My Favorite Wargame Cards – A Look at Individual Cards from My Favorite Games – Card #32: “The Wall Must Go!” from 1989: Dawn of Freedom 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 #32: “The Wall Must Go!” from 1989: Dawn of Freedom from GMT Games

1989: Dawn of Freedom is a fast paced game simulating the end of the Cold War in 1989 as the Berlin Wall fell under pressure from the people as during this year a series of democratic revolutions ended the 40 year Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. 1989 simulates the political, social and economic aspects of these revolutions using a card-driven system similar to Twilight Struggle. I have really very much enjoyed my plays of 1989 and those plays are increasing as the game has been placed on the very cool and user friendly online platform Rally the Troops!

One of my favorite types of cards in the Twilight Struggle Series of games are the roll off cards such as Olympic Games. I know that they are extremely luck based and the dice normally hate me but they just add a lite and fun element to this very serious game and can cause big changes in the course of a player’s strategy. Such is the situation with today’s card called “The Wall Must Go!”

“The Wall Must Go!” is a Late War Democratic aligned card that can be played to attempt to wrest control of East Germany away from the Communist player. The card gives both players the opportunity to roll a D6 and then add +1 for each of the spaces in East Germany that they control. The best part is that this is a best of 3 thing where you will continue to roll off until someone wins 2 roll offs. Then the victor will gain +3 VP’s and then the Communist player must remove 3 influence from East Germany. The important aspect to understand here though is that win or lose, the Communist will lose influence in Germany so this card is really a bit of a trap. As you know in these CDG’s, it is very difficult to remove your opponent’s influence from spaces on the board so anytime a card gives you the opportunity to force them to remove their own, that card is worth its weight in gold.

The thematic connection here is also very strong as this ideological struggle was real and the Germans wanted the wall to come down so they could be reunited with friends and family who had been separated for decades. The statement “The wall must go” gained significant traction during 1989. While President Ronald Reagan famously used the phrase during a speech in 1987, calling on then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear it down, the urgency of the wall’s removal increased dramatically throughout 1989. This was due to mounting political pressure within East Germany, increased tensions during the Cold War, and the broader shift towards democratic reform in Eastern Europe.