Any quartermaster general fans? I recently played the newest flavor, The Cold War. This is the first game in the series to have 3 teams instead of 2: “the West,” the Soviets, and the Non-Aligned nations. A bloc wins if it has more than 20 points than the last place bloc after a scoring round, but only after the 2nd place player spots the loser points until the deficit is 19 or less provided he does not drop below 20. Hence, if you are in second place the last thing you want to do is cost the last place player more points. Players are required to balance the game, and 3 player dynamics seem made for this.
This is almost certainly the most complicated game in the series so far, by using everything else from the series so far. It has the Air step from the Air Marshall expansion, the prep step from Victory or Death (now called espionage), and the same action step from every game. Except there is a new card type: WMD’s. You can think of these as face up response cards with a VP cost. However, players will also keep track of “escalation” in this game. I just call this threat. Every time you attack another bloc, be it an air raid, a battle, or most WMD, you are creating threat with that player. The greater the threat, the bigger the discount that player gets when using WMD on you. And some of those WMD can cause more than 10 VP’s worth of damage.
So, the 3-way non-zero sum nature of this game, combined with the “push your luck” accumulation of threat, gives this game the feel of a very different conflict. Yeah, it can turn hot very easily. Maybe the US builds into China to the detriment of the Non-Aligned player, but then the Soviets have an easier path to victory. Ditto for a hot war in Europe, except watch the world say no to super powers.
If there is a downside to play, is it seems a player who gets a strong card combination going is going to do run ahead on scoring unless the other powers can drag him back down. However, that requires the right card combinations or suboptimal play. On the other hand, 2v1 will eventually catch up.
I look forward to playing it more, so another captivating entrance into the series.
PS) Another downside is the game says it is for 3-6 players. This is achieved by splitting a bloc’s deck, and then players discuss what cards they will play from their seperate hands for each phase of the game. This is such a clunky work around that I have no desire to try it. I just say this is a 3 player game. If I have more than that… I have more Quartermaster General games!