Twilight Struggle

The boys and I played a number of games this weekend, including The World Cup Card Game 2010 and EcoFluxx. In addition, Andrew and I played Twilight Struggle this afternoon at Wargameroom.

Twilight Struggle -- which simulates the Cold War -- is one of the more innovative game designs of the last few years. (It was published in 2005.) It starts with the card-driven mechanic that Mark Herman pioneered with We The People in 1994, but adds area-control-style mechanics popular in many Euro games.

Wargameroom is a web site with online versions of several card-driven games, including Twilight Struggle. The programs enforce all rules, which makes play move much faster than on a board, or in other online versions where players must carefully verify that their moves (and their opponents' moves) are legal. The programs are free to use (although users are encouraged to make a donation to the developer to offset his costs).

I ended up winning the game today, when Andrew accidently kept a scoring card at the end of a turn (which results in an automatic loss). It was an unfortunate way to lose, but there was no way to redo the turn, and we didn't have time to restart the game. We'll definitely try it again soon. In fact, since the game is played online, we hope to play a game some evening this week (while Andrew is at his mom's house).