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.

#47: Fidel from Twilight Struggle: The Cold War, 1945-1989 from GMT Games

Twilight Struggle is a 2-player game simulating the forty-five year ideological struggle known as the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States which can be played in 2-3 hours. The entire world is the stage on which these two countries “fight” to make the world safe for their own ideologies and way of life. The game starts right after the end of World War II in the midst of the ruins of Europe as the two new “superpowers” of the world squabble over what is left and ends in 1989, when only the United States remained standing.

The map is a world map of the period, where players move units and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for their superpower. The beauty of the CDG system used here is that each decision of whether to use a card for the event or the operations value is a struggle as if it is the other side’s event, it might go off hurting you very badly. There are mechanics to allow for the ignoring or cancelling of some of the best cards for your opponent in a side game within the game called The Space Race as well as nuclear tensions, with the possibility of game-ending global thermonuclear war (Shall we play a game, anyone?). I have played TS about 30 times and love it more and more with each sitting. The game makes me sweat, cringe, jump with joy and bite my fingernails. To me, a game that can do all of that in one sitting is worth the price.

One of my favorite cards from the game is the Fidel card, which is an Early War Card that has an Ops Value of 2 but is way more valuable as the event as it gives the Russians a direct conduit to control over Cuba and a sure entrance into the Central American area of the board. Remember, one of the key rules of the game is that you cannot place Influence into an area where you don’t already have a presence. In order to place into areas, you must already have at least placed 1 Influence into the region and then can begin spreading out from there. That is why this card is so powerful as it circumvents that rule and allows placing of Influence directly into Cuba. As we have played this game, and I have been the USA player, I have had to keep in the back of my mind the fact that this cards is in the deck when placing Influence into Cuba. Too much commitment in the early part of the game can be a waste as it can all be removed with the play of this card and you must keep that in mind. Any card that allows for the placement of Influence into an area you cannot is worth its weight in gold.

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and then President from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1965 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state where both industry and business were nationalized and socialist reforms were implemented throughout Cuban society.

Ultimately, Cuba become a battleground between the Soviets and the United States as the USSR attempted to build missile launching infrastructure in Cuba in order to have nuclear missiles just 90 miles from the border of the United States. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day confrontation in October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union over this nuclear missile deployment in Cuba. The crisis ended when the Soviet Union dismantled its missiles in Cuba, in exchange for a U.S. public pledge not to invade Cuba and a secret agreement to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. This standoff is remembered as the most dangerous moment of the Cold War, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.