1st Annual Languish Twilight Struggle Tournament

[Maladict]

Thanks mkiefte and Berkut 
What about final scoring? I never give it all that much thought until probably way too late, but then again how many games go the distance, right?

[Berkut]

As the players get better, the chances of a game going to distance go up. But it is still maybe 25% of the time or so, would be my guess.

You have to be hyper aware of Wargames once you reach Late war, of course...

[Berkut]

I'd be in.

In to go again, or in for a mini-4 way tourney between the tied players?

Who am I kidding, you are in for either or both.

Which would you prefer?

[Habbaku]

Both.

But I figure a playoff between the top 4 is in order.

[Berkut]

What happened to the losers bracket touney? I don't think I saw anything after Drakken resigning his game...

[Berkut]

SO a 4 way playoff.

Ranking players by their respective win/loss against each other:

1. Nels
2. mkiefte
3. Habbaku
4. Tamas

Nels vs Tamas

mkiefte vs Habbaku

1 game, normal setup, winners meet for the title.

[Tamas]

ok!

[Solmyr]

What happened to the losers bracket touney? I don't think I saw anything after Drakken resigning his game...

I'm still playing vonMoltke, he's slow.

[mkiefte]

Sure.

I'm in three different games right now though.  If you start up a game with me now, my response time may be a bit slow.

[mkiefte]

Just started a game with Habbaku.

[Habbaku]

This is the one we're counting after you losing two in a row? 

[Solmyr]

This is the one we're counting after you losing two in a row? 

We don't count games that you win.

[Nels]

I don't want to call the tournament officials biased, so I won't say biased. It's just so political. We have a beautiful electoral college, which I won, big league. Big league, I'm telling you. I would have won the popular championship, too, if 4 to 5 million electrons hadn't "voted illegally" and tipped the odds against me in several battlegrounds. Sad! Habbaku hasn't won anything in so long he has forgotten what winning looks like. Mkiefte, who had a terrible strategy, terrible, now wants to appeal. We've got to get smart, people. We need leadership.

A bad high school student understands this. It's standard locker room stuff: head to head is the tiebreaker. So simple! It's sad, really. Now a panel of so-called judges has unanimously ruled that we re-play head to head. It's a crooked system. SEE YOU IN COURT!

I will MAKE AMERICA (or the USSR, depending on the random draw) GREAT. AGAIN! Like I did the first time! Because they're telling me I have to!

[Nels]

Tamas, I've invited you (slimkt) to game #202562.

[Nels]

More strategy thoughts:

The AI plays to pollute your control of key battlegrounds. Don't be like the AI. You pollute battlegrounds with events or sometimes you play the China card for 5 ops to take over Pakistan or Thailand when the enemy controls it at only +2.

When I first started playing, I let myself get too far behind in regions. I figured I'd make it up later, I suppose. Now I try to compete in a region or make my opponent pay for his dominance in one region by consolidating my own in another one. Beware of outright control, though. At around 10 points a shot, a fully controlled area can ruin a game. You want to pollute his edge, at least.

Ops are precious. You want to play every single point for a reason. It's not bad strategy to simply play for points. That is, play for the scoring card that is coming up. In Early War, that means you might not play a single op outside of Europe, Middle East, and Asia (or at most one or two). It forces him to react. (That's why paying 2 to pollute is usually bad strategy. It's hard for you and easy for him.) Mkiefte is a formidable player, so I hesitate to contradict him, but I like to play to space only if I need to. I try to get as many ops plays as I possibly can, even playing the other guy's events whenever possible.

Usually I give up easy VP plays to play ops. But the game has lots of knobs. If you are struggling to keep up, then play cards for VPs, or take a small scoring play with just a presence if you don't think you can turn it into dominance.

Hold the China Card. Of course you will sometimes play the China Card. But I think you really need to know it's helping you more than the other guy when you play it. And most of the games I play are against people rated higher than me, so I'm not so sure I can play it to better effect than they can. Also, holding the China Card is a get out of jail free card if you draw two defcon suicide cards.

Play to screw the other guy. Think of how you can escape a bad hand or think of how you can make the hand miserable for him. Drew a fistsful of his events, including his Bear Trap or Quagmire? Play that on yourself so you can freely get rid of (hopefully only one) of those bad cards. Drew Bear Trap and you're the US? Maybe you don't play the event. That's 3 safe ops, and those are hard to come by. Probably you play it, and he just rids himself of Grain Sales or something, plus you just lost the opportunity to play 3 ops. Usually I'd rather he eats a bad card than I give him the easy out. Still, those cards get played a lot. Quagmire, especially, cancels NORAD and probably should be played. But that's the way to think about it. You play Quagmire so he stops screwing with you over NORAD. Not so much because you are hoping he'll miss his discard roll.

On scoring: You'll get behind in scoring regions. Way behind. See if you can control more states than he does, even if you can't control the battlegrounds. Don't give him that dominance/control easy.

Don't realign if he can just get back into the area from an adjacent space. *Do* realign when you can screw him over. A successful realignment should kick him out of the area with no way back in. If you have that opportunity, it's not a mistake to spend multiple cards attempting it. Constantly do what hurts the other guy, either by building an edge or by caving in a project he's building with something like Brush War or Voice of America or realignments.