Twilight Struggle - 2p Teach, Play-through, & Roundtable Discussion by Heavy Cardboard

[@imjustsomeguy72]

Good stream, pretty hard to watch Edward get snowed under so early. Getting struck under RSP when you have Blockade is always a nightmare. But that's the game! The only real weakness of Twilight Struggle is that it is very unbalanced if one player knows the deck and the different card effects better than the other. On the flip side, if both players know the deck well, that's when all the bluffing and strategy comes to life. I think do another stream of base game, If Edward get US again give him at least +2 inf in setup.

[@imjustsomeguy72]

46:40 actually, +2 US is the most common handicap in competitive play. Basically there to mitigate the damage that a USSR coup to IRan or Italy can cause early which can steamroll to early VP victories

[@zamparor]

Thanks for a great teach and play though. Took my unplayed copy off the shelf at 1am and did a quick teach and played a trial round. Can’t wait to see Edward win the rematch!

[@manzell]

This is one of those games where it's really mandatory to understand 1) Every card in the game and 2) the basics of the reshuffle and "card counting". Thankfully unlike say Magic or Netrunner, there's a fixed and relatively small cardpool and you learn it once and you're done.

[@lukekennedy1001]

Great point, but with games with heavy theme like this, often it is more pertinent to enjoy the application of the mechanics onto the theme and see how it rolls out. The moments I enjoy of a game the most are before everything is unveiled to me. The anticipation of every nook and cranny of a game can stultify the experience of it and time progresses, irregardless of how proficient at the game it makes you. There is an argument to be made for enjoying games competitively versus enjoying seeing how the systems interact.

[@Roundtablist]

Congrats for 30K!

[@benhsu42]

Great Stream, can't wait to catch up on it!

[@manzell]

Also standard for about a decade is to give the US 2 additional influence at the start of the game to place anywhere on the map they already have influence.

[@jonathanhope3672]

I love TS but it can be absolutely brutal sometimes. Well played. GG

[@Afinati]

I'm just watching this now and as this got me into heavy games nine years ago and it's the game I'm best at playing, I'm worried if this'll be a train wreck. But I also look forward to their post-game commentary. Let's see what happens.

[@toddmolenda]

I need more of this game

[@jankogo]

Thank you for doing this, Edward! I really want to try my own copy, but it feels like this one has a huge barrier to entry

[@eddoerring9274]

Theres an iOS version to play against the cpu. Ive been loving it so far, a great way to get into it without being humiliated by friends. It also lets you play online as well

[@jankogo]

@@eddoerring9274 Nice to know. I think it is on Steam as well.

[@Apeshower]

Awesome stream guys.

[@JustinLillich]

Looking forward to a Turn Zero playthrough! I've done the digital version and have the physical next printing on P500 (for like 9 months now...)

[@imjustsomeguy72]

1:05:00 more properly, the star means the card is taken out of the game when played for the event (you can play for Ops or space without taking it out of the game)

[@Drewkas0]

Yeah. What Edward was describing sounds like how events with underlined titles work.

[@imjustsomeguy72]

@@Drewkas0 Yeah, actually, in retrospect that's probably what was meant.

[@emildafinov2710]

Random question, is that the correct way to deal cards when the round 3 reshuffle happens? All the remaining cards before the reshuffle were dealt to Edward, meaning that Ken could know exactly what these are (if he were annoying and decided to look through the discard deck), while all the cards dealt to Ken would come from the reshuffled deck, and Edward couldn't have a clue what they are.

[@imjustsomeguy72]

Tournament rules require cards to be dealt out in an alternating fashion always starting with USSR, for this reason, but I don't think it's otherwise required in the standard rules. But yes, if you get to the point where you know what's in the deck and can card count enough to know what is left in the reshuffle, it's wise to follow tournament rules. Although if you're advanced enough you will still know what your opponent has, because you knew what was left and you have the others :P

[@EmilioRodo]

Well, technically both players have a card list and the discard pile is public information. So, nothing is stopping you from taking a minute to rummage through. It'll be annoying, since the other player would have to sit there and wait. I wonder, does anyone just show the cards that can be deduced? It would save time, not require counting, and it would make for a different feel for the turn following a reshuffle.

[@joeferreti9442]

Edward played abysmally and had bad luck on top of it. And Ken played very well, as far as I can tell. A very one-sided playthrough. But nice to see this game getting played by Heavy Cardboard.

[@Heavycardboard]

Sorry. I’ll try and do better next time.

[@hamid842]

@joeferreti9442 Rather, I think Edward did a fantastic job bringing this game to all of us who never played it!

[@lukekennedy1001]

@@Heavycardboard You had no experience with it in fairness to you, can't expect someone to be good at a game they haven't played!

[@imjustsomeguy72]

2:09:35 Arab Israeli should have gone to discard pile, not left the game.

[@pfefferle74]

Red Scare does not mean that you can't discard your 3 Op cards for Blockade. The -1 reductions is only for cards *played* not for those *discarded*.

[@imjustsomeguy72]

No, they played this correctly. The rules aren't very helpful at this point, but7.4.2. This specific example is not mentioned explicitly, but an inverse example (Brezhnev allowing a one ops card to be discarded to Bear Trap) is. This is also how it's implemented in the Playdek app which is basically what gets used for competitive play not over the board. Your reading is fair though. Its something that always kinda needed a small adjustment to the RSP text to just get rid of the 'played', or otherwise make explicit in the rules that 'discarding' is still 'playing'. TLDR: RSP (and Brezhnev, containment, etc) affect Ops values for all cards whenever those ops values are relevant for ANY purpose.