Twilight Struggle: Red Sea solo play and review | Review copy provided

[@enriquevarea5730]

Best solo tutorial about this game in KZbin, thank you and well done

[@OneStopCoopShop]

Glad it was helpful!

[@RandyStrader]

Really enjoyable play through, you’re very engaging in your presentation! I wanted to offer a small nitpick at the 19:28 mark. When Coup’ing a Flashpoint country, I think the draw to check if DEFCON degrades occurs *prior to* the resolution of the Coup (see Playbook example, p. 12). Look forward to watching more content from you.

[@OneStopCoopShop]

Doesn’t really matter, right? If you lose the game from the draw then you lose either way, and if you don’t lose then you don’t lose. 😅

[@RandyStrader]

@@OneStopCoopShopMatters only in an edge case that the card drawn is a scoring card, which AFAIK is scored. So scoring could be different before and after the coup result. I only caught this bc I literally read an entry on BGG prior to watching. Thanks!

[@OneStopCoopShop]

@RandyStrader ohhhh, good call didn’t think of that

[@wmarclocher]

Thanks for the review. It helped me grasp a little better how the solo bot is suppose to work. One of the things I actually like with this solo bot and the flow chart solo bots in COIN is that it teaches you what goals you should be aiming for in your strategy. Have you tried the digital version of this game?

[@OneStopCoopShop]

I don’t generally try video game versions of board games, but I’ve heard this one is good

[@timothybrown7188]

Thanks for the video! Around the 14 minute mark, you mention the action table says to use the coup action if a 4 result would remove all US influence from a flashpoint country. Then you performed a coup in the country. However, the coup does not necessarily have to occur in that country I believe. The directions have a section where it says that the country that triggers the solo action isn't necessarily the country where the action will take place. For the location of where the action will occur, I think you need to reference the page for action locations for solo.

[@edwardbrost331]

Looking forward to this one.

[@nicolasdujovne4228]

Hi Mike, great playthrough! Thanks! I'm learning how to play the solo mode and have a question, for example in 41:55 since the USSR doesn't control 3 countries in Africa and the Africa Scoring Card is not in the discard pile, shouldn't the first column apply?

[@OneStopCoopShop]

Thanks for watching! The leftmost column says "USSR does not control a Flashpoint Country OR at least 3 countries in Africa". So if at least one of the two applies, the column is skipped. For the moment you mentioned, the USSR controls Somalia, so they don't care whether they control at least 3 countries. They control a flashpoint, meaning the column does not apply and is skipped. Hope that makes sense!

[@nicolasdujovne4228]

Im not sure that is correct… the solo rules says: “… check each condition from left to right until a condition is true” Since the 1st column has an “OR” the statement will be true if one of those statements are true. USSR does control a Flashpoint country, so the 1st statement is false but doesn’t control at least 3 countries in Africa, so the 2nd statement is True, so the condition as a whole is true.

[@nicolasdujovne4228]

But, just noticed that in the solo example of play, also from the rulebook, they skip it if the bot controls a flashpoint country… which is contradictory with the rules as writen 😮

[@OneStopCoopShop]

You are misunderstanding the logic for the bot here. That first column is meant to prevent an immediate player win from African scoring. So if the bot either has a flashpoint or has 3+ control, either of which would prevent the auto-win, then they will skip that column. If they needed to both control 3+ countries AND a flashpoint country, they would almost never skip that column and they would focus way too much on Africa and play poorly 😅

[@nicolasdujovne4228]

@@OneStopCoopShop I'm not sure if the meaning of the 1st column is to prevent the player from an immediate win or if its for the bot to accomplish it, since by having at least 1 flashpoint country and at least 3 countries, according to the place influence chart they would prioritize Flashpoint countries so they will end up with both Flashpoint and a 3rd country in order to win... but only if the Africa Scoring Card is not in the discard pile, otherwise the bot strategy changes to avoid the 1st column since Africa is not that importan afterwards. I'm going to ask in BGG hopefully for the solo mode designer to clarify it since the rules and the bot example are in contradiction...

[@jaybear7272]

Great playthrough Mike! I’ve played original TS a ton on the app, but the physical board game just wouldn’t work for my family - much too long and complex for their tastes. So to have this version which feels just like TS, plays quickly AND has a solo mode, is just fantastic. Although the bot here can be a bit swingy, to me that adds to the challenge and the variety of how games play out. Overall though it seems pretty balanced to me: I’m currently at about a 50% win rate against the bot playing as both USSR and US. I read somewhere that GMT games are planning on bringing out more of these “mini TS” games in future, and if they do I’ll be snapping those up for sure!

[@OneStopCoopShop]

Agree with all of this. It’s great!

[@davidko9289]

Looks great, but I'm allergic to resolution tables. I wonder if there's a way to have an app or something similar instead of having to consult the full card list of what to do.

[@OneStopCoopShop]

I’m sure someone could figure it out :)

[@simonl3113]

You can play this game on Steam

[@tommasomartinoli1468]

is this already stable as digital version? I heard very bad reviews about it.. However i am pretty sure that someone will come up with an app to handle the bot, an app like the labyrinth bot one @@simonl3113

[@staticklingon2182]

This is one of those situations where I appreciate the review so much because now I know this game just isn’t for me. 🙂

[@OneStopCoopShop]

Perfect! I like to help either way :)