Twilight Struggle - I'm going to play experts on YouTube. :)

As far as reshuffle questions, etc: the scoring cards are still in the discard because of my reshuffle shenanigans - there were 2 cards left in draw like at end of turn 7, so the “pure injection of late war cards straight to your eyeballs” was added to them and the turn 8 hands were dealt. Given that ME scoring was apparently one of those two cards, it’s about 50/50 whether it appears this turn or not (would have been initially more than 50/50 but since I didn’t draw it it’s less than 50/50 he has it) I believe reshuffle will happen at the beginning of next turn, turn 9, which will be the last possible turn for ME scoring to appear and the first turn for things to reappear.

Getting all my grain sales and duck and cover and stuff back into the deck is a reasonable argument for forcing reshuffle. I tend to base things a bit more on scoring cards than other cards, but I might be too narrowly focused. You might say I was more afraid of some awful scoring card coming back than I was hopeful for grain sales :)

Brian

Wow. I really hate that alt Space race track. Being able to break control with a single influence is just too powerful. It shifts too much priority to the space race, which always felt was meant to feel like a background drama, with some neat perks and extra point opportunities for ditching absolutely unplayable cards, but nothing that is totally game breaking. It doesn’t even make thematic sense.

Shows how much I keep track of what is going on as I was persuaded Middle East was coming up this turn!

That whole reshuffle business in Turn Zero is really busting my brains. I just can’t wrap my mind around it, at all.
So, if I understand it correctly, this means that without events, the reshuffle would always take place on Turn 9 in a TZ game? Does the reshuffle happen after all the newly injected late war cards have been played? Does this also mean that with that late reshuffle, what scoring cards may come is up to randomness? That sounds like a pretty huge random swing - well, I guess that is the whole thematic of TZ!
Maybe Turn Zero games aren’t supposed to last to the Late War (in my experience, they never last that long, but I thought that was because I am terrible at dealing with Kremlin Flu).

Sorry those questions got nothing to do with playing experts, and more like basic knowledge of Turn Zero ;)

It is actually quite possible to have a non-turn-zero game with no reshuffle - if some combination of the China card getting played a lot, and a lack of extra discarding due to especially Our Man in Tehran, etc. Somewhat more common in TO with the extra cards, although Non-Aligned churns four cards as part of its event so often makes up some of the ground.

In either event the effect is, yes, that you end up reshuffling at the beginning of turn 9. Doesn’t mean all the late war cards will have been played (some are dealt out for turn 9) but all will be dealt. It does mean substantially lower likelihood of rescoring regions in late war, although keep in mind that even with reshuffle on turn 7 a late war scoring of a region is hardly guaranteed. The fact that there were more of “his regions” than my regions coming back in the reshuffle was my principle reason for avoiding the reshuffle.

Brian

It definitely my least favorite thing, and I normally turn it off when I set up a game (I love the way the individual parts of the expansion can be toggled on and off). I did think it was worth showing as part of a T0 game though. Lots of people seem to like it though, or at least set up their games with it when I see T0 games online.

Brian

Once Muslim Revolution hit, I was expecting you to use China to take Iraq, and then use Sadat to re-dominate ME. Did you consider that, or was keeping Japan a higher priority than I thought?

Turn 6 - Even though I never do that level of card counting, I might still have played Shah for the event, as you had a two card “buffer.” Then, you hope to draw something like Lone Gunman or Muslim Revolution. I mean, worst case, you draw 4 nasty Soviet events and can only discard two of them. Well, that’s two more

Turn 7 - I definitely think you should have headlined Africa Scoring as well. Barring circumstances I don’t know about (never played with the new cards), I don’t see how you net a domination. Playing it for a lost VP is probably your best case scenario. Even if gets to play ops during headline phase, well, you are no worse off than you were later when you had to play it while he had domination. Another point, you did not lose one VP to gain 8 ops. You lost a VP and the China card to play 3 ops. Semantics, perhaps, but…

Turn 8 - I typically try to lose Lone Gunmen before the lategame just for this kind of situation, though admittedly I didn’t see a clean way of doing it last turn. Now, your hand is vulnerable to Defcon suicide courtesy of Terrorism or my most feared Soviet late game event (while playing as US of course!), Aldrich Ames. Fortunately, it looks you have some breathing room, courtesy of either Love the Bomb or that new card which apparently raises defcon to 5. Still, doing either is going to lose you tempo. Oh, and we haven’t seen Missile Envy. Probably best to hold that for Missile Envy, and hope he doesn’t play Reformer.

I agree that not headlining Africa was a major woofup, probably the worst mistake I’ve made this game - a total what was I thinking moment.

The Shah I did entirely on scoring cards but I see how it could be right on the bubble for some. Note that I could only have discarded one card, since if the deck ends up perfectly empty after turn 7 is dealt it reshuffles immediately (rules subtlety). So choice was 2 ops vs discard one card. Of course maybe I burn Lone Gunman. Or maybe I see Lone Gunman and Middle East and some other terrible thing and decide to burn them all… Then again I might cause South America and Europe to score twice, etc etc etc. It would probably take a serious math sim to know the odds on right answer.

Turn 8 - yeah for now with Petrov and Worrying I think it’s best to nurse Lone Gunman along and look for an out. Petrov is an entertaining card to donate for Missile Envy sort of like Nuclear Test Ban is, kind of makes him wish he didn’t play it. Up until now I had WWBY as my Missile Envy preventer, but you’re right now it’s fair game so we will see. Glasnost obviously gets gotten rid of ASAP before it has to be spaced.

Brian

I always think of JFK as a lone-gunman disposable device, never considered it that its main use might be for awful scoring cards… I’ll keep that in mind from now on.

Weekly little joy… I hope you keep on making those, Mr. Reynolds!

Amen. These have been extremely entertaining and informative, especially as I hunker down to finally learn this game after waiting for too many years.

Epic turn 10 hand! The type dreams are made of. It makes up for never seeing Grains and all that non-stop space race punishment. Excellent game.

I will definitely have another game coming soon - have two guys rated 2000+ (!) to play. I may, as I mentioned in the video, need a week hiatus as I just got back from Europe and am putting my house on the market! So my plan is for the next one to go up on April 7 unless I get UNBELIEVABLY efficient :-)

Brian

Twilight Struggle on hiatus this week after our glorious victory last week. I’m playing a 2015-rated opponent for next week though!

Meanwhile if you just can’t be without the sound of my cackling voice you can watch me do Fallout: New Vegas in hardcore no-healing permadeath ;-)

Brian

I never realized the designer of the game worked at Firaxis. Did he coincide with your tenure there Brian?

Good job pulling out the win. I thought you had a pretty strong lead in the early game, but your opponent made it interesting towards the end.

I was actually inspired to try Turn Zero and the promo cards from this. Haven’t played it live yet, but so far it appears the additional promo cards make a turn 7 shuffle far less likely.

Nope we were years apart (almost a decade!) - I’m pretty sure Ananda mainly worked on the XCOM games. But we knew each other a bit while he was in town. Once I realized he’d done Twilight Struggle I goobed fanboy all over him :-)

Brian[quote=“Greatatlantic, post:37, topic:128652”]
I was actually inspired to try Turn Zero and the promo cards from this.
[/quote]

Once you’ve played the regular way a hundred times it’s awesome to have some wild new variants!

Brian

Once you’ve played the regular way a hundred times it’s awesome to have some wild new variants!

Brian
[/quote]

Yeah, sadly the Promo cards are bugged so as far as I’m concerned they are unplayable :(

Are there still significant bugs? I remember when it first came out there were horrible bugs, but I haven’t noticed one in a long time.

Brian

Several of the cards cannot be played for the Event first - you are required to use them for Ops, then the event takes place. This caused problems in several games. I see on their forums that these bugs were reported a long time a go - still not fixed.