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 #39: The Victorious Leader 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 from this game we will take a look at in this series is a United States Card called The Victorious Leader, which refers to Siad Barre, the self styled “victorious leader” of Somalia. The card is a Mid War Card and has a 3 Ops Value. Any card that allows a player to place Influence in a country, even if it is enemy controlled, is a very valuable and powerful card. Remember, in Twilight Struggle when a country is controlled the player will have to expend 2 Operations Points to place 1 Influence in that space. But, when a card instructs the player to place Influence this is the work around to the penalty. And this card really does a lot for the United States player by giving them 4 Influence to place. There are 2 limiting factors to the placement of the Influence granted by the card though. The first is that there can be no more than 2 Influence per country placed and second the Influence must be placed into countries that were adjacent to countries controlled by the USSR at the start of the round.

Let’s take a look at how this card will work. The United States player will take 4 Influence and can then place them according to the 2 limiting factors as explained above. In this example, Influence can be placed into 5 countries shown in the picture including Yemen (which contains 2 Soviet Influence and is therefore Soviet Controlled), S. Yemen (which contains 2 Soviet Influence and is Soviet Controlled), Djibouti (which contains 2 Soviet Influence and is Soviet Controlled), Somalia (which contains 4 Soviet Influence and is Soviet Controlled) and finally Saudi Arabia (3 United States Influence). The target countries have to be adjacent to Soviet Controlled countries, so Somalia is adjacent to Djibouti allowing placement, Djibouti is adjacent to Somalia allowing placement, Djibouti is also adjacent to S. Yemen allowing placement, Yemen is adjacent to S. Yemen allowing placement and finally Saudi Arabia is also eligible for placement as well as it is adjacent to Soviet Controlled Yemen.

2 of those available United States Influence are placed directly into S. Yemen to take Control away from the Soviets there actually gain Control for the United States and the remaining 2 Influence are split up and placed into Yemen and Djibouti to also wrest Control from the grip of the Soviets. Remember, this card allows you to place Influence 1 for 1 into Controlled countries so take advantage of that!

Mohammed Siad Barre was a Somali military officer, politician, and revolutionary who served as the third president of Somalia from October 1969 to January 1991. Barre, who was the commander of the Somali National Army, became president of Somalia after the 1969 coup d’état that overthrew the Somali Republic following the assassination of President Abdirashid Shermarke. The Supreme Revolutionary Council military junta under Barre reconstituted Somalia as a one-party Marxist–Leninist communist state, renamed the country the Somali Democratic Republic and adopted scientific socialism. Barre spoke three languages, English, Somali and Italian.

The “victorious leader” of Somalia, who also styled himself as “Guulwade” (meaning “victorious leader” in Somali) worked to cultivate a strong personality cult and lead the country with an iron fist. But his policies were quite revolutionary for the time as during his rule, Barre implemented policies like scientific socialism and sought to create a national identity by reducing the influence of clans. He also initiated a large literacy campaign, granted women more rights, and modernized the Somali language. His regime also enjoyed close ties with the Soviet Union, receiving military aid and training. Control over Somalia was of great interest to both the Soviet Union and the United States due to the country’s strategic location at the mouth of the Red Sea. After the Soviets broke with Somalia in the late 1970’s, Barre subsequently expelled all Soviet advisors, tore up his friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, and switched allegiance to the West, announcing this in a televised speech in English. Somalia also broke all ties with the Eastern Bloc and the Second World (except China and Romania). The United States stepped in and until 1989, was a strong supporter of the Barre government for whom it provided approximately $100 million per year in economic and military aid.

In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at Luther’s 95 Theses from Here I Stand: Wars of the Reformation 1555-1571 from GMT Games.

-Grant