New Cold War is a game about geopolitics that takes place from 1989 to 2019. It begins with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and ends with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Players (from 1 to 4) take the role of the great powers fighting for the new world order: Russia, China (forming the Red Bloc), the United States and the European Union (Blue Bloc). The allied powers will have to cooperate with each other (exchange of cards, media marker…), but victory will be individual. There are two victory conditions: a power must declare two of the hidden objectives on its agenda during the game or lead the victory point score at the end of the last turn of the game. The game consists of nine turns divided into three decades with a game duration of 150-180 minutes.

In this series of Event Card Spoilers, we will cover several different types of cards included in the game and from the different Decade Decks and give their details so that you can understand how the game works and how it incorporates the historical narrative of the new Cold War struggle between super powers from the end of the first Cold War through 2019.

New Cold War is a Card Driven Game (CDG) featuring the 135 most important events of the 30 year period covered by the game. Your power’s cards can be played as an event or as operations, while opponents’ cards and your own negative cards are played as OPS and the event is executed for or against the power to which it belongs. OPS can be played in five different ways: 1) placing or removing influence on countries on the map (based on their stability, geopolitical value and initial alignment), 2) stabilizing or destabilizing countries to protect or favor access to them, 3) advancing on the prestige marker, 4) advancing on the media marker, either alone or in cooperation with your ally (it is a track that is contested by blocks) or 5) creating a reserve of OPS to play in later rounds or game turns.

Card #7: 1st Decade Deck – The Tibetan Conflict

The Tibetan Conflict is a Negative China Event that comes into play in the 1st Decade Deck. It is a non-unique card, which means that it can appear several times throughout the game and that it represents that this territorial conflict remains in force today. Unique events, on the other hand, will be discarded from the game regardless of their use (for either event or operations).

After a first decade of internal consolidation, the Chinese player will have at his disposal from Turn 4 a series of events which will allow him to open up new Spheres of Influence across the globe (Africa, South America…) thanks to his economic and diplomatic potential, but without ever neglecting his internal problems, represented by a series of Negative Events of a territorial nature (Uighurs, Taiwan) or concerning freedom of expression (non-respect of human rights, dissidence). These events will have a negative impact on the Chinese position on the Media Track, whose dominance will bring important benefits in the form of Prestige and Influence Checks that will be performed in each decade of the game.

The next card up in the series will be Card #105: 3rd Decade Card – Annexation of Crimea.

Also, if you are interested in learning more about New Cold War, you can visit the Board Game Geek game page at the following link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/405994/new-cold-war

The game is not yet ready for pre-order but should be sometime in the next several months.

-Grant