I can report Soviet Greatatlantic over Capitalist @Brian_Reynolds by score in Turn 7.
I cannot quite figure out how that happened, because Brian had some great early turns and I’ve played about 3 games (including this one and CF_Kane above) in the last 6 months. So, I was badly out of practice. Furthermore, it felt like I was outnumbered in term of Op cards. Yet, I think the flow of the events favored me starting around turns 3 and 4. I still got hit with Grain Sales, but had UN and the China Card to mitigate hand difficulty. Another example of this is when he played Nuclear Subs to challenge my African battlegrounds, I was able to play SALT to make all coups less potent. Plus, Brian seemed to aggressive in terms of spending double ops to break control instead of filling in empty battlegrounds, such as South Africa. Or fighting to flip Venezuela when South America Scoring had come and gone and Central America was yet to be scored.
I also have a sense he drew Lone Gunmen early, and other than playing SALT in response to Nuclear Subs, I tried to make sure he did not get an opportunity to play or dump it, including spacing Ask Not. Was that the case, Brian?
Congrats to SadleyBradley for his victory on Turn 4 of our game. He was already up by 5 when I was dealt scoring cards for Europe, SE Asia, Central America and South America all in the same hand. The remaining cards were 2OP or less, all his events.
Woof, that is a dog of a hand. Any time you have more than two scoring cards in hand it’s gonna be rough. Never seen 4 personally. And not even like you got Asia and SE Asia, at least those pair together.
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!
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.
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.
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.
