US Nuclear Test Ban for influence: Burma 2/0, Laos 1/0, Philippines 2/0
Well, that’s a total waste of 4 OPs and an AR. SE Asia scoring only comes up once, at best, and the US could be putting real pressure on me. Since they are not, I don’t even have to use the China Card this Turn.
USSR Truman for influence: Saudi Arabia 0/1
Finland 0/0
US Socialist Governments event: W. Germany 3/1, France 2/6. Influence: W. Germany 5/1, India 3/0
I guess they are going to hold Decolonisation then.
USSR Five Year Plan for influence: S. Africa 0/3, Iraq 0/3
I don’t really want to move from S. Africa, because I have no guarantee of being able to degrade Defcon next Turn, meaning the US gets the battleground coup.
US Duck & Cover for influence: W. Germany 6/1 Pakistan 3/0, Japan 2/0, Indonesia 1/0
More wasted OPs. Pakistan is about the only worthwhile influence added, because it prevents me from flipping it with the China Card in one AR, which would make the US lose Dominance.
In this Turn, the US had a decent OPs advantage and could have at least forced me to give up the China Card. More generally, the last AR is usually where the US wants to create a problem for the USSR that prevents the USSR doing whatever they like in the usual headline + coup combo at the start of a Turn. Some way to get MilOps, or creep into a region, or flip control of a battleground.
Of course, we have the weird twist this game where I have no battleground coups to make, which makes a last AR threat potentially a bit pointless, but still… for example, a point in Pakistan earlier, and filling Israel this AR would have been better.
Turn 4
-2VPs for MilOps
Defcon 3
Mid war cards added
Headline Brush Wars on Jordan - this solves my MilOps problem, and means I don’t have to waste any Ops on a coup (of Jordan). If it works, I might be able to play ME Scoring to win. If it doesn’t, I can hope the US coups the ME, then I can use Muslim Revolution anyway. Regardless, ME Scoring is going to net me a lot of VPs.
My one concern is that a US headline of Missile Envy will net Muslim Revolution, but that’s a risk I’ll have to take.
US headline: Cuban Missile Crisis
USSR headline: Brush War in Jordan: roll 4. Jordan 0/2, 3 MilOps, -1 VP
Well, that headline means the US doesn’t even get to coup a battleground!
Oh, and
USSR Middle East Scoring: -11 VPs EDIT: see correction downthread.
USSR wins
Thanks for the game, forum peoples! Shame it was so one-sided, but I hope you all enjoyed fighting against the odds. I am looking forward to reading the hundreds of posts over on the public thread.
Thanks for the game Benkyo
It’s fascinating reading your side of the game. As you said, our Turn 2 hand was dreadful, even before Red Scare. I think the Italy coup threw us out and we never found a way to get going in Europe.
As you’ll read, we didn’t want to be aggressive in France with Suez and De Gaulle around.
I thought we were in with a shout, our Turn 4 hand was useful, which was why we felt we didn’t need the BG coup.
I’d really like your comments on our thread, how you would have played it differently.
Cheers again
This one didn’t aged well 
I think it’s fine. After a successful coup of Italy, you get to control France for 1 OP, which is a better outcome than losing France or being forced to spend 3 OPs in France. Also, look how it worked out in our current Playdek game!
Look at this way: even 4 influence in Italy is a 50/50 chance of losing Italy to a 4 OP coup, because 0/0 means the USSR can move in next AR uncontested - you have no adjacency to Italy. 2 influence in Italy means the same odds! A 1-3 roll means the USSR doesn’t get control, and you have adjacency to re-control with 3 OPs even on a 0/1 influence result.
That is a very good point!
I’m thinking about 1 in France and 3 in Italy. But rolling a 4 would make both France and Italy too vulnerable still
The risk there is Socialist Governments removing France completely, but Soc Gov is always a problem.
reading back I think the main mistakes in the group thinking was to shore up Asia in the hope of a lot of points on Asia and SEA-scoring and not going for battlegrounds with all our ops, to prevent your coup in Turn 4.
And also interesting that looking back, you think we should’ve grabbed France. I normally find taking France far to risky when all the France-events are still out, but in hindsight it just makes much more sense to do it as USA
Yeah, the events are just as good for the USSR played as 3OPs, and that keeps them in the deck. As the US, there’s a reasonable chance you can space or mitigate them. The main problem with Dr Gaulle, for example, is giving access to Algeria, not the loss of 2 influence.
And yes, SEAsia scoring is quite a low return on OPs.
That’s a common mistake I make: forgetting that it’s really annoying for your opponent to trigger the event of a high ops card.
The SEA-thinking was also influenced by the fact that it was our best option if we didn’t want to hand you a coup option, which (in my mind at least) made the return on ops better than it probably was. Attacking Iran, Algeria or taking Israel was probably much more worth it.
One other question: Should we have headlined Marshall Plan T1? I wasn’t taking part of the discussion at the time, so don’t really know why the Forum didn’t do it.
ME scoring is also a very strong headline. A Marshall plan setup and headline for Europe dominance would have changed the game dramatically - Iran coup would have been my opening.
I forgot the forum played ME scoring. That indeed makes it a very strong headline.
Also: is it standard nowadays to start US +2 on the set up? Because if I play online against a friend of mine, I normally go for US +1 or none extra at all
Yes, +2 is balanced. I will always bid 2 to play USSR to avoid playing US at +1 or +0.
Well, that was very eye opening, there is a lot of things I keep doing wrong on this game (@Captbnut and @lalunaverde can verify) but it has been great to see the mind of an expert at this game giving the reasons behind every decision. Thank you very much.
Thanks for the write up here. Its interesting, having seen the other side. Doesn’t the ME scoring at the end come to 9 rather than 11?
Ah, yes, you are right. Don’t know why I was looking at the control total. Shall we assume that the forum took 1 more AR, in which only Olympic Games could possibly have scored 2 VPs, and no MilOps could have been gained, then I used Arms Race to win?
