Twilight Struggle's Nuclear Family

Twilight Struggle (2005, Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews, GMT Games)...

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There are the micro games of course - 13 Minutes (which I have not played) and Iron Curtain (which I have, and quite enjoy). I tend to like the lighter end of these, I liked 13 Days as well. Iron Curtain has the a spatial element because once you've played your card and done the command/event thing you place it like a tile to build a map of influence. It's abstracted way out, but a good little game and gives me the fix of what I like about TS but without the 3 hours worth of brainburning over the same kind of decision.

I have not played Wir Sind Das Volk - is it close enough to say it's related?

And I recently found out about Dual Powers: Revolution 1917, which is probably another step away from the family, really, but is a cousin at least. Anyone played this one?

Wir Sind Das Volk is definitely in this family.

I have cooled greatly on TS. I'm not interested in memorizing the cards and its you-put-I-remove-you-put-again gameplay just isn't interesting enough for me to want to take the time to explore it. I much prefer 13 Days and WSDV. Even 1960 gets a bit repetitive.

I need to try Europe in Turmoil.

I like the subject matter of Twilight Struggle, but I have only played once and don't feel the need to play again. My opponent was more familiar with the cards and that made for an obvious advantage. That could eventually be overcome if I played enough, but I found the gameplay often devolved to a zero-sum shoving match that I consider the most tedious sort of two-player game.

I love Twilight Struggle but rarely get the chance to play it (or other long, medium/heavy, 2p games). 13 Days is a pretty good substitute that is 90% as good but really misses out on the epic arc of TS.

Thanks, I'll try to get in a play of Wir Sind Das Volk sometime. I haven't played the microgames either.

Gary Sax, you should. Europe in Turmoil stretches the system a bit.

I leaned pretty heavily on Twilight Struggle for my design of The Expanse. The key issue I had to solve was how to extend the Event option to more than two players. I'm very pleased with the Event Priority system I ended up with.

@englestein, that's interesting. I'll look for a chance to play The Expanse.

Kevin, nice summary of the political card driven games. Keep up the good work on reviews and analysis on war games. The only one I haven’t played is Europe. Also coming out soon is the GMT England vs. France in 17-18 century, I have that on p500 Order. TS is the best of the bunch not because it was the first but because of the tension of scoring and nuking the world. The Expanse is probably my second favorite again because there’s also a lot of tension over when scoring rounds are going to be triggered.

Yeah, imperial struggle looks very exciting to me.

KingPut and Gary, I'm eagerly awaiting Imperial Struggle as well. Thanks for the kind words, and yes, I will be covering more wargame topics as well as some "heavier" Euros.