rho21’s capitalists defeated the USSR of jeromeymartin (Habbaku) by concession, Turn 7 AR1.
Incredible early war for the USA. Pretty much everything fell my way and I was at +12 at one point. While I was consolidating my early war scoring, the USSR was able to make a play for the Middle East and the Americas and look like pulling some ground back in the mid-war… until drawing 4 scoring cards in one turn.
Game was conceded with the USA at +14 just after Africa was scored for 10 in the T7 headline. The USSR was very short on time, plus had an awful hand without any sign of a way out.
I’m still not a great fan of the influence odds - shame there’s no other means of handicap available in the computer version. It just feels incredibly swingy when the US player draws Middle East scoring on T1 for an immediate +4 in a region they might often lose to the USSR (assuming Nasser isn’t also headlined).
A few questions:
This game, I drew all of Marshall Plan, Nasser and Middle East scoring on turn 1. After much thought, I chose the scoring card as the headline, giving up on the incredible value of Marshall Plan with an adjusted Europe setup in favour of a big points swing. Was this the correct decision? What influence setup would you go with in Europe in this case?
If you’re holding Nasser as USSR, is it strong to headline it to negate the possible headline scoring? Are there other cards you’d headline ahead of it (perhaps traditional options like Suez Crisis or Arab-Israeli War)?
Very good questions! As US if the bidding gave me control of Iran at setup then I consider Middle East scoring to be the absolute no-brainer headline for turn 1 if I have it. Scoring 4 points instead of scrambling desperately to avoid being dominated in the region always sounds great to me.
It doesn’t mean you have to give up on playing Marshall Plan for the event, necessarily, just that you won’t be headlining it. Note that if you “signal” a Marshall Plan headline in your setup, i.e. put 3 in WG, 2 in Italy, 1 in Greece, 1 in Turkey, then your opponent may wave off any aggressive European headlines he had in mind, so if you’re definitely playing Marshall for the event later in the turn there’s that bluffing consideration, and you can just play Marshall for the event on a later action round. But if your hand tells you that you might NEED the 4 ops card as an ops card, then you don’t want to be left out of position in Europe - go with the normal setup.
As USSR, I might headline Nasser if I didn’t have one of the “big four” traditional headlines including both of the ones you mention, and no unwelcome scoring card I wanted to jettison. But headlining him early exposes Egypt to a US coup in situations where he doesn’t want to (or can’t) coup Iran, and so positionally I don’t like it - yes it’s fantastic if he turns out to be headlining ME scoring, but that’s only 25% of the time (25% of the time that I don’t have the ME scoring card in my own opening hand). So it’s not a “definitely don’t headline” but it’s way down the list from my top choices. Cards I’d headline before Nasser also include Captured Nazi Scientist and Cambridge Five. Maybe even Olympic Games, so that gives you an idea ;-)
CraigM over @grunden due to time. Which is a shame, because we only made it to turn 4. Unfortunately trying to go live never worked out. However it is quite possible that things could have ended if I drew Middle East and Europe scoring.
The position at the end of the game was pretty favorable to me, and it really felt like I was dictating his play, controlling what actions came. All I was waiting for was him to use Decolonization for something before I sprung Quagmire. Wasn’t going to let him send it to Vietnam for free, of course. Gotta give him credit for timing his play of both Asia scoring cards perfectly. That would have been an 8 point swing otherwise.
My favorite moment was headlining DeGaulle, then playing AR1 4 ops to take control of France. Felt good. For a first time playing the USSR I had to learn how to counter some strong US cards for the first time, and I did so with my two best cards never coming out, as both were drawn turn 3* by the US.
*Or, potentially, drawn earlier and held. I suspect not though.
Yes, it was a rough struggle from the start. And I seem to end up in these tournaments just as I’m travelling through multiple time zones so my playtime gets very sporadic.
I actually had both Decolonization and Destalinization from turn 1: one of the reasons I was forced into some of the plays I had to make, it was definitely a completely defensive game. But then, I find most US games are defense for turns 1-4. Limit too much scoring for USSR over that period and work on CA, SA and Africa for scoring.
Which I was trying to limit my exposure there by not expanding into the non battlegrounds, especially the stability 1 states.
Curious how you could hold both from turn 1 though? Obviously turn 2 you played China Card (to great effect too), which allowed you yo hold both, but turn 1 you had no such trick.
Ooof, that would do you no favors. I was prepared to sacrifice both Brezhev and Quagmire for Ops to keep Europe as needed.
Probably me being confused and drawing one of them on turn 2. I had another similar game running parallel at the same time which I sometimes conflated. Perils of playing multiple games async.
Circling back to this. No one else has spoken up so far but please do if it’s also an issue for you.
@Brian_Reynolds – If the next round starts on expected schedule of March 18, then you will have until April 8 to complete your round. And I think it would be a better call to extend your single game’s time if it is necessary rather than switching to a 21 day timer (42 days total) which could seriously delay the end of the tournament.
Don’t hesitate to let me know if you need more time, particularly since you are in contention for 1st place. (We could end up being matched as well.)
I am confident Berbatov (last tournament’s champion) is a stronger player than I am, so it was only luck that allowed me to pull out the win. We played with Turn Zero and starting from there I was lucky – there were two 1 results and another 2-3 soviet advantage - only one US advantage and the other two were neutral. Not sure if it’s a bug only present at the end of the game but when I click “Turn Zero” the track appears empty, so I can’t provide exact details.
Most critical Turn Zero result was the significant USSR leg up in European presence, giving me Austria and one influence in France from the start. Berbatov controlled France in response in initial influence and didn’t place any influence into West Germany . I thought he held Blockade turn 1 and perhaps he did, but he didn’t play it until turn 2. I took a risk and snapped up West Germany on T1AR1 rather than couping Iran–which wasn’t as big of a risk as it normally would be as I had headlined Red Scare and had Indo-Pakistani War in hand.
I suspected he held Truman so it was a bit of a burden to protect West Germany (and later East Germany) from the “final US AR to break control then headline Truman” trap. I had to take the unusual step of burning Decolonization in T2 to do that but it worked out (I also held Destalinization).
Berbatov’s draws were quite bad through the game, and it was instructive to me to see how he played from US disadvantage, spreading into Africa and Central America despite his ops disadvantage. His bad luck peaked in Turn 4 when he Headlined ABM Treaty, targeted Thailand, and rolled a 1 to reduce 3 USSR influence by only one point. And I was lucky enough to have him under Red Scare again in T4.
Still one week to go until the target end date of Round 3, and all but two of our games are complete. Great job, everyone! I’ve also updated the Challonge brackets, and the players with 3-0 records are myself, @Brian_Reynolds and @rho21
Sorry if I’ve missed the reports (from next round I think I’ll ask people to put game results in bold so I can spot them more easily) but I believe we are still missing results from these two games. Participants can you please update me on the status?
My game with @buzznaut is underway but got a late start so is still early in turn 1. I completely forgot to check the thread for the start of the round. Do you want to try to find a time we can hammer out some rounds, buzznaut?
April 8 totally works since it means I’d still have almost two full weeks when I get back - I can just play then and usually the games don’t last the full two weeks anyway. In the unlikely event of needing an extension, it looks like it would only be a day or two.
Much of my thinking time at the start was about whether to go with the standard setup, a Marshall Plan setup or somewhere in between (4WG, 2 Italy, 1 Greece, say). In the end I went standard, not wanting to encourage a coup in Italy too strongly. I had plenty of ops, so maybe that was a bit too defensive.
GG and WP! I think you may be overestimating my strength a bit, but I did find this a hard game. IIRC, you had 2 1s in Yalta and VE Day, as well as a 2 in Japan that gave you 1 op in South Korea (which I felt was fairly significant). As a result, I think you started with an op in WGermany and France, leaving me with a real conundrum about how to go forward (5WGer/2Italy??) and so I felt that 4Fr/3It was safest. My 6 was in Israel, which did help nicely, and the rest of T0 was no effect.
I felt behind from the T1 Purge onwards; I didn’t see a 4 op card until T4, and found too many 1s. You played well to keep the heat on everywhere; my failure to score domination in the Middle East hurt, and the lack of domination in Africa was the death blow. A better space roll or two (or I-P War/Thailand Coup) could have stalled the game out a bit, but I was cooked in Asia and had only the prospect of a draw in Europe, while South America looked bad. Well played!
No, everyone plays five rounds, force ranked against people of similar records. So your games should get better and better as you play against people with similar records to you in the later rounds. That’s the beauty of Swiss!
@buzznaut has asked to be removed from the tournament, so I will mark @ottthegreat as the winner of the game – assuming it didn’t finish?
I also heard from @tcgamer that he was unable to start this round due to another unexpected personal issue. But since I never heard back from @TheRockSal both in direct messages and in response to this thread, I am going to mark their game as a tie.
If I can hear back from Ott the Great (just want to be sure the game is either incomplete, or Ott the Great won) then I will post the fourth round matchups later tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.
