It’s more all that lovely access, and the (hopefully) problem-free 4OP, and the ability to defuse Truman early.
For the US? How?
Hah, OK, thought it was a USSR hand. My bad, 5 am, kids not sleeping. Still, denying the USSR all that lovely access isn’t too terrible either… unless you get RSPed.
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@Benkyo beat me. He was the Soviets. It went to turn 7 which is better than I’ve ever done against him before.
@Benkyo I’d be interested to know what you thought. I was much more cautious, and tried to minimise losses. Some decent hands, combined with some good dice for me and some bad dice for Ben had me in an ok place at the end of Early War. I think I was 7 points down, tied in Europe, ME and Asia (but he was holding a lot of key battlegrounds) but he was making early advances in South America.
My understanding is that this is a reasonable position for the US to be in. However, I needed perfect cards in Mid War to even come close to challenging and I didn’t have them. I kept taking small losses with scoring and was down 10 points at the start of Turn 6 and holding Africa scoring. I could have headlined and lost another 3 points and tried to hold on, but I made it my Alamo and wasted good ops on a lot of daft realignment rolls. Annoyingly I had good cards in Turn 7 and if I’d held on I may have had a chance to make the end game interesting.
Simply though, he was too good. The way Ben deals with enemy events is ridiculous.
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This was how T1 ended. Reconstructed for posterity:
US Domination of Europe, 1 influence from US Domination of ME, 3 influence from US Domination of Asia. 2 VPs to US. ME the only place it looks like I have any hope of contesting, and this is after using the China Card! Fast-track to a USSR loss, however I look at it.
Went from that, to +USSR scores for both Europe and Asia in T2!
That appears an amazing US opening turn!
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I think you could benefit from focusing on BGs more and take less risks on the dice. There also seemed to be moments when you backed off but should have pushed through, like the early Europe and Asia turnarounds, but I haven’t gone back and checked your hands to see if you were desperately short of OPs or ARs. If you want a breakdown of plays like I did for RossM I’ll message you one later.
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I’d like that. Although to echo @chrislear , playing this game to the best of your ability is really stressful.
I had a great hand in Turn 1 and you had bad rolls. I don’t remember ever controlling Thailand! I was so nervous about making mistakes. You headlined Cambridge Spies in Turn 2 so you saw I had Asia and Europe Scoring - you flipped Italy in AR1 so I think I bailed on Europe.
I think I got scared in Asia. If you hadn’t known I had the scoring I may have gone for it. I can’t remember what my hand was like either.
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That is impressive. I was wondering how that could come about, and I thought that a war in Pakistan/Vietnam revolts and maybe Socialists in Europe might be involved. I didn’t think of the Cambridge 5.
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I actually lost Pakistan to the war in T1. After an influence tussle in Europe I had a chance to coup Thailand (I chose not to coup to Defcon 2 in T1 for this reason). In hindsight a Pakistan coup would have been safer, but I was gambling.
I get the stressful-part. Playing versus Benkyo always gives me the feeling of dancing on the edge of a vulcano, because you won’t get one breather during the game 
But I’m suprised you got scared after he saw your scoring cards. I would imagine it just frees you from the stress. He knows you have it anyway, so why not go all in on Asia/Europe. It not like you can suprise him at that point.
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Wait, how was Cambridge 5 used? Because you can’t flip a BG with just the event of that card, right?
He took Italy to 2-1 in the headline and put in 3 or 4 ops in AR1.
Tbh I’ve never thought of it like that. I tend to panic and think that if I can’t Dominate a region by subterfuge then I can’t do it at all.
Ah forgot that Cambridge let’s you put one op in without restrictions.
And depending on your ops of course, fighting for a region that will be scored this round isn’t a waste. Certainly if you have a good starting position like you did after T1.
On a side-note: what is it with you guys and crippling my hand on T1 with Red Scare/Purge? @Captbnut also just did it to me in our (supposedly) friendly game!
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It is too good to let it pass 
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Okay, here is my starting hand as the US player:
You can see Nasser up in the left corner as my Headline choice.
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Honestly, not sure you do. You can space Destal, or de Gaulle, hold the other, and get your MilOps without coup. Could have headlined Europe, and mitigated Suez. qwertysoldier, on the other hand, also had Decol and Blockade to deal with.
I’m now wondering whether in qwertysoldier’s case I would have set up with only 1 in W Germany to mitigate the risk of RS/P, or gambled on that not being the headline.
Why? To be able to get rid of Blockade without having to discard Destal and holding that until Turn 3?
Being able to hold Decol instead of being forced to play it is the key thing. Under RS, you’d space Destal, play Blockade and not discard.
But a smart USSR player would probably park 2 influence in W. Germany in AR1 after an RS headline.
Maybe 3 influence in W. Germany? Same idea, maybe playing Blockade in AR6 instead of as early as possible.