Twilight Strategy

In a typical game of Twilight Struggle, the draw deck will reshuffle while dealing out the cards for Turns 3 and 7.  Occasionally, the deck will reshuffle immediately before Turn 10 as well.

What this means is that cards can fall into one of several categories:

• Any card played or discarded on Turns 1 and 2 will be guaranteed to be redrawn between Turns 3-7
• Any card played or discarded on Turns 3-6 will not be redrawn until Turns 7-10
• Any card played or discarded on Turn 7 or later will probably not be redrawn, and if it is, it would only be on Turn 10

Note that this is not a perfect overlap with when the cards come out:

• All Early War cards are guaranteed to be drawn between Turns 1-3
• All Mid War cards are shuffled in on Turn 4, and therefore are guaranteed to be drawn between Turns 4-7
• All Late War cards are shuffled in on Turn 8, and will be drawn only on Turns 8-10 (if at all)

What does this mean strategically?  It means that when discarding your opponent’s vital events, you want to discard them on Turns 3 and 7, rather than on Turns 2 or 6.

This is most commonly applied to the two most important Early War events in the game: Decolonization and De-Stalinization.  They are far and away the most important cards to draw, even more important than Red Scare/Purge.  So as a US player, if I draw either or both in the Early War, I will do my best to hold onto them until Turn 3 before discarding them with Blockade, the Space Race, or UN Intervention.  This guarantees that they cannot be reintroduced to the deck until Turn 7 at the earliest.  If I sent Decolonization to space on Turn 2, by contrast, it could come back at Turn 3 at the earliest, and in any event not later than Turn 7.  It’s a huge difference that dramatically changes the dynamics of the game.

It is therefore very important to consider what cards you hold on Turns 2 and 6, because those held cards won’t be coming back into the game for a very long time (if at all).  For instance, if, as US, you are choosing between triggering the Voice of America event vs the John Paul II Elected Pope event on Turn 6, you should choose Voice of America, because it might come back again next turn, and hold John Paul.  It’s not a huge deal for John Paul to be played on Turn 7, since he can only happen once anyway.  Similarly, as USSR, if you are debating between playing Arab-Israeli War or Defectors for Operations on Turn 2, you should play Arab-Israeli War now and hold Defectors until Turn 3 so that you can have worry-free headlines between from Turns 3-6.

This also somewhat affects the Our Man in Tehran event, which is much more helpful on Turn 7 than on Turn 6.

The overarching paradigm of Twilight Struggle is that events create opportunities, and Operations are how you take advantage of those opportunities.  Accordingly, you should treat events not as your primary source of influence, but rather as gamechangers that break open the game for your Operations.

The basis for this principle is the observation that Operations are generally more efficient than events, even if the event technically gives more influence.  The Comecon event gives the USSR 4 influence, but they’re spread out and in a rather useless place.  By contrast, the 3 Ops of the Comecon card can be played as a strong coup, can take over a crucial battleground, or can extend and create threats all over the board.

On the other hand, by the Mid War, many regions begin to degenerate into stalemates.  Once your opponent controls a country, it’s hugely inefficient to try to break their control with Operations alone.  Sometimes it’s still worth it, but you need to be at a significant Ops advantage (or take multiple Actions in a row) to take over an opponent-controlled country with pure Ops.  Alternatively, maybe you just don’t have access to the region: without coup targets, all the Operations in the world aren’t going to get the USSR into the Americas.

This is where events come in.  Their effects can have dramatic ramifications and shake up otherwise deadlocked regions.  USSR secure in Africa?  Boom, Nuclear Subs and all of a sudden all the battlegrounds are yours.  US is dominating Europe?  Bam, Socialist Governments headline, and now an AR1 Europe Scoring is -5 instead of +5.

A large part of Twilight Struggle skill is therefore recognizing which events to trigger, and when to trigger them.  Some events are so powerful that you will almost never see them played for Operations (ABM Treaty, Decolonization, Grain Sales to Soviets), and some are so awful you’ll never even remember their event text (Summit, Nuclear Test Ban).  But most events are somewhere in between.  Knowing when you should press on with your Operations and when you need to call upon an event is a hallmark of a strong player.

A good example is Red Scare/Purge.  The event text is unbelievably strong: it can cause your opponent to flat-out lose the game.  But while a weaker player will tend to automatically headline the card, seeing only the advantages and opportunities of -1 to your opponents’ Ops, a strong player will also spot the potential benefits of being able to play 4 Ops at once (one of only five Early War 4 Ops cards), and recognize when Red Scare/Purge ends up being more beneficial when played for Operations.

To get better at this differentiation, it is helpful to classify the cards in the game into four categories: your opponents’ starred events, your own starred events, neutral starred events, and recurring events.  With your own events, you are choosing between the Ops and the event; with your opponent’s events, you are choosing between the Ops minus the event effect or the Space Race.

Your opponents’ starred events

Your opponents’ starred events can only happen once in the game.  Prior to Turn 7, therefore, you should seek to trigger them whenever possible — better that you control its one-time effect than your opponent — rather than discarding them (by playing them on the Space Race, or by playing it with UN Intervention).  Some examples:

• The US should always try to get Warsaw Pact Formed out of the way as soon as possible, since 5 influence for the USSR is infinitely preferable to the looming threat of being able to instantly remove all US influence in eastern Europe.
• A US player that draws De Gaulle Leads France can play it with an empty France and then place the 3Ops into France to make it 3/1.  On the other hand, a USSR player that draws De Gaulle can headline it and then take France easily on AR1.
• The USSR should play Containment and Nuclear Subs on the final Action Round of a turn, where they have the least effect, rather than send them to space only for the US to draw them back and play them more effectively.
• Truman Doctrine is useless in the USSR hand, because the USSR can just play it as soon as they have no uncontrolled countries.  On the other hand, a US player can time its play for maximum effect, by, for instance, breaking USSR control of France on the final Action Round, and then headlining Truman Doctrine the next turn to wipe out 3+ USSR influence from a critical country.
• Many beginner US players will find ways to discard or cancel Blockade from being played.  This is a mistake.  If you draw Blockade and can safely play, you should usually do so, rather than allow the USSR to spring a nasty surprise on you in the Mid War.

Only the truly critical opponents’ starred events, the ones you have no ability to manage, should be sent to space.  These include De-Stalinization, Tear Down This Wall, The Reformer, and Quagmire/Bear Trap.  These are usually either so strong, or so suicidal for you to play, that you would prefer to assume the risk of your opponent controlling how it’s played rather than play it yourself.

However, if you’re on Turn 7 or later, you no longer need to worry about the “removing” vs “discarding” distinction.  For all practical purposes, you can safely discard cards knowing they will almost certainly not return to the game.  The draw deck reshuffles on Turn 3 and Turn 7; it’s occasionally reshuffled on Turn 10, but that’s quite rare.  Of course, you still won’t be able to space every card you see, and will still have to deal with some of the events, but you no longer have to worry that cards sent to space will return to your opponent’s hand.

Your starred events

Most of these you want to keep around in the deck, since you would rather your opponent have a hand full of your events than full of his.  Sometimes the effect of a card is the same no matter who plays it: neither side particularly cares who triggers Willy Brandt or NATO.  (In other words, these are generally bad events.)  Sometimes a card is only dangerous because your opponent is playing it: CIA Created, for instance.  Sometimes the looming threat of the card is more effective than the card itself: Truman Doctrine‘s continued presence in the deck is often enough to deter the USSR from engaging in an influence war in Europe.

But there are also times when you must trigger your own starred events:

1. Because they will be meaningless or crippled in your opponent’s hands: see, e.g., Containment/Brezhnev Doctrine, “Ask Not What Your Country…”, Cultural Revolution.
2. Because they are so critical that your opponent will never play them for you, and certainly send to space: see, e.g., De-Stalinization and John Paul II Elected Pope.
3. Because if you don’t play it now, its effect will be meaningless later: see, e.g., Vietnam Revolts and Puppet Governments.
4. Because if you don’t play it now, it may never get played.  You really hope the USSR will draw CIA Created, but if you draw it on Turn 7 as the US, don’t hold out hope that the USSR will somehow draw it again by the end of the game.  Just play it if you need it.

Neutral starred events

There aren’t many of these.  Consider playing them so your opponent can’t.  This is especially true of SALT Negotiations: even if you can’t make good use of it, you don’t really want your US opponent using it to play The Voice of America again.

Recurring events

Since these events will trigger over and over again, you don’t have to worry about removing them from the deck.  So when playing neutral or your own recurring events, the general principle applies: do you really need the event?  Or are the Ops going to be better?  Latin American Death Squads maybe gives you one coup bonus, but the 2 Ops is almost certainly superior.  On the other hand, Liberation Theology is also 2 Ops, but it gives you 3 influence, can be played into US-controlled countries with no penalty, and is in a fairly critical region.  As US, Duck and Cover is usually played for the 3 Ops, but towards the end of the game, the 3VP / denial of a USSR coup may be worth considerably more.  (As a general rule, most of the neutral recurring events are pretty strong.  ABM Treaty, Brush War, Junta, and Red Scare/Purge are all among the best events in the game.)

There’s no real advantage to playing your opponents’ recurring events instead of spacing them.  The only relevant question, therefore, is whether it’s worth sending to space or using the Ops.  Since you ordinarily only have one Space Race slot per turn, you have no choice but to work around most of your opponents’ recurring events.

Generally, this is accomplished by triggering the event before playing the Ops (with exceptions: the US can preemptively defend against Arab-Israeli War with the Ops, for instance).  Socialist Governments and East European Unrest are not really problems when you can just replace the Influence lost.  But some don’t give you enough Ops to fix the problem: you’ll rarely be able to repair the damage done by Decolonization and The Voice of America, and so those are just going to have to go to space.  And certain cards are flatout irreparable: Grain Sales is a canonical example of a card the USSR must keep sending back to space instead of losing by thermonuclear war.

The first turn of Twilight Struggle is arguably the most important one.  An empty board means that the board is rife with both opportunity and pitfalls.  Even the smallest mistake early on can have dramatic ramifications: misplaying into Asia on Turn 1 can easily cost you Asia domination for the rest of the game.

As USSR

There are five great USSR headlines on Turn 1: Red Scare/Purge, Suez Crisis, Arab-Israeli War, Socialist Governments, and Vietnam Revolts.  The benefits of Red Scare/Purge are obvious.  Suez Crisis (and Arab-Israeli War, with a 50% probability) plus a successful Iran coup will wipe the US out from the Middle East entirely.  Socialist Governments allows you to make a strong play for Europe.  Vietnam Revolts provides you with immediate access to Thailand and all but guarantees you’ll be able to take it before the US does.

On AR1, you realistically only have two options: coup Iran, or coup / play for Italy.  Traditionally, USSR players made a play for Italy, but modern Twilight Struggle thinking is that access to Pakistan and India is simply too important.  The Iran coup is critical not just for the Middle East, but also to secure western Asia against the US.  Letting the US into Iran means letting them into two Asian battlegrounds, and makes it very difficult for you to prevent Asian Domination.

As far as the rest of the turn goes, you have several priorities.  In Europe, it’s usually difficult to break through to France, so you can only content yourself with nabbing Greece/Turkey.  In the Middle East, an early Nasser can net you both Egypt and Libya, and if the US is still in Israel, taking Jordan and/or Lebanon puts some real pressure on the US position.  Their only option for presence would then be an Israel incredibly vulnerable to Arab-Israeli War.  In Asia, assuming you successfully took Iran, you want to expand eastward from western Asia (while watching out for the Indo-Pakistani War), while for keeping alert for an opportunity to grab South Korea and Thailand.  Obviously Decolonization and Vietnam Revolts will help greatly with the latter.

As US

Assuming the USSR takes Iran, you have quite a few priorities:

1. Protect Israel via Lebanon and/or Jordan.
2. Make your way through Egypt into Libya before Nasser wipes you out.
3. Gun for Thailand via Malaysia.
4. Shore up South Korea while guarding against the Korean War.
5. When you have a chance, take Greece and Turkey before the USSR does.

If the USSR opening coup of Iran is too good, then I wouldn’t bother dropping DEFCON to 3 by couping Iran back.  You not only risk being couped back if you succeed, but the USSR may be able to take Thailand first with Decolonization if you don’t succeed.  On the other hand, if the coup was weak, then I’m willing to gamble on the Iran coup in hopes of getting something into western Asia.  Overall, I’d much rather have the last coup of the turn than the second-to-last.

On the whole, your goal should be to survive rather than triumph.  All of the initiative is with the USSR; your main objective is simply not to fall behind too much in board position and VPs.  You should accept the fact that you will almost certainly be behind in VPs at the end of the Early War.  That’s OK, so long as you aren’t losing in every region.  Recognize when one region is beyond repair with just Ops, so you can cut your losses and be content to tread water there until you are able to take advantage of a major event to shake things up.

Each side begins the game with the ability to place Influence in Europe.  (Note that this is Influence, not Operations points for influence.)  The USSR can place up to 6 in Eastern Europe, while the US can place 7 in Western Europe.

As USSR

The standard opening setup for the USSR is 4 East Germany, 4 Poland, 1 Yugoslavia.  There is rarely any reason to deviate from this setup.  As USSR, you overcontrol your two battleground countries, vulnerable to East European Unrest and Mid/Late War events. Your 1 influence in Yugoslavia provides you with access to Italy, keeping your options open, as well as Greece.  Occasionally, you will see people play into Bulgaria, as it also provides access to Greece and is the only Eastern European country inaccessible from the rest of Eastern Europe.  But it does not provide access to Italy.

Alternatively, the “Comecon Trap” setup is 3 East Germany, 4 Austria, 2 Yugoslavia.  You headline Comecon, gaining you control of Austria and Yugoslavia.  (You can also do this with Warsaw Pact Formed, but Warsaw Pact is a critical card for the USSR in the Late War.)  On AR1 of Turn 1, you are now able to realign West Germany and Italy at +1.  Against a standard US setup, if you are successful, you can obliterate the US position in Europe in a single play.  However, this gambit is risky: not only are you not couping Iran (thereby allowing US unfettered access to western Asia), but it can be easily thwarted by a US headline of Defectors, Truman Doctrine (if they played enough into Austria), Duck and Cover, or even Marshall Plan.

As US

The standard opening setup for the US is 4 West Germany, 3 Italy.  As USA, you take the two safest battlegrounds in Western Europe, and the overcontrol of Italy guards against a Socialist Governments headline and/or T1 Italy coup.

If you have Marshall Plan in your opening hand and plan to headline it, you can open with 3 West Germany, 2 Italy, 1 Greece, 1 Turkey.  You still end up with the same 4/3 in West Germany and Italy, but you get two of the three critical Mediterranean non-battleground countries (the only two that the USSR has easy access to) and make it very difficult for the USSR to ever score Domination against you.

There are several reasons why you may want to leave West Germany empty.  For example, you fear Red Scare/Purge + Blockade, when you have no cards to discard, or alternatively, you hold both Blockade and De-Stalinization in hand and want to play Blockade without discarding any card this turn (so that you can hold De-Stal through the reshuffle).  In such situations (assuming you lack Marshall Plan), you can open with 4 Italy, 1 Greece, 1 Austria, 1 Turkey.  This guards Italy against Socialist Governments followed by a coup or Duck & Cover, provides an additional adjacency to Italy in case Socialist Governments removes adjacency to Italy and you get couped out, and provides access to West Germany so that you can threaten to take it immediately.