1-stability countries are huge targets since they are "ops-positive".
- I need to count how many ops I have, how many ops opponent is likely to have, and make realistic aims for the turn. Previously I would aim to take everything (and I mean everything), which might have worked if opponent just passed and did nothing but of course doesn't work when opponent isn't AFK. I would commit too many ops to make threats that I can't follow through, for example.
- Finally, I need to value access more. At the time I made plays like Destalinization into 2 Pakistan 2 Thailand to block opponent from Asia (via Iran/Malaysia). This does win Asia domination, but losing access to Africa & the Americas has huge downside. I don't think I'll ever Destalinization into two countries again. Like, in the situation above, 1 Pakistan 1 Thailand still means opponent can only take one of the two battlegrounds on their turn. I get the other one, and I get access to South America / Africa. Access to South America / Africa is worth more than 1 Asian battleground, especially if it doesn't flip Asia domination.

The game is hard, but I'm getting better

awesome! love these updates. It's neat hearing the progression and mindset. Really happy you're enjoying it so much

Damn this game is hard. I can't play it on autopilot. I think when I'm concentrating carefully and accounting for every possible card in the game, I can play as well as the top players, but unlike them, it is so damn easy for me to make critical mistakes. Earlier today I forgot about a Voice of America that I knew about in the opponent's hand, losing South America control as a result; then in a later game I forgot about Blockade and nearly got controlled in Europe.

This isn't nearly like Magic or Storybook Brawl where my autopilot mode is still pretty damn good. Like yeah, on autopilot I will make subpar plays, but in those games my subpar plays are still almost as good as the best plays. It doesn't help that Twilight Struggle takes over an hour to finish, and the human attention span is only around 30 minutes at most.

I'd love to play a long-duration team game someday, it seems like it's the best way to avoid these horrible oversights.

Is Blockade the one where you have to hold a 4+ card in your hand on the chance they might have? Such a disruptive, game changing card

The mistakes you’re making is what’ll make you a better player. It’s the only way to learn in that game cuz you can’t possibly account for everything in the game just by reading the cards

Yeah Blockade is that card which requires you to discard a 3+ ops card or you lose West Germany. https://twilightstrategy.com/2011/12/19/blockade/

I got crushed in my last game too. Some games you just cannot win. I missed lots of rolls (worst ones was a full-strength Brush War that would have won me Asia domination, and then a 2-ops coup on a 1-stability battleground that was my way into Africa, not to mention all my space attempts) while opponent landed important ones. Then this happened:

Going into turn 4, I held CIA Created & the China Card. Drew Puppet Governments, Grain Sales to Soviets, Nuclear Subs, OAS Founded. All extremely bad cards. I had played Destalinization earlier in the game so I had 1 op in Chile, and I came up with this plan:

1. I will headline OAS Founded. If opponent puts ops into anything other than Chile, I will coup that country with my other cards (Missile Envy, NATO, Quagmire). Then I will space Grain Sales, play Nuclear Subs on AR6, and then CIA Created on AR7, taking advantage of the Nuclear Subs event to mitigate CIA Created as a defcon suicide card. Since I had no influence in 1-stability countries it shouldn't be that bad.
2. Opponent headlines Nixon to take China Card, making my hand even worse.
3. I play NATO to put 3 ops into Argentina and 1 op into another country which he'd broken control of the previous turn.
4. Opponent coups Argentina, rolling enough to knock me out of the region but not to place any of their own influence in there.
5. I play Quagmire to take Argentina. Opponent does something irrelevant, and I use Missile Envy to take Uruguay. Opponent coups Uruguay (knocks out one influence).
6. I use Nuclear Subs to take Brazil. Opponent coups Brazil and Brazil goes from 0/2 to 1/0. I play CIA Created placing 1 ops into Brazil first, opponent coups again and Brazil goes from 1/1 to 2/0.

A disaster of a turn, but then my hand was terrible, so it was always going to be a disaster. Then on turn 5 I draw Colonial Rear Guards, Voice of America, Duck and Cover, Allende, Panama Canal Returned, Africa Scoring (with me having no presence in Africa). I needed that turn 1 coup to even get anything done in Africa, but I rolled a 1. Conceded shortly afterwards.

Game was tilt-inducing.

Lol sounds brutal. Yeah the game is all about who can mitigate bad hands the best sometimes.

>1600 rating and climbing

Won't say I'm good at the game till I get to ~1750, however. I still make lots of mistakes (one distressingly common one is forgetting how many more ARs there are in a turn). The game really is hard, harder than Magic. Game length is a major problem as well. I find I can't really play well with 45 minutes on the clock (need at least 60 minutes), but that means a single game can take 2 hours. There not being a good card tracker makes things harder, too. In Storybook Brawl, I don't need to pay attention so much because I can always mouse over my opponent's board with the tracker, but the only available Twilight Struggle card tracker takes manual card counting.

Do you know if space track 6 allows you to discard scoring cards?

I dont, sorry

I thought some scoring cards said you can’t discard them

I haven’t played in ten years tho

This game is too hard. I don't get it. The assessment that I can play as well as the best players given time to think is almost surely wrong, unless it means spending a lot more time thinking than I already do (and I spend more time thinking than most of my opponents already). I stomp all the bad players and get stomped by all the good ones, and can't really figure out why, other than "they rolled better" or "they drew better". I know all the concepts but somehow I still lose. Shucks.

You might be interested in this though, it's an amazing game: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1747306643

Although not nearly as complicated as this game sounds; I play a board game called BloodBowl that is largely based on d6 and a 1 always a failure. Even with the possibility to Reroll (which are limited), you can only ever mitigate failure to a 16.5% so even the best players lose to bad rolls, no matter how good their tactics or overall strategy are.

You dont get to build your deck in this game do you? Are there any other ways to mitigate bad luck? Any way to give yourself a better chance at having the right cards at the right time?

I never played blood bowl but I know what it is


You don’t build decks in this. Everyone draws from the same deck. The game is largely decided by whichever player plays his bad cards in the least damaging way to him/her.