David R. Moody  - Mar 13, 2006 1:22 pm (#12927 Total: 12932)  
"Life is that unfortunate time between wargames."--Larry Leadhead 	 

"Nels: Thanks for the AAR for Downtown. Just bought it, perusing it, a
little intimidated by the bulk of rules - and just the general
unfamiliarity of it all. But despite that it seems eminently playable." 

It is. Awesome, AWESOME game. And a good portion of those rules aren't
applicable in all scenarios. I've never played with chaff or B-52s or
detailed CSAR or some of the more detailed ordnance, for example. In our
last game, my dad nailed two of my Tomcats with SAMs, ruining an
otherwise successful strike at the Paul Doumer bridge. 

On the table over the weekend: Twilight Struggle, another game fast
becoming one of my favorites. Joe Oppenheimer introduced me to it, and,
like War of the Ring, I loved it so much I had to get my own copy. So I
sold off Samurai (GMT) to get it, and took it for a spin Saturday night
against one of my other regular opponents. 

This time, I was the Americans (I was the Soviets in my first playing).
I started out well, building up a good VP lead with such things as the
Marshall Plan, a treaty with Japan, and a policy of Containment. I was
even ahead slightly in the space race, and got up to around 13-14 VP (20
and the US wins). 

Then the bottom started to fall out. I got three scoring cards in one
turn (SE Asia, South America, and Africa) and tried to improve my
position in all those places, but my opponent matched me and messed me
up with nasty cards. I did well in SE Asia, getting VP for everything
but Burma (unaligned) and Vietnam (Communist, thanks to the revolt
card), but saw my lead evaporate with the Africa and South America
scoring, and then saw the advantage go to the Soviets when those cards
came up again later. 

And I never got it back. My excellent position in the MidEast went away
thanks to Nasser, an Arab victory in the second playing of the
Arab-Israeli War card, and Muslin revolutions. Suez Crisis, Willy
Brandt, and DeGaulle, and the fact that my opponent fiendishly buried
the NATO card in the discard pile, eroded my position in Europe. France
and Italy, in particular, swayed back and forth between the free world
and Commie orbits. Mexico was also a battleground, with several coups by
both sides. I managed to salvage Central America (I buried the Fidel
card out of spite for NATO) and gain a foothold in South America with
brushfire wars in Panama and Venezuela, though Columbia and Brazil
remained solidly Communist. I was also doing rather well in Asia. 

But my opponent leapfrogged me in the space race thanks to captured Nazi
scentists, getting a man in orbit. Then he hit me with Aldrich Ames,
which really truly messed me up. He got up to 14 VP, and played the
Europe Scoring card as his Headline for the win on Turn 8. A great game,
hard fought on both sides. The cards just weren't with me in the late
game. And no Korean War. At any rate, my opponent loved it and wants to
play again. Joe and I are probably going to play again in a couple weeks
as well.