The fundamental tension of the Twilight Struggle series of Cold War games is that you often have to play cards that help your opponent. The strategy centers around determining when to play such cards.

In Twilight Struggle, cards have two uses:

  • Operation Points – The cards have a numeric value from 1 to 4, which can be spent as operation points on a coup, on realignments (eroding your opponent’s influence), or on placing influence of your own in regions you neighbor. 
  • Events – Each card also has an event on it, from something simple like “Remove all US Influence from 1 country in Africa” to something complex like “Place Famine markers in two adjacent countries. Immediately make a Coup attempt in one of the countries with a Famine marker using the Operations value of this card. Famine markers add a +1 modifier to Coup attempts in that country. Remove marker after any successful Coup attempt.” An event can apply to you, your opponent, or either of you:
    • If the event applies to you or to either of you, you can trigger the event instead of using the card for its operation points.
    • However, if the event applies to your opponent, you can only use the card for operation points and doing so triggers the event!

You have two standard ways to get rid of an opponent’s event: you typically have one card in your hand that you won’t have to play that hand, and once a hand you can discard a card of a value of at least 2 ops points to roll to advance the Space Race (which provides benefits and, later, VPs).

When operation points are spent, you are using them to change influence on the map. For instance, with 2 operations points, the US could:

  • Place influence adjacent to any country where it already has influence, so adjacent to Saudi Arabia or Ethiopia at the start of a game of Red Sea. To place 1 influence in any such country costs 1 operation point, unless your opponent controls it, in which case it costs 2 operations points. (Different countries have different stability values required to control them, from a low of 1 for Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Yemen to 2 for all other countries but Saudia Arabia, which has a stability value of 3.)
  • Attempt to realign two regions controlled by the Soviets. For each operation point you spend, you roll and your opponent rolls, then adds appropriate modifiers for adjacent countries they occupy and for relative influence in this country. Influence is adjusted based on the difference between modified rolls.
  • Stage a coup. Roll a die and add all the operations points. If the roll exceeds the stability value of the country, the coup succeeds.

I found it hilarious when I was reading BGG reviews of the game and came across a comment that the players hated that they would play cards that their opponent could use: that’s the core innovation of Twilight Struggle compared to other card-driven wargames, and it makes for delicious, painful decisions. (In fact, the lack of this card mechanic is one of my chief complaints about Imperial Struggle.)

While I love this tension of Twilight Struggle, the full game often takes us 6 to 10 hours. So I was excited to see Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa, from the Lunchtime Series from GMT Games, and I bought it for my youngest for Christmas [yes, I wrote this post months ago].

As the US, I lost the first two games (night #1, DEFCON 1 in a game), tied the next two (nights #2 & 3), then finally won on my fifth game (night #4, DEFCON 1 by my opponent). At which point I switched to the USSR and won twice. It’s not many games that I play more than 5 times (see my Five and Dimes from 2024), but even while losing or drawing I fell in love with this game and greatly enjoyed it.

As a kid, one of my best friends and I regularly played Balance of Power, often blowing up the world for stupid reasons. So it was amusing, in that sick Cold War way, in Twilight Struggle: Red Sea to see my son blow up the world over Ethiopia.

A STRANGE GAME. THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY. HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF CHESS?

After my son went back to college, and took his Christmas gift with him, I bought Red Sea on Steam. The AI wins often enough to be challenging. The bot is harder but it cheats by design (it never triggers your events).

Pros:

  • The play of Twilight Struggle in an hour or less.
  • Excellent mechanics.
  • Captures a nice slice of Cold War tension.

Cons:

  • We had to do web searches to resolve ambiguities in the rules quite a few times.
  • After you’ve played long enough, there’s times you can look at your starting hand and be certain whether you will win or lose.
  • Card draws can be really random. While those might balance out over a ten-round game like the original Twilight Struggle, in two rounds it can be pretty unbalanced.

The Twilight Struggle series is better than Balance of Power, and I look forward to many more plays of Red Sea, and I’m anticipating the next in the series, Twilight Struggle: South Asian Monsoon.