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.

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 six different ways: 1) placing or removing influence on countries on the map (based on their stability, geopolitical value and initial alignment), 2) by staging a coup d’état, 3) stabilizing or destabilizing countries to protect or favor access to them, 4) advancing on the prestige marker, 5) advancing on the media marker, either alone or in cooperation with your ally (it is a track that is contested by blocks) or 6) creating a reserve of OPS to play in later rounds or game turns.

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.

Card #19: Objective Card – Russia Objective

In New Cold War there are two types of cards: Event Cards and Objective Cards. There are 135 Event Cards and these cards are divided into three decks of common use, one for each decade. The whole background and historical verisimilitude of the game is based on them. On the other hand, each power has its own deck composed of 8 Objective Cards each.

In each game, only three of these Objective Cards will be used and if we manage to declare two (maximum one per turn) we will have achieved an automatic victory, this being the only existing way in the game to do so. If no power manages to win by Objectives, the game will be decided by total VP’s in the final turn. On the Objective Cards there are a number of conditions that must be met: control one or two regions, take control of a certain number or type of countries (Regional Powers or Orbited Countries for example), reach a certain level on the Prestige or Media Track…This mechanism ensures that each game of New Cold War is different, as it provokes diverse interactions between the four powers that guarantee high replayability.

The next card up in the series will be Card #135: 3rd Decade Deck – Brexit.

You can catch up on the series to date by following these links:

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

Card #105: 3rd Decade Deck – Annexation of Crimea

Card #82: 1st Decade Deck – Warsaw Pact Dissolved

Card #134: 3rd Decade Deck – Rise of the Far Right

Card #41: 2nd Decade Deck – Afghanistan and Iraq Wars

Card #25: 3rd Decade Deck – Xi Jinping

Card #61: 1st Decade Deck – UNSC Presidency

Card #30: 1st Decade Deck – Gulf Monarchies

Card #63: 1st Decade Deck – Counter-Insurgency

Card #64: 1st Decade Deck – War Lords

Card #132: 3rd Decade Deck – Trading of Mineral Oil Products

Card #76: 3rd Decade Deck – Erdogan

Card #77: 3rd Decade Deck – Fake News

The game has recently been put up for pre-order and you can secure a copy for $68.00 from the VUCA Simulations website at the following link: https://vucasims.com/products/new-cold-war

-Grant