My Favorite Wargame Cards – A Look at Individual Cards from My Favorite Games – Card #31: Water Wars from Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa from GMT Games

With this new My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.

Card #31: Water Wars from Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa from GMT Games

We all love Twilight Struggle….and if you say you don’t, you really do but just want to be different or are a contrarian! The game is phenomenal and has done very well for GMT Games with 8 Printings as well as the Turn Zero Expansion and now a series of smaller geographically focused spin off games starting with Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa. Twilight Struggle: Red Sea deals with just two regions located in the Horn of Africa including Africa and the Middle East. The game uses the familiar Twilight Struggle formula of Cards with both Events and Operations Points that can be used by players to perform Coups, do Realignment Rolls or place Influence in an effort to gain control of the most Countries in the Regions to score Victory Points and win the game. The game is fast, furious and only lasts 2 hands of cards (unless you choose to play the special 3 Turn variant) so there isn’t a lot of time to mess around and players must be focused on what they are trying to accomplish. The best thing about the game is that it plays in 45 minutes as compared to 3-4 hours for Twilight Struggle.

The next card we will take a look at in this series is Water Wars, which is a Neutral Mid War 2 Ops Value card. Water Wars refers to the age old struggle between Egypt and Ethiopia for control of the Nile River as a primary water source. Over the years, dams have been built which lead to the restriction of water to Ethiopia and the argument continues.

The card allows the player playing it to remove all of their opponent’s Influence in either Egypt or Ethiopia depending on which has the highest value but their opponent must control both of these locations. This can be a very important card if one player has built a large lead in Egypt. Egypt is a Battleground Country and is very important to scoring.

The power to control the flow of water down the Nile is really well represented here in this event as removing Influence is a very strong action. The ability to take Control away or grant it has been a common theme in the cards that I have chosen to highlight from this game and this one does that very well when the opportunity presents itself. The dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over water access to the Nile River, centered on Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), has led to significant recent tensions and a potential risk of conflict. Egypt and Sudan, downstream nations, are concerned about the dam’s impact on their water supplies, particularly during droughts, while Ethiopia views it as vital for its development.