Twilight Struggle tournament redux

Oh geez, you weren’t kidding about that hand. That is rough.

I normally try not to blame the luck of the draw, but in this case…

Will update the standings tomorrow.

Just finished my match with @Baconsoda. Won on points in Turn 10, admittedly I got lucky with Aldrich Ames on turn 9 revealing Grain Sales. But a good match nonetheless.

Thanks for the good game @Leglaen. The worst thing could happen to me was having Lone Gunman and We Will Bury You on the start of turn 8. Rest of the cards were mostly 1 or 2 OP values neutral cards and you can sort of tell I had pretty much given up the game since then.

I won against @Baconsoda on Turn 7, after a wild swinging game!

There was some very, very ugly times for me — my Turn 4 hand was one of the most horrible hands I was ever dealt from the headline, on top of which my opponent then went berserk in an all-out war effort, to which I replied handsomely by digging a hole and hiding my head in quagmiring myself for 3 turns!
But I had some pretty incredible luck:

  • on events (an early Indo-Pakistan war, devastating for my opponent; a Five-Year Plan headline fishing for Truman, and hooking it!);
  • on the rolls that mattered (an Uruguay coup which swinged South America for me);
  • and on events again when, on the final turn, Kennedy* saved my hurt ass by trashing horrible events and handing me the single best scoring card I could ask for.

Thank you for the suspenseful and crazy game, Baconsoda!

So what’s the current standings?

CURRENT STANDINGS

Gruppe Ost
@Greatatlantic 3-0
@dtolman 1-2
@Brian_Reynolds 1-1
@CF_Kane 0-2

Games still to play:
@Brian_Reynolds vs @CF_Kane

@Greatatlantic wins group

Gruppe West
@CraigM 2-0
@SadleyBradley 1-1
@Sonoftgb 0-2

@CraigM wins group

Gruppe Asien
@Left_Empty 2-0
@Leglaen 1-1
@Baconsoda 0-2

@Left_Empty _wins group

Gruppe Europa
@quantum_mechani 2-0*
@maulet 1-1*
@newbrof 0-2

*Group was decided by best 2-of-3 as @newbrof withdrew

@quantum_mechani wins group

It looks like both remaining games in Gruppe Ost are meaningful! Either @Greatatlantic wins, or we have a 2- or 3- way tie at the top. If @dtolman defeats @Greatatlantic but @Brian_Reynolds loses to @CF_Kane, @dtolman will advance on head-to-head tiebreaker. If there is a three-way tie at the top … we will figure it out.

Woo! Invite sent to @Greatatlantic. Lets see if I can perform under pressure!

Mine is not to understand the tiebreak rules, mine is but to get to defcon 2!

@dtolman, sorry for not joing the game yet, I had some stuff going on and what have you, but will do so soon, probably after work today.

No worries - not in a rush :)

I can report Greatatlantic over @dtolman by score in Turn-7. Dtolman seemed to play a frustrating game of coup chicken in Turn-1 by both never couping to lower defcon and never giving me a decent target to coup and lower defcon. I’m not sure it was a long term win for him, but it did lead me to making my biggest mistake in the game. Defcon never got down to 2, so at the start of Turn 2 my blue Pakistan was promptly couped and dtolman went on to score Asia domination.

This was aided by a weak hand of Turn 2 cards for me… except I had drawn De-Col and De-Stal. I spaced De-Col and held De-Stal to turn 3, but got lucky as De-Col did not turn up again until turn 7. This denied dtolman a presence in Africa and South America, but an unusual Turn-4 had 4 scoring cards played that round. Dtolman was able to play CA, SA, and ME before I could position myself to score there. I was able to make up some points by scoring South East Asia for 5 or 6. Rounds 5 and 6 were mostly about positioning and hand management, but I managed to Score Alliance for Progress for 4 or 5. I also used SALT to pick up DUck and Cover to score another 3. Come turn 7 we both knew Europe Scoring and Africa scoring had to be in hand, but I had a dominate position in both and used Special Relationship, Colonial Rear Guard, and Puppet Governments to stay competitive in both.

Overall, I played this game looking to control access and use ops efficiently and that paid off.

Good game Dtolman.

Great, guys! I haven’t see the results of @Brian_Reynolds vs @CF_Kane, but since @Greatatlantic has clinched that group, I think we can move on to the knockout rounds.

Semi-final 1
@Left_Empty vs @quantum_mechani

Semi-final 2
@CraigM vs @Greatatlantic

Have at it, boys!

Yeah cfkane and I have a game going in the midwar somewhere, sounds like not relevant though

*Sent from the wild frontier of mobile games :-)

I dispatched an invitation toward @quantum_mechani.

Thanks! The 4 scoring card turn was fine, it was playing the -1 to ops card on me in Turn 6 that sealed my fate - before that I was ahead in points and position was even - but that combined with a hand full of 1s and 2s - just crippled me as you got free reign in Africa and the Americas… Was hoping to sneak out an even score in Europe by misdirecting you to the ME in Turn 7 - but… no dice. Oh well! Great game!

Good game less_empty, lots of ups and downs and I made some pretty big mistakes but fortunately luck was on my side…