With this 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.

#97: Prudence 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!

Any game that has cards is focused somehow on attacking those cards or at least minimizing access to them or to taking a turn away from your opponent by causing them to have to discard one of their cards or to do something else with that card. But there are some type of cards that will limit your opponent’s cards and their effectiveness by imposing a penalty on them. That is the case with our next card in this series from 1989: Dawn of Freedom called Prudence. The card is very simple as it imposes a -1 Ops penalty on all cards played by your opponent for the Operations Points for the remainder of the turn. All cards still will retain at least a 1 Op value but others will be reduced. The play of this card as an Event or for the juicy 4 Ops that it conveys is a real choice and players need to understand the value in the card. If played as the first card play of a turn, the penalty can impose up to a -6 Ops loss to your opponent over the course of the turn. So you have to somewhat do a cost-benefit analysis when you play the card and decide if it is best played for the Event or for the Ops. The later the turn goes, the less impact and utility the Event will have and you must gain a return from this valuable card if used for the Event. 4 Ops cards are rare and you must come out on top or your game will suffer.

President George H.W. Bush frequently used the word “prudence” to describe his cautious, restrained approach to foreign policy during the historic collapse of the Soviet bloc and the end of the Cold War. Prudence meant calculating risks and weighing long-term consequences rather than reacting with flashy, immediate emotion. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Bush famously refused to publicly dance on the wall or gloat, despite pressure from political rivals like Senator George Mitchell. This was a measured and conscious choice to deescalate the tensions and fall out from the fall of the Berlin Wall as Bush feared that openly humiliating Soviet leaders or the Soviet military might provoke a hardline backlash or cause Moscow to halt troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe.

As you may know, comedian Dana Carvey popularized a famous caricature of George H.W. Bush on Saturday Night Live, using the catchphrase “Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent” to lampoon the President’s cautious speech patterns and deliberate style. While critics sometimes mocked his caution as a lack of a grand vision and understanding of his place as the Leader of the free world, historians often credit his prudent diplomacy with managing a peaceful transition out of the Cold War.

I very much enjoy the thematic connection of this card with the Event. The play of this card, which is a choice as it has a 4 Ops value and could be used in a different manner to forward the player’s interests on the game board, mimics the restraint and choices before President Bush. I think that in today’s world, this type of restraint is sorely lacking and if present at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, could have sparked further decades of struggle as the Cold War would have continued to freeze the 2 Super Powers into an ongoing and pointless ideological fight.

We posted a full review video and you can watch that at the following link:

In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at The Balkan Wars from Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 from VUCA Simulations.

-Grant