DEC 2013 TS forum game archive

[BanzaiCat]

Are we waiting on the Imperialists to complete their AR?

[Barthheart]

EDIT ***
Never mind I need to read the rules better....  :P

[Barthheart]

Da, silly Americans are too busy wringing their hands in fear to make any political decisions.

[undercovergeek]

Americans are busy building launch pad for great expedition - shhhhhh

[GJK]

If I understand the question correctly- the OPs points from the Castro card would go first, so you would play those OPs; a coup perhaps somewhere but it wouldn't be in Cuba because the event that places IP's in Cuba for Russia won't trigger until after you've played the card for the OPs points.  You could however Coup somewhere else this turn, let Castro event trigger and then Coup attempt in Cuba for the 6th (final) round. 

[undercovergeek]

agree with everything, except surely we can only generate ops points for the final turn by playing the last card, and that cant possibly happen with the card of doom!!!

So this turn then, lets play Castro and coup Syria - what would the dice modifiers be GJK?

[Ubercat]

Maybe you should attend this school.

[BanzaiCat]

As Comrade Ubercat put it previously:

Round 6: Five Year Plan for 3 Ops. We can figure out later what to do with these points. The important thing is, the event will make us discard one of THEIR cards. All we'll have left are CIA created and Containment. The event will fire but who cares? They'll either get 1 extra Op for their final card (assuming they play it for Ops) or they'll get to see our (almost empty) hand and use 1 Op. Their (wimpy) event will fire so the card will leave the game and we won't have to worry about it coming back when it may do more damage to us.

Since we don't have control over which card we'd have left, there's not much of a debate at this point as the ball would be in the opulent yet decadent Westerner's court at that time. So we need to decide what we do with the 3 OPS points.

I think we have three choices:

(1) Spend the 3 OPS to put influence in:
     (a) Europe - 1 in E. Germany, 1 in Poland, and the third in Spain/Portugal;
     (b) the Middle East - 2 in Jordan, 1 in Libya
     This is of course open to debate.

(2) Perform three Realignment Rolls.
     (a) Focus on W. Germany. Since nobody has an adjacent country, it would be a straight die-roll challenge. If we roll better than them, the difference is
          removed from their Influence in W. Germany. Why? Well, why not. That might make them panic if we cut them down in Europe. If the first roll fails, we have
          two other rolls we can do; we can roll for the same country more than once if we wish!

(3) Go for a Coup Attempt in Jordan. If we gained control of Jordan we'd have better leverage vis-a-vis Israel and Saudi Arabia should we wish to pursue Realignment Rolls in the future. This would satisfy our remaining Military Operations point so the imperialists would receive no VP.

Keep in mind the West has not yet performed Military Operations, so I expect them to pull a coup somewhere. Otherwise, they're looking at coughing up some VP at the end of this turn. I honestly don't understand the rules fully despite reading them - I'm not sure if we pulled a coup off if that would raise the DEFCON to 3 and therfore if they perform no Military Ops, we'd get 3 VPs? Is that right?

There's also always the Space Race. Although I don't think my comrades in the Kremlin are all that hot on that option. I think we have more viable options this AR.

Anyway, I'm open to anything, just throwing some ideas around for our Five-Year Plan card play.

[GJK]

So Syria has a Stability Number of 2.  That doubled is 4. The Castro card is worth 2 OPs so it's a die roll +2.  You need a 5 or a 6  for a successful coup.  However, the USSR has 2 IP's in Syria so you need to roll a natural 4 to remove the 2 IP's, a 5 to add one of your own or a 6 to add 2 of your own:

(Roll)+2	Stabilityx2	USSR IP	Net Result
(3)5	4	2	-1 USSR IP
(4)6	4	2	-2 USSR IP
(5)7	4	2	-2 USSR IP/+1 USA IP
(6)8	4	2	-2 USSR IP/+2 USA IP

[Staggerwing]

How does a region scoring card get played? Is it just dealt out like any other and then played for event or points, depending on whether it favors or hurts the card holder? Would the Europe card already be part of the current hands? If so the CominternCats must have it.

[undercovergeek]

There's 2 whole decks we haven't seen yet - new set for mid war and late war

[Ubercat]

Since we don't have control over which card we'd have left, there's not much of a debate at this point as the ball would be in the opulent yet decadent Westerner's court at that time. So we need to decide what we do with the 3 OPS points.

I think we have three choices:

(1) Spend the 3 OPS to put influence in:
     (a) Europe - 1 in E. Germany, 1 in Poland, and the third in Spain/Portugal;
     (b) the Middle East - 2 in Jordan, 1 in Libya
     This is of course open to debate.

Spain/Portugal and Libya are not options as we aren't next to them. Jordan would be very inefficient as we'd have to burn 2 Ops to place a single IP. The relevant rules are 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 on page 6 of the rulebook.

(2) Perform three Realignment Rolls.
     (a) Focus on W. Germany. Since nobody has an adjacent country....

Did we lose E. Germany??  :o  ;D

it would be a straight die-roll challenge. If we roll better than them, the difference is
          removed from their Influence in W. Germany. Why? Well, why not. That might make them panic if we cut them down in Europe. If the first roll fails, we have
          two other rolls we can do; we can roll for the same country more than once if we wish!

Realigning W. Germany would be a pretty good idea, especially since we'd have a +1 DRM for having E. Germany while the Americans have no adjacent countries. Unfortunately for us, Def Con is too high for any coup or realignment rolls in Europe. (Check the Def Con status track on the board)

(3) Go for a Coup Attempt in Jordan. If we gained control of Jordan we'd have better leverage vis-a-vis Israel and Saudi Arabia should we wish to pursue Realignment Rolls in the future. This would satisfy our remaining Military Operations point so the imperialists would receive no VP.

Couping Jordan isn't too bad an idea for the reasons you give. We've already satisfied our Mil Ops requirements for the turn so no issue there. If the Americans don't get some Mil Ops, we'll grab 4 more VP.

Keep in mind the West has not yet performed Military Operations, so I expect them to pull a coup somewhere. Otherwise, they're looking at coughing up some VP at the end of this turn. I honestly don't understand the rules fully despite reading them - I'm not sure if we pulled a coup off if that would raise the DEFCON to 3 and therfore if they perform no Military Ops, we'd get 3 VPs? Is that right?

We don't want Def Con to go up any more. If it rises to 3, we'll only get 3 VP instead of 4. And if they're the ones who made it go up by couping, we may not get ANY VP's.

My preference is to finish grabbing Iran and throw an extra IP there since it's an easy country to coup and we don't want them to grab it back. (our ridiculously poor luck when WE couped it notwithstanding) I'd place the final IP in Laos/Cambodia or maybe the Gulf States. Laos/Cambodia would get us closer to well set up for when someone plays Indo/Pakistani War and for SE Asia Scoring, and Gulf States would also help with realignments of Saudi Arabia, and future plays of Terrorists.

Also, if Def Con stays at 4 this turn, it will lower back to 5 next turn, so we can turn around and coup Italy!

Couping Jordan wouldn't affect Def Con, so that's helpful. We can really go either way.

[BanzaiCat]

Well, I got one rule right at least.  :-\ Ubercat I'm glad you're up on the rules...I didn't read them right obviously. Or the map. Or...sigh.

In any case if you're in agreement then we've narrowed our choices to either Coup Jordan or realign W Germany. Comrade Barthheartovitch what say you?

[Staggerwing]

But which one is the Europe scoring card in? early, mid, or late?

[Ubercat]

Well, I got one rule right at least.  :-\ Ubercat I'm glad you're up on the rules...I didn't read them right obviously. Or the map. Or...sigh.

In any case if you're in agreement then we've narrowed our choices to either Coup Jordan or realign W Germany. Comrade Barthheartovitch what say you?

Actually, I was also including grabbing/securing Iran with 2 IPs and putting the remaining 1 IP somewhere else. Remember, ME scoring is still out there and they're currently leading in the ME. If they don't play ME scoring next, we'd be wise to grab Iran and make the ME a wash in VP's.