"Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call tobear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled weare but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle..."
John F. Kennedy
In 1945, unlikely allies toppled Hitler's war machine, whilehumanity's most devastating weapons forced the Japanese Empire to its knees ina storm of fire. Where once there stood many great powers, there then stoodonly two. The world had scant months to sigh its collective relief before a newconflict threatened. Unlike the titanic struggles of the preceding decades,this conflict would be waged not primarily by soldiers and tanks, but by spiesand politicians, scientists and intellectuals, artists and traitors. TwilightStruggle is a two-player game simulating the forty-five year dance of intrigue,prestige, and occasional flares of warfare between the Soviet Union and theUnited States. The entire world is the stage on which these two titans fight tomake the world safe for their own ideologies and ways of life. The game beginsamidst the ruins of Europe as the two new "superpowers" scramble overthe wreckage of the Second World War, and ends in 1989, when only the UnitedStates remained standing.
Twilight Struggle inherits its fundamentalsystems from the card-driven classics We the People and Hannibal: Rome vs.Carthage. It is a quick-playing, low-complexity game in thattradition. The game map is a world map of the period, whereon players moveunits and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for theirsuperpower. As with GMT's other card-driven games, decision-making is achallenge; how to best use one's cards and units given consistently limitedresources?
Twilight Struggle's Event cards add detail and flavor to thegame. They cover a vast array of historical happenings, from the Arab-Israeliconflicts of 1948 and 1967, to Vietnam and the U.S. peace movement, to theCuban Missile Crisis and other such incidents that brought the world to thebrink of nuclear annihilation. Subsystems capture the prestige-laden Space Raceas well as nuclear tensions, with the possibility of game-ending nuclear war
