The Tao of Gaming

I played Twilight Struggle twice last night. This is the latest entry in the "Card Driven Series" that includes Paths of Glory, Wilderness War and We the People.

At this point I take "Card Driven Game" with a super-sized fry bucket grain of salt. In Twilight Struggle, there are no leaders, no troops, no manuever. There are fronts, but the board system has been replaced with El Grande-style area control. Unlike traditional wargames, both sides can have units in the same space. Units (called 'influence') sit there. Each country has a stability number, and if you exceed your opponents influence by the stability, you control the country.

A fair chunk of the cards trigger scoring for a region (Europe, Asia, etc). You use a formula to figure out your status in the region (None, Presence, Domination, Total Control) and get get bonus points for certain items. Most points come from 'battleground' countries, which are just the important ones that were historically fought over.

Victory points are a zero sum track, from +20 (US Victory) to -20 (Soviet). Whenever you earn VP, you just slide towards your end.

The board play is pretty simple. You play cards for operations to add influence to countries. The designers specifically model the domino theory ... you can only influence countries adjacent to those you have influence on. You can also spend OPs to try and whittle away your opponents influence. This is a battle, except you don't need any troops! [In fact, it's safer not to have it, as either side could lose influence]. Finally, you can sponsor a coup, which can transfer influence from your opponent to you.

The board play doesn't feel like a wargame, but like a Euro. I'm not sure I like it, compared to the heftier CDGs. The card play impresses me, for several reasons:

• The Headline Phase -- Here each player plays a card simultaneously as an event. Many of the other CDGs see players just spending ops. This forces a minimum amount of events. Additionally, they are played simultaneously, adding uncertainty.
• If you play an opponent's event you get the OPs, but the event triggers. Maybe 1/3rd of the cards are specific to one side; this happens often. So many events occur, but the beneficiary can't control the timing. A good idea. Players can discard one card a turn to fund the space race, which allows you to get rid of a nasty event you don't want to play.
• The fact that the scoring cards are in the deck means that you can't play the final action then score between turns. (No "last licks"). I suspect the board play required this, but it's still nice.

The game uses a shared deck, with some early, middle and late cards. So remember cards (once you know the decks) is probably necessary to play well.

There's a bit of chrome, in particular subsytems for military operations and triggering nuclear war. The brinkmanship does mean that careless play can loose instantly. But Twilight Struggle is light, the rules take about 15 minutes. Two games took a total of three hours.

I had fun; but both games saw Fast Soviet Victories, one during the beginning of Turn 4, one at the end of Turn 6. A full game lasts ten turns. I've seen reports that many new players can't figure out how to survive long enough to see the pendulum swing back with the mid to late deck. But others say the game is roughly 50/50. No matter the overall balance, it seems fair to say that it's harder for novices to play the US. If there really are balance issues, it's easy enough to handicap (bid for sides).

I like the duration (a game that goes the distance will probably be under three hours, playable in an evening with a filler on the side). There's more chaos than would be acceptable in a longer game, but each player has plays a fair mix of operations, their events, and opponents events. Managing their timing appears critical.

I'm hoping to play again, and I'll get the chance. So I'm pleased. The CDGs I listed above are better games in theory. But those sit unplayed, the victims of a tight schedule.

A few nights ago I read the designer's strategy notes, and played solo, just to see if the US could hold it. The US won a fairly solid game(but it did go the distance). So I think that my early concerns about balance were just that ... early concerns. I hope to play again soon.

Tonight's game night had my 3rd game of Twilight Struggle, and laid to rest many concerns/ The early war saw little VP movement (which bodes well for the US). As the US, I kept the Soviets out of the Americas, eventually realigning Fidel. Europe was strongly Soviet, but Asia was strongly US.

Things fell apart for the Soviet Union on turn seven when the Soviets got a handful of scoring cards (four!), all for pro-US areas, and he lost half a turn playing them. Automatic victory for the US.

Even without that unlucky clump, it looked like a US victory unless the Soviets could capture Europe (by no means impossible). The space race figured prominently (The Soviet's Nazi Scientists defected on turn one, and the US played "One Small Step" on turn four to take the lead, the followed up with Nazi Scientists and then normal research to gain the advantage). Realignments, ignored in the first two games, reared their ugly heads to great advantage.

There's one concern remaining -- the neutral events. Either side can play these for Ops or event, and many of them are large. "Red Scare/Red Purge" is cost your oppponent 1 Op/round. (Call it 5 OPs, since a few turns you'll play events). So it's a 10 Operation swing depending on who plays it. "Salt Treaty" lets one player fish through the discard pile. "Missle Envy" makes your opponent give you his highest op card (and forces them to use a 2 op turn).

Now, if there were no neutral events, things would balance. Each player would have some ratio of "Their events" and "Opponents events". The ratios would change from game to game, but each player would have the same ratio for the game. If you get opponents events, they trigger. Your own events may trigger (or you may take ops). But the neutral break that symmetry; if I get neutrals I can use the ops or event and give you no benefit. You draw lots of events for yourself (your choice ops or event) and for me, so I get my events! So it's better to draw the neutrals. More choices for you, less for your opponents. And given how powerful a few of the neutral cards are, I worry that the game may simply turn on a few cards. Red Scare could show up 3 or 4 times in the game. If one player gets them all, that's a 15 OP advantage. If it shows up 3 times, the US will get them all 1/8th of the time, the USSR 1/8th. So 25% of games will see one player get that three times in a row. Now, if there are lots of great neutrals, it will balance out, but I think there may only be a handful....

Given that it's a card driven game, the luck of the draw will matter and decide some games. But how often? I don't want to play a 2-3 hour game where a few single card draws decide it. Right now it's a mild worry. Time will tell.

I played Twilight Struggle three times last week! And in each game the bluebird of happiness left a little gift on my shoulder.

Once was clearly my fault. I played a new player and we took sides randomly. I should have taken the US. I don't particularly believe that the game is pro-Soviet, but they are probably easier to play (in the opening, anyway).

The second game highlighted my concern about the neutral cards. I got Red Scare/Purge on T1, then again on T4. At this point, my opponent was down 10+ Opps, and has had worse luck on the space race. Game called.

My third game was the most interesting, in that it went the distance (I lost on T10). But my opponent was frustrated constantly dealing with a handful of my events. [I like that part of the game]. Afterwards we discussed several issues with the game, including it's historic accuracy. It's certainly baffling that Vietnam isn't a battleground, at the very least.

One opponent said that the real problem was the granularity of luck. Either you make a space race or miss it. Each coup roll is big. I'm not sure I agree. Even in Titan (where you through lots of dice) there are significant breakpoints where a slight change in the result can have long reaching implications. Now, you could certainly argue that the space race should have less luck (or a different system entirely where your roll depends on the opps you spend), but I'm not sure that the granularity matters.

There are now a dozen or so 'real' CDGs (as compared to games like Manifest Destiny), and the design of the card system (as compared to the board system). Here are the design issues I see:

• Single deck, or one deck per player?
• All the deck at the start, or incrememntal additions & deletions?
• How to handle going first/last each turn? [Letting one player go last, and then having a VP phase, can introduce problems].
• How to balance operations with events to grant historic feel?

I'm not sure there's a 'right' decision. The strength of the CDG is that you can take a similar base system and hide the complexity in the cards. In reality, the rules are still plenty complex. Twilight Struggle is simple enough, but if I break open another CDG, I'll spend an hour (or more) skimming the rules. And I do want to play them. There are great ideas in the system -- the fog of war, tons of historic feel (right or wrong), and nice replay values. But the downsides are showing, too. The game space is so wide that flaws appear despite playtesting. [I'm thinking of Here I Stand, where you have a large deck reshuffled every turn, giving lots of potential hands. I think that Twilight's issues (smallish deck you run through 3 times a game) show up quickly, so I can only assume that the designers don't consider it a serious issue].

What would I like to see in CDGs? Let's start a wishlist:

1. Since cards can break the rules, you shouldn't need too many. (This depends on the genre. A straight wargame needs less rules than a multi-faced struggle. Many of the rules in these games are too keep players 'on the rails').
2. There should be no 'key cards' that wildly swing the game depend on who gets them. Some cards will invariably be better than others, but the variance should be lower. A generally useful card is the ideal. Cards useful in fewer situations should be powerful when said situation occurs.
3. Cards should be balanced so that the decision to use it for Operations or an Event is meaningful.
4. Each position should be interesting to play. [I'm thinking of Prussia in The Napoleonic Wars, here].
5. The card deck shouldn't have such a complicated structure that it is necessary to have spreadsheets of card flow to truely understand the game [I'm thinking of WWII: Barbarossa to Berlin's invasion cards].
6. Players should have some hand management abilities, but not too much. In general, I think that the play 6 out of 7 (or 8) cards makes for tense choices.

And this is all before you get to the board play. Am I putting the cart before the horse? Probably. I'm sure there are other design criteria I'm forgetting. Any ideas?

Yet another game of Twilight Struggle, and yet another game where the neutral events dominate. (I should clarify. By Neutrals I mean both the events that either player can play, or events that are neutered if your opponent gets them [Like the "Gain 1 OP for each play this turn", which you simply play on the last OP of the round.] Playing the Soviets, I got:

• Red Scare/Purge (twice)

• Nazi Scientist

• Junta

• CIA Created* (Show my hand, played on last card)

• Containment* (+1 US op/round, played on last card)

• That nice 4 OP or score VPs (Defcon - 2) neutral (twice)

The (*) cards aren't neutral, but if the USSR gets them, they are basically removed without effect (there are a few cards for each country like that). To add insult to injury, the US missed it's first three space race rolls. I missed two out of three, but that wasn't as bad because a) the early rolls are worth more VP, b) I could space race twice a turn because the US was far behind (in fact, I missed both my rolls on the late game). I went to 19 VP early in turn four and got the rest at the end of the turn (by playing the card gives you 5 OPs and sets the defcon at five. Yes, another neutral card, although one that's second tier, IMO).

Is the game pro-Soviet? No. I could easily see the US running away with it if they got the same hand. In fact, I saw it several weeks ago. About the only bad luck I had — getting all three scoring cards on the second turn. And that wasn't horrible, as I just cashed them out for about 7 VPs. And if I had won the Arab-Isreali war, the game would have ended at the beginning of turn four (if not earlier).

Back when I said that 10-25% of the games would just be decided by the cards, I appear to have seriously underestimated. Right now over half of my games have been decided by early luck. Some of this can, no doubt, be attributed to having played several games against people I've taught. But even being generous, At least four of my seven games have been very lopsided (considering the deck and space race). That number is too high. The only upside is that the game took ~1 hour.

Anyone interested in Card Driven Wargames should read Chris Farrell's discussion on deck size. I've been thinking about this, but hadn't posted detailed thoughts. Well, now I have a reason...

Let's stick to multiplayer games. Chris's idea to trim the deck are good. In fact, I was thinking about the general problem — Some events will need to be country specific, but are unlikely to ever wind up in that countries hands. There are a few ways this has been solved:

• If you play an opponent's card you get the ops, they get the event. This is part of Twilight Struggle. Mandatory events do basically the same thing in Here I Stand. But in Twilight Struggle, you go through the deck three times, wheras in HiS, you see 1/3rd (or less) of the deck each turn, but reshuffle each turn. Even if the event appears, your opponent can confound it by timing the card right.

• Home Cards. Each country's special ability is theirs. But this removes the element of the unknown. I know that the Turks have Janissaries in their hand. This reduces fog of war.

• Each player has their own deck (Sword of Rome). Not bad, if done right.

• Diplomacy. If people could trade cards, that would help. Here I Stand allows for random draws, but only in one direction. I haven't played enough to know if I'd like straight trading better, but that would seem to be more elegant.

• Timed events. If they aren't played by Turn X, then they get played between turns. A kludge.

For two player games, individual decks, or a deck that adds cards as the game progresses (or both) provides a nice pull. Twilight Struggle got this right, even if they got the cards wrong. But for multiplayer ... let's think of other mechanics that can solve the problem.

Chris raises the point of putting special cases in rules, instead of cards. I'd personally rather have less rules and keep the special cases on the cards, but given the rules complexity of these games .... well, it's moot. So, other ideas:

Instead of specific cards, you have tracks. This is actually explored in the comments of Chris's post, and I think it's a good idea. Rather than have 5 Cards (A, B, C, D, E) that progress you along, you can have three cards that say "Progress along the ABCDE track". A good idea.

You must give player's their cards. After cards are dealt, everyone passes Player X any of 'his' cards. Anyone who has too many cards throws them into a pot, which is then dealt out to players who have too few. I think this idea could work well. It also gives players some limited intelligence, in that one player knows that the turks have Janissairies this turn. If you don't reshuffle, and deal out 1/3rd of the deck each turn, you'll eventually get your cards.

Each player has their own deck, but there's a neutral deck, too. I think this could work well. Very well. This allows for very different powers, more than can just be captured by home cards (or even Here I Stand style mats), but creates large fog of war. Done right, an elegant system here. Let's imagine Here I Stand in this way. Each player has (say) a 10 card of their own, and a fifty card deck of neutrals. You reshuffle the neutral deck each turn, because it's stuff that could have happened whenever, but you don't automatically reshuffle the 'home decks.' Suppose that each player draws 2 from their own deck each turn. Now each player will cycle their deck twice. Of course, you can tailor each player to draw more (or fewer) cards from their home deck, or allow the player to choose (within some limits).

England's deck has events related to the succession, the Papacy has counter-reformation cards, the turks get piracy and spiffy combat cards. Everyone may get a "hose your hated enemy" card or two. The neutral deck has the generally useful "Mercenaries run away," "Bad Weather," combat cards, and whatnot. If you want, it may have cards thad push towards the endgame, but not for any particular player.

I suspect the 'home decks + neutral deck' option strips pages away from the rulebook, puts players more in control of their destiny, and keep people from having a hand full of "opponent's events."

One other point, Chris talks about keeping the Op Balance of the deck the same. Obviously Op balance matters, and in thinking about it, I realized that the games have maybe missed the point.

In the original games, you had generals of 1, 2 or 3. You need a card of that number (or greater) to activate the general. So a 3 card could activate anyone, but if you kept using them for "Ops," sometimes you'd use that 3 card just to activate Washington (Hannibal, whoever your stud is). So a '3' card is better than a '1', but is it three times better? That depends ... were you planning on activating your stud, or did you need to activate that Red Headed Step child in the flanks? It depends on the situation. In Paths of Glory, it's how many spaces you can activate. A three is certainly better, but given trench warfare, it may be a touch less than three times as good. In Twilight Struggle, it's how much influence you can place. And, if you are placing influence, it is clearly three times as good. It may be more, since a '3' coup against a high stability country is much better than three '1' coups against the same country.

The point is thus — as the games evolve I think designers may lose lost sight of the numbers. If you are just using them for general activation, then 1, 2 and 3 are fine. But if you 'spend' them, then you want to restrict some of the wilder swings of card draw luck. In that case, perhaps you want the deck to be 2, 3, and 4. Or 3, 4 and 5. [One of Tom Lehmann's games, in fact, uses cards of value 4, 5 and 6. Two cards are always better than one]. I don't think that Twilight Struggle got this wrong, but it's something to watch out for in design. [And Here I Stand allows ops to be spent in numerous ways]. This presumably gets noticed (and tweaked) in playtesting, but it's a design issue I thought should be mentioned.

Update: Fixed some formatting issues.

In the comments to my last post, Chris brings up the "Events as Currency." In certain games, if you can spend operation points to do things, then events that do the same thing are really just variations. In Twilight Struggle, plenty of events do this. 1 OP equals 1 influence, assuming you aren't putting them in a country controlled by your opponent. In the early deck (~35 cards) we have the following (this is from memory):

• Fidel -- Influence in Cuba for control (3+ opps)
• US/Japan Mutual Defense Pact -- Japan (3+ opps) plus a small benefit
• Nasser -- Egypt (2+)
• The Marshall Plan (& Warsaw Pact) -- 7(5) opps plus minor effects
• Rumania -- (3 opps)
• De Gaul -- (2-3 opps) + minor effect

In reality, these are just "hard coded" operations. The chief effect being that an opponent who knows the deck won't spend any in Cuba/Japan/etc, since these cards will just cancel any extra opps. Now, some of these cards do have minor effects, but basically they just spend influence. The various wars can potentially convert influence (and earn VP and military points) but the basic effect is, as Chris pointed out, something that could be done without any events whatsoever. From our perspective, it's just a way to push the game down historical paths. Nothing wrong with that but you aren't really exploiting the benefits of the CDG ... having cards do things that aren't in the rules.

In a way, these cards are a problem. They reduce fog of war, but add to the "inorganic complexity" of the game. (Where you have to know the contents of the decks, just to avoid wasting actions). I mean, the US knows Fidel is going to hit ... even if I space race him, he'll get reshuffled. So the US just ignores Cuba until later.

Come to think of it, Twilight Struggle seems to have quite a few of these "anti Fog of War" cards. And there are no cards that interferer with coups (or realignments, or space race attempts) once they've started. Imagine if each player had a card "Cancel a coup attempt" (or modify the roll). More tension, and more cards that do things that you can't just spend opps on.