Turn Zero itself doesn’t add any cards to the deck (it sometimes replaces one, delays one until midwar, or even removes one permanently). In any event it isn’t the thing that affects deck size.
It’s the “Kickstarter” cards that affect the deck size. They were completely separate expansions and did not come with any such recommendation.
Finally I’m pretty sure from everything else I’ve encountered that the sentence you’re referencing is actually a case of awkward/poor English: I’m pretty sure “without” only references the Chinese Civil War. We could always ask Ananda, but again per the above the original Turn Zero expansion had nothing to do with deck size.
Yes, I have the Kickstarter collector’s edition that includes both Turn Zero and the expansion cards.
My understanding is that the first time Turn Zero appeared was in the Kickstarter collector’s edition of the game, appearing together with the new cards. Agreed that there is no guidance on whether the Turn Zero addition is balanced with the new Kickstarter cards.
I was at GDC the past three days and despite seeing other Riot Games folks hanging out at the SUSD boardgame area on the 3rd floor of West Hall, I did not see Ananda. However, I just did a quick search and found this thread on BGG in which Ananda clarifies:
Turn Zero was designed assuming players would not use the first Deluxe edition’s optional cards.
Ah, good research. My original kickstarter stuff came in like 3 different shrink-wrapped packets with different rule cards for each. Turn Zero (etc) was pretty esoteric stuff before the online version came out.
It is with a great sense of pride and a great moment for history that I can report that the glorious Soviet people under the guidance and benevolence of Comrade tgb have finally and decisively crushed the decadent SadleyBradley and his capitalist stooges.
It was one of the more fun games I’ve played here, and for a while could have gone either way. At one time or another we both made mistakes that could have handed victory to the other, and both missed our opportunities. By the 10th turn I was up by 17 VP, but he was in a better position in terms of controlling the map and could have turned it around in final scoring. Fortunately I had been having a lot of luck with playing the Space Race, and was able to roll a Space Shuttle on the 3rd AR, giving me the 4 points I needed to win.
@tgb123 prevails over SadleyBradley in round 10. I had an opportunity to win about halfway through but totally didn’t see it and got slowly buried.
I’m definitely down for a rematch, but I’d like to wait until after the tournament is over, if that’s okay. This game takes up a lot of headspace for me, and I’d be screwed trying to maintain more than one game at once.
Our game is coming down to the wire. Soviets up +8 VP at turn 10 with 4 action rounds left to go. U.S. dominates Europe and Central America, Soviets dominate Asia and Africa, rest of the regions are perfect ties. Could see a swing with tricky late war cards and the final action U.S. shenanigans.
Early game had bad luck on U.S. first turn draw: 2 score cards with none for Soviets. Late game Soviets are getting whacked with bum rolls: a 2 to 6 realignment roll, followed by a 1 to 6 roll for a LOSS when they were up PLUS FOUR.
Brian Reynolds (cattlesquat) USA over Gumers USSR, Turn 10 by scoring track. GG gumers! - momentum just stayed with me throughout.
Note - I will be in Europe from Mar 11 to Mar 26, during which I will try my best to do moves for the next round, but it may just not work out.
PROPOSAL - Possibly others are also having Spring Break issues this month as well? Could we do one round with a more forgiving time control, e.g. play on the 21 day clock and try to finish in early April? Or just delay the mandatory onset of round 4 by a bit? (i.e. I could pound the whole thing out the last week of March if my opponent could too)
But if in the end things just march onward then that’s life - it just occurred to me this may be a month when others are similarly affected.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen all the late war cards in a game, let alone gone on to final turn 10 scoring.
My lord there are some nasty US cards. I had only known about stuff like AWAC Sales and Evil Empire. Wasn’t prepared for Tear Down This Wall or Chernobyl; those things are up there with Blockade, Destalinization, and Quagmire for potential game-swingiest card in the game. Thank god Pope John Paul never went through for Solidarity to go off.
I got lucky and received The Reformer and Glasnost in the same turn. Unfortunately I decided to use it to take control of France instead of Italy, not knowing about the Tear Down This Wall card. France was easy pickings for a realignment roll.
There’s some excitement there!!! I will admit that sometimes I get an opponent rated much lower than me, but then they play a Pitch Perfect early war. So I’m always thinking… let me just hold until the late war and perhaps he will not be expecting the power of This Fully Operational Battlestation! :-)
That’s yet another thing I love so much about this game! I am starting to feel the early war, am getting familiar with the mid war, and still got that whole unexplored late war continent to learn about. Although for that, I should probably stop using Wargames as soon as I can.
Greatatlantic (US) over tylertoo (USSR) in Turn 9 due to defcon suicide. Who says Terrorism can’t achieve its objectives?
It was a close game throughout, I don’t think either player ever broke the 10 VP mark. However, close games tend to tilt towards the US over time, and this one was no exception. Though the board state favored me with domination of Europe and Control of Asia, this came down to hand management.
Using Space to see the headline of Terrorism coming, tylertoo missed counting cards and didn’t realize he wouldn’t be able to hold Grain Sales to Soviets after spacing KAL-007. On the other hand, the way out of that situation was to play KAL-007 on AR1 and space Grain Sales. Or, hope Terrorism doesn’t discard Bear Trap and Trap himself to discard one suicide card after spacing the other. Neither particularly pleasant options, despite the otherwise great 1-2 punch of Reformer and Glasnot in his hand, and as it was Bear Trap was discarded by Terrorism. Barring a longshot of me raising Defcon or playing Nuclear submarines, the game was decided.
Some open suggestion so others might learn (subject to critique):
One of your first turns was to spend the China card to take South Korea. I can’t see this as a good move. It is aggressively taking what I’m hesitant to defend because of the Korean War card. As it is, I used the China card next Turn to flip North Korea, which is a trade I’d make any day. It’s worth an extra VP due to adjacency, and I don’t have to worry about losing it to Korean War.
Make Duck and Cover Work of you! If I set up a battleground flip at the end of a Turn forcing you to chose between giving me the coup and losing that battleground, Duck and Cover actually gives you an out. Play it, let the event lower defcon, and then place influence. Obviously not ideal, since you give me 3 VP, but still, a good option to consider instead of necessarily spacing it.
So, waiting until your hand only had Five Year Plan and Truman Doctrine was clever, give your self 3 OPs to solve the issue instead of 1. However, you used those ops to make sure Independent Reds influenced Yugoslavia didn’t flip. The end result? You spent 6 ops to hold Yugoslavia, after I already had Greece and Turkey thanks to Marshall Plan. You weren’t going to stop me from scoring domination at that point except by taking France or by playing the scoring card before I took France (which is what you did, meaning Yugoslavia didn’t matter for scoring, at all).
You hit me with Purge on turn 3 (or was it 2?). Nice! However, you almost immediately gave it back by using Containment for a Coup. I know you had your reasons, but Purge turned my hand into painful muck. Containment returned it to playable. Note, that also let me discard to Blockade. Containment should have been played on your last action or 2.
You got greedy with Central America Scoring. I know you know this, but maybe somebody else can learn. It was pretty obvious to me you had the scoring card, but I wasn’t in any position to stop domination. However, Control? Yeah, I could stop that by holding Mexico as you kept placing influence in its direction. The kicker? You neglected Africa where you had the battlegrounds for domination, but not the country count. Fixable, but I was able to play Africa from my hand for a single VP loss. A good player tries to maintain domination and prevent domination in as many continents as possible. This puts pressure on their opponent to fight the board as well as their hand.
Avoid giving the US non-Battleground coup targets. This is inevitable some point in the middle war, but denying the US any way to conduct military ops in rounds 2,3, and beyond is something of a hidden source of VP. For example, you successfully couped Panama. Placing influence in Columbia did not give you Venezuela. What I remember happening is I coup’ed Columbia, got my minimum military ops to avoid point loss, and later moved into Venezuela, giving me a presence in South America where otherwise I might have been shut out.
Getting unpleasant events out of your hand should be a priority. I don’t know how common you were ending your Turn with two “bad” US events, but I suspect it was at least a few times. Because next Turn, you won’t have the China Card to give you breathing room for those events, and you can expect to draw more. Now, a hand with 3 bad US events? You can only space 1, hold 1, and the other is going to have to trigger, which is what ultimately determined the game.
The main reason I almost always try to hold onto the China Card through at least turn 1 as Soviets is that it vastly increases my chances of prying loose Decolonization / Destalinization if the US player draws them. Since with China in his hand he could potentially make it through turn 2 with BOTH of them, and would similarly be able to hold one card even against a Blockade. (Recently I had an unusual game where I held both Decol & Destal on turn 1 as Soviets. Leaving me a little short on ops cards, so… what the heck! … I played China on turn 1). All of that said, I will play China if it’s what needs to be done to stop a domination of Asia, and sometimes assimilating the ROK is the only available move in that regard. I wouldn’t trade the north for it though!
EDIT - and the secondary reason I hold onto it is in case I draw CIA. With China in hand, CIA doesn’t become an existential threat until at least turn 4.
Note that in Early War if you’re not holding any war cards as Soviets, running Duck and Cover for influence on AR1 probably goes in the books as -5 VP, because of the 2 points you won’t be getting for milops – or even -7 vp if US gets to run an Indo/Paki for 2 ops. Occasionally the US will have to play Korea or Arab/Israeli for you, and you may have a feel for the likelihood if it’s turn 2. But the key point is that Duck and Cover is often an excruciatingly costly card for the Soviets, and some of the costs are hidden. Often it might be better to go ahead and lose that battleground… I got a little clearer on this after playing some Turn Zero, where the First Lightning card offers the Soviets all the benefits of Duck and Cover without nearly as much VP swing.
Man, my game is going to likely go without Decolonization or Destalinization getting played. The US player drew both in turn 3, with Truman, while I had Containment, Marshall, and Blockade.
I had also drawn DeGaulle, which I headlined and then used the 4 ops from Nato to take French control.
But, short version, I held blockade until Destalinizaiton came out, which he spaced, which cleared West Germany (it was AR5), I played Containment for Ops in Africa (Tunisia and Libya), he Truman for 2 into West Germany. Which means that he’ll space Decolonization this round. Not much I can do about it, unfortunately. At least I made him play Truman, meaning I could take West Germany now, if I wanted.
It was an odd turn since we both knew we had two of our opponents best cards drawn that round. Marshal Plan wasn’t a huge problem, since I used the Ops to control Turkey (I already dominated Europe, was to close off an entry to Mid East). Even after that the only country he controls in Europe is now Italy.
Will be interesting to see what happens if we can finish tonight, but the timer is running out. I feel real good about my position, Dominating Europe, Middle East, and would be Asia too at any time I want as I control all battlegrounds but Japan and Thailand.
Yeah you can’t stop him from sometimes drawing Decol & Destal on turn 3. :-O You can only try to minimize the chance he successfully holds them from turn 1 and 2.
dstone112 over infested_terran (Groovechamp) by 5 VP in Final Scoring.
An interesting tense game which got as high as 18 VP for the USSR in the
mid-war (I think). USSR dominated Africa and Asia the entire game.
Long fights over Europe and Central America. South America and MidEast
were stalemated most of the game. Late War changed the picture slightly
with USSR up 8 VP going into turn 10. Chernobyl on Central America plus
Central America scoring brought this down to 4 VP. And then the US
played Voice of America in AR7 – USSR lost control of Pakistan, India,
North Korea, and Angola – flipping Asia from USSR domination to US
domination and moving Africa from USSR domination to a stalemate.
Ouch. Voice of America is one of the deadliest final cards US can play on turn 10.
What I wasn’t prepared for was all the leftover cards. For some reason I thought all cards would be played, and was expecting an Africa scoring to come up and give me +5VP. Very first game going to final scoring so didn’t realize that.
I kick myself for those mid war plays that gave away 10 vp, 4 of them on the boneheaded move of simply forgetting about the military ops track one turn. The rest on losing Europe domination by raising defcon to 5 and not realizing how vulnerable soviet France is to realignment (following by repeating that mistake and taking France instead of Italy with The Reformer).
Not sure I should have even made it to that point though. You won despite getting hobbled with that horrendous turn 1 hand of 2 score cards.
I consider myself an advanced beginner, so to get to the end of Turn 9 against an accomplished player like GA and to be nearly even in VP is, for me, a victory in itself (although my dice helped a bunch). Just a shame I bungled card counting at the end. But that’s the way to learn.
And speaking of learning, thanks so much for the detailed analysis. I will try to review our game and follow your thoughts. Just reading it now, it’s very much over my head (other than don’t be greedy), and it shows the level of insight you have about this game. I thought I had done so much right – but clearly I could have done better in many ways beyond the ending suicide.
