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Wow, that Uruguay play is neat. Especially with Ussuri gone, it looks reasonable but I would never have thought of it. I was wondering if you could realign him out of South Africa earlier but unsure when would have been good. I would headline Nasser. Muslim Revolution could be useful but not sure you want to commit to using it as the event. I don't really like using SALT except to set up obvious game-winners, the extra AR spent doing nothing + drawing one less card is a tough cost - probably I underuse it and here you do have the interaction with Cuban Missile Crisis so perhaps headline the latter?
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Sep 30, 2017 02:43
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Nasser-Muslim Revolution would be a real nice one-two combo, since you'd first Nasser into Egypt and then rip him out of both Egypt and Libya, which means he has no way back into Libya and that basically swings the ME right around especially since Sadat is in the discard. You'd have to do it at DEFCON 2, though. You can space Duck&Cover so that's not a problem, so I wouldn't play it for the event. So what I think I'd do is headline Nasser, then use NATO to coup Panama, then Muslim Revolution for the event in AR2, then I'd probably use most of the other cards for ops while looking to hold onto OAS, except maybe SALT Negotiations, depending on whether I feel comfortable handing him a coup or not and Arms Race if I can get the three points. As I recall there's nothing absolutely critical in the discard anyway.
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Sep 30, 2017 14:33
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Cerebral Bore posted:Nasser-Muslim Revolution would be a real nice one-two combo, since you'd first Nasser into Egypt and then rip him out of both Egypt and Libya, which means he has no way back into Libya and that basically swings the ME right around especially since Sadat is in the discard. You'd have to do it at DEFCON 2, though. It's a good plan but how useful would that be considering the ME won't be scored for another three turns, if at all? The Americas are more urgent, unfortunately.
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Sep 30, 2017 15:41
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The Nasser - Mus Rev combo actually works better if you don't run Nasser as the headline, though. If you play Nasser in a DEFCON 2 AR he has practically no counterplay and you may be able to bait him into wasting more influence on Egypt. Headlining Nasser means either he coups Egypt back (which you can still undo, but leaves you out of position after MusRev drops) or he flips Thailand (which is a much bigger priority since Asia/SE Asia are unscored.)
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Sep 30, 2017 15:58
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Straight White Shark posted:The Nasser - Mus Rev combo actually works better if you don't run Nasser as the headline, though. If you play Nasser in a DEFCON 2 AR he has practically no counterplay and you may be able to bait him into wasting more influence on Egypt. Headlining Nasser means either he coups Egypt back (which you can still undo, but leaves you out of position after MusRev drops) or he flips Thailand (which is a much bigger priority since Asia/SE Asia are unscored.) That's a fair point, actually. With that in mind, I'd leave it for later in the turn. u brexit ukip it posted:It's a good plan but how useful would that be considering the ME won't be scored for another three turns, if at all? The Americas are more urgent, unfortunately. Well, you need Nasser and Muslim Rev to do it, and we're obviously not going to get that combo again. So opportunism, basically.
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Sep 30, 2017 16:13
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Right now Asia is the biggest problem. Muslim Revolution + Nasser sounds good for the long term, but I agree that Cuban Missile Crisis is probably the best headline followed by fortifying Asia. If you get a spare moment maybe you can do something in the ME, but let's be honest, that's not very likely. Right now there's too many cards to watch out for after he burned all those good USSR events out of his hand so I'd expect something like grain sales or voa to be incoming. Also, good to see the thread back alive again.
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Oct 1, 2017 04:40
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Got some travel tomorrow so releasing a day early - enjoy! 5.3 - We Are Siamese If You DON'T Please! 
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Oct 5, 2017 20:27
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Man, that was rough. You definitely got a bit greedy there with Asia, though. Personally I wouldn't have played Shuttle Diplomacy until after Asia was scored. EDIT: I mean, shuttle dip set you up for a ten-point swing. That's not something you just risk, IMO. Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Oct 5, 2017 |
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Oct 5, 2017 21:18
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I felt like the game was probably lost without it, and the double-coup seemed to offer a stronger chance of keeping Thailand altogether. But yeah certainly a risk with a huge downside. BY THE WAY... what do you guys think about the following: I've been wondering if the series would be more coherent if I did it in "one turn" increments rather than "two turn" increments. Because that way every headline phase would have "homework" and analysis, etc, instead of the current "every other turn" which sometimes feels weird. Of course the episodes would tend to be shorter, though the final product would largely play in the same overall time. Thoughts?
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Oct 5, 2017 22:26
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Oof, that was painful  I can understand the logic behind the Shuttle Diplomacy desperation play, but I think it might have been slightly premature: you pushed SALT because you knew you needed to coup some battlegrounds to turn Africa and the Americas around, then turned around and gave up on them in order to protect future points in Asia. Still, though, brutal hand. Bringing up SALT was already a bit of a Hail Mary, so with those draws I can see why you weren't enthusiastic about trying to slog it out in the other regions. Personally I like the two-turn format--there's a big chunk of summary and analysis at the start of every episode, and while I enjoy getting the zoomed-out picture from these I think it might get a bit annoying if every single turn was prefaced by 5-10 minutes of intro. Going two turns gives us these nice doses of deep analysis without being too
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Oct 5, 2017 23:11
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I like the two turn episodes. But really whatever is best for you, in my opinion, since the hardest part about making good content is getting the content out there at all. Also, this came up in a civ thread...remember Imperialism and Imperialism 2? Imp 2 is one of my favorite strategy games ever, and no one seems to know about it, and someone said you played it or used it as inspiration or something. Honestly don't know what I'm even asking, just want to bring up the game because it's amazing and I wish there was an imp 3.
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Oct 6, 2017 13:43
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I like two turn episodes because it doesn't take as long for games to finish. The slow pace in general during episodes bothers me more. Specifically it's the 10 minute play by play recap of the previous episode, and long headline or play discussions. I find myself going "get on with it!  " at least once per episode despite watching everything at double speed. Mind you, I realize that everyone has their style. Maybe it's is possible to add timestamps for the start of the turns in an episode?silvergoose posted:I like the two turn episodes. But really whatever is best for you, in my opinion, since the hardest part about making good content is getting the content out there at all.  Later I had great fun with Imperialism and that's when I realized that I would probably would have gotten more lasting fun out of Imperialism 2 than out of Nascar 2000.  That is my imperialism story
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Oct 6, 2017 18:38
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Okay cool, sounds like 2-turns-a-shot is still the right format. I'll see what I can do about timestamps for jumping "straight to the action". Obviously I think the in-depth headline discussions need to be there since this is a "teaching series", but I can see how many just want to see how the game is coming out - legit! Imperialism! Yes I do remember... in a rather distant way. I think I must have been playing that around the time I was working on Civ 2 - that's my guess for which game drew inspiration. Although the funny thing is that one of the chief inspirations I drew from it (along with from Master of Magic) was NOT to have a separate tactical combat game from the main map!
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Oct 7, 2017 14:34
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Hah. I do kinda like the battle system, actually, but I can understand why you chose not to.
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Oct 7, 2017 14:47
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Couple of quick updates: (1) Next game is underway with the mighty Ziemowit, one of the top online players of "theory style". Watch this space... (2) Meanwhile a fun little thing has happened in that GMT reached out to me asking if they could promote the videos which I guess they eventually noticed. Of course you can promote my videos, GMT :-) Not that I monetize them or anything, it's just cool. (3) I'm about to start a Skyrim playthrough (on the new Survival mode, Legendary Difficulty, and with some kind of permadeath-type challenge) in a different thread on here. Because I just feel the hunger. So in case you can't get enough of my voice, check out that thread I've opened up. Won't stop me from continuing to do these, although keep in mind that each one of these videos represents around 5-6 hours of work whereas I can pop out a Skyrim video in about 2 :-O I won't mention that thread again here. (4) Anybody in the Vaguely Virginia area who's interested in playing in a face-to-face tournament, I'll be personally GM'ing the Twilight Struggle tournament at Prezcon (https://www.prezcon.com) in Charlottesville VA which runs Feb 19-25 -- they haven't told me the date they want me to run the Twilight tournament but last year it was the final Saturday so my guess is it would happen Feb 24. So come on down and play! Brian Reynolds fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Oct 26, 2017 04:16
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Aaaaand we're back! Now playing Ziemowit, one of the best-known masters of the game, a leading proponent of the positional theory-style play that forms the opposing camp to Sankt-style! 6.1 - Festering With Mitigation (vs. Ziemowit!) 
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Dec 1, 2017 18:47
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dat hand 
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Dec 1, 2017 18:52
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OK, I really have to question you opponent's Turn 1 AR3 play. If he's reduced you to only having one influence in Israel and he's holding Suez Crisis, I'd say that the obvious best move for him is to play it for the event to eliminate your middle eastern influence altogether. It's not even like he had anything critical he had to do at that point, and the reward is clearly well worth the price. Real nice on your part to be able to get rid of both Decol and Destal next turn, though. As for headline, I think I'd headline Blockade and discard Destal on it, on account of neither having anything really good to headline, nor anything super bad (that we know of) to prevent with Defectors, which I wouldn't headline here anyway due to the likely possibility that he tries to sneak away a good US event (or maybe even Asia Scoring) in the headline since he knows you hold it.
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Dec 1, 2017 22:01
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Cerebral Bore posted:OK, I really have to question you opponent's Turn 1 AR3 play. If he's reduced you to only having one influence in Israel and he's holding Suez Crisis, I'd say that the obvious best move for him is to play it for the event to eliminate your middle eastern influence altogether. It's not even like he had anything critical he had to do at that point, and the reward is clearly well worth the price. quote:Real nice on your part to be able to get rid of both Decol and Destal next turn, though. As for headline, I think I'd headline Blockade and discard Destal on it, on account of neither having anything really good to headline, nor anything super bad (that we know of) to prevent with Defectors, which I wouldn't headline here anyway due to the likely possibility that he tries to sneak away a good US event (or maybe even Asia Scoring) in the headline since he knows you hold it.
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Dec 1, 2017 22:32
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Brian Reynolds posted:Oh wow, fantastic point! I didn't notice that at the time (didn't realize he had Suez yet, and had even moderately discounted it based on his headline). But YES! Would have given me an immense mountain to climb to avoid losing 7+VP in the Middle East. Plus I have good reason to think (from a comment he made in turn 3) that his hold card from turn 1 may well have been Marshall Plan, meaning he could withhold my best chance to even get adjacent to the Middle East. You're absolutely right Suez Crisis for the event on AR3 would have been devastating and he missed it! Yeah. Seems a bit strange since the guy apparently is an expert at the positional game, but I guess it goes to show that nobody's immune to missing opportunities sometimes. Brian Reynolds posted:Hmmm... Middle East doesn't seem likely to get any BETTER for me as the turn goes on "and he knows I'm holding it"? Blockade's at least a 1-op if I play it mid-turn whereas ME Scoring is a zero op however you look at it? Well, now that you mention it, it's probably better to just take the loss. As you say, you can always get rid of Blockade later. Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Dec 1, 2017 |
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Dec 1, 2017 23:15
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Good to see you back on the 'tube, Brian! Interesting hand you have there at the end; great opportunity to get rid of Destal and Decol both; although to be honest your opponent has demonstrated that he doesn't really need them to take over Central America or to plunge deep into Africa  My initial thought for headline was Blockade to get rid of Decolonization, then use UN Intervention later in the turn to neutralize Destalinization. Though I realize that means you won't be able to hold Defectors... e: ME-wise, you could at least fill up Israel to get another point out of it; possibly even take over Iraq with NATO on AR1 if he does a coup
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Dec 7, 2017 21:32
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Aaaaand I went with Middle East Scoring ;-) Enjoy! 6.2 - Only Nixon Could Cram The Whole China Card 
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Dec 8, 2017 18:10
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u brexit ukip it posted:Good to see you back on the 'tube, Brian! quote:Though I realize that means you won't be able to hold Defectors... One of my main mental debates was between two things: (a) Space BOTH destal & decol, and play Blockade with UN intervention (more space shots is good; leaving blockade in the deck is less good) (b) Space Decol, play Blockade discarding Destal, and then UN is just played for ops (retires blockade for good, plays 1 more op onto the board)
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Dec 8, 2017 18:17
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Couple interesting possibilities for VOA. With China in hand you could have put NK into play for +2 points on Asia and a more durable domination than what Formosa gets you, although it's probably not worth ceding China for. I would have been tempted to take everything out of Central America and leave him with a single influence in Cuba: that's +2 VP for you that he can't undo with his measly 1 op, plus you can supercharge Cuban Missile Crisis if it comes up. If he plugs Nicaragua or Haiti up for defense you can coup it, if not you can just drop an influence into Nicaragua yourself thanks to Costa Rica (costs you a milop point, but oh well.) Granted, considering how the hands shook out this turn it looks like you probably made the right move: Junta is exactly what he needed to reverse the bleeding in Central America and Sadat is exactly what you need to capitalize on Libya for maximum pain. You'd still be vulnerable to a counter-coup in Egypt but a lot of his safe 4s are gone, and he can't coup Panama and Egypt both. Then again, Grain Sales is always a great move and it's virtually guaranteed that he's holding something really really nasty since he opted to dump Voice of America instead of playing it. Duck & Cover, Ussuri, or Bear Trap would be the obvious candidates, although given the relatively painless VOA he was able to engineer I can see where he might have decided that was a better play than something like Puppet Governments/Panama Canal/OAS. Hitting him with Grain Sales would potentially let you steal the coup (against another headline coup, no less!) while simultaneously stealing his ability to hold something really nasty. On the other hand, if he can't coup it's a no-brainer for him to retake Libya. I think I'd still be leaning towards headlining Sadat and playing Grain Sales later.
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Dec 8, 2017 19:28
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I'm fond of using Voice of America for area denial, so I think I'd have used it to take away all his influence in Libya and Egypt since that'd leave him with no real way back in, and also basically flipped the ME into your camp. Admittedly the ME has scored already, but with this board position I kinda think you need all the positional advantage you can get. Otherwise I don't see very much else I'd have done differently. As for the headline, do you even have to ask? Grain Sales away and steal the coup, or he'll go into Mexico and potentially coup Panama for central american control.
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Dec 8, 2017 19:29
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Great to see this series back again, it's always fun to se people who know what they're doing playing TS. I'd say headline Grain Sales because that's just what you do when you draw Grain Sales and there isn't anything else that looks better. At least it'll let you steal the coup and maybe gain Nigeria. I'd say focus on what's going to score next, try to get Africa and play defensively in Europe and Asia. Italian Brush War is still possible right?
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Dec 8, 2017 23:30
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Straight White Shark posted:I think I'd still be leaning towards headlining Sadat and playing Grain Sales later. Cerebral Bore posted:As for the headline, do you even have to ask? Grain Sales away and steal the coup, or he'll go into Mexico and potentially coup Panama for central american control. Ithle01 posted:I'd say headline Grain Sales because that's just what you do when you draw Grain Sales and there isn't anything else that looks better. At least it'll let you steal the coup and maybe gain Nigeria. I'd say focus on what's going to score next, try to get Africa and play defensively in Europe and Asia. Italian Brush War is still possible right?
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Dec 9, 2017 17:09
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I'd go with above and headline Sadat. Keeps lots of ops in your hand and denies him Egypt and Libya. Less important given OPEC's gone I admit, but it seems the best way to consolidate your advantage. And yeah, I'd have gone for two out of NK and two out of Libya.
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Dec 9, 2017 18:37
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Brian Reynolds posted:Is there that much of a hurry on Sadat? Grain Sales works best in headline because of its coup-stealing potential and doubly so against Junta - against a Sadat headline he can put his Junta influence into Mexico and then coup Panama and ends up with 5-10VP depending on his die roll. (Admittedly without a coup he can still do much of that, is just limited to down-odds realignment in Panama, but at least the 10VP total crushing is eliminated and I think the 7VP version is less likely). It seems to me though that with Middle East and OPEC already out and other scoring stuff still in the mix he's not likely to have time to play into Libya on his first play? Now if Middle East was still in the deck and the Americas already scored I'd agree! Good point, I hadn't spotted the threat of Central American Control (guess my head was still stuck in the space of hitting Cuba with VOA). That definitely changes the calculus; getting Sadat in immediately is still nice to keep him out of Libya but it's definitely not worth giving up control.
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Dec 9, 2017 20:05
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If you had seen VoA coming, maybe playing Allende sooner would give you something good to do with it! When you had the CIA Op point I would have used it for influence in UK, since you knew Special Relationship would be played that turn. Agree with Grain Sales here.
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Dec 10, 2017 22:07
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Brian Reynolds posted:Sometimes my asking is pro-forma :-) (and since beginners might not "know" yet) but in this case note how Straight White Shark found at least a reasonable alternative in Sadat that while I don't think is quite as good in the current scoring card context, does have some upsides. And note that when examined more closely even with coup-stealing from Junta we're only lowering our Central America downside "some" - he can still reach domination in spite of us. That's true, but at least it would only be five points lost and not ten.
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Dec 11, 2017 13:42
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Cerebral Bore posted:That's true, but at least it would only be five points lost and not ten. Absolutely but my point about scoring-card-context was that, imagining a world in which we'd already scored Central America and Africa and had NOT yet scored Middle East and OPEC, that Sadat might beat out Grain Sales as a headline.
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Dec 11, 2017 17:20
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Brian Reynolds posted:Absolutely but my point about scoring-card-context was that, imagining a world in which we'd already scored Central America and Africa and had NOT yet scored Middle East and OPEC, that Sadat might beat out Grain Sales as a headline. Right, that makes sense.
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Dec 11, 2017 19:59
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Who's ready to eat a Victory Point Sandwich? Anyone? 6.3 - A Victory Point Sandwich 
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Dec 15, 2017 18:06
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Hmm, dropping defcon will let him use Decol + the China Card (or even Brush War, if he feels like rolling the dice) to flip Thailand (and Asian domination) without even giving up the coup. Headlining Bear Trap would give us a chance to defend, but also makes his hand management situation a lot easier, and while giving him an Africa coup now doesn't flip it, it does make the situation much harder to defend going forwards. I'm thinking we call Asia a bust and try to flip Central America. Perhaps Junta into Guatemala (setting up a good realignment on Mexico), plus an opportunistic coup (maybe Mexico, but perhaps in Argentina to potentially put South America into play?). If he defends Mexico, then we can defend Asia without giving him an Africa coup.
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Dec 16, 2017 02:39
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Definitely correct play on Africa there. As for the headline, I'd go with Bear Trap. It shuts down his opportunity to capitalize on Decol, and it lets you either steal the coup or cash in some VP with Duck and Cover. E: Unless I had to shore up something due to Decol, I'd probably use Junta either on AR1 to coup something in the americas or on AR2 after a Duck and Cover to realign Mexico, picking the first option if he gets out of the trap immediately and the second if he doesn't. Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Dec 16, 2017 |
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Dec 16, 2017 15:15
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So yeah you guys are onto some of the scary tradeoffs on the coming headline: (1) The implied threat is Decol into Thailand followed by Cramming-The-Whole-China-Card to flip it. (2) Both Junta and Duck&Cover somewhat "aid and abet" this (or at least increase the temptation for him) by stealing the coup. (3) BUT he can Brush War Thailand ANYWAY and flip it at 50/50. (4) BUT if he does that then at least he isn't doing it to Panama. (5) *BUT* if I headline Bear Trap and he successfully discards in AR1, then I have no card that lets me both "save" Thailand AND steal the coup, so then I probably get to eat a coup in Panama and a Brush War in Thailand! (Or he could coup Brazil and Brush War Venezuela, if South America is his preferred flavor of carving me a new peehole) In other words... gently caress.
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Dec 16, 2017 22:04
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Any consideration to AR7 using SALT to recover Grain Sales or maybe Voice of America?
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Dec 17, 2017 20:35
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rchandra posted:Any consideration to AR7 using SALT to recover Grain Sales or maybe Voice of America? I probably SHOULD have thought longer about that. I felt like "Defcon 5 Chaos" would be better for him than me, but I didn't analyze it deeply.
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Dec 22, 2017 21:31
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 21:20 |
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Who's ready for the Late War? Ziemowit is! 6.4 - To Make A Communist Stew 
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Dec 22, 2017 21:32
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