by SnowFire
I got the full pack o' promos & turn 0. Turn 0 seems neat but might need some balance trimming. The promos... urgh, I'll have to play with 'em some, but I'm worried, and some seem sloppy.Turn 0: This is good for adding some chaos into the game. However, there's not a lot of actual strategy for the Sirlin-esque bluffing game, which might be fine if the goal is just to move to the real game quickly. Additionally, it seems like it might be needlessly unbalanced early.
You basically will have a +2 play, 2 +1 plays, a Joker cancel-opponent-card (alternatively, value equal to whatever the opponent played), and 2 +0 plays (no effect). Hope you Joker your opponent's +2 and he Jokers your +0, of course. If all the crises are balanced, then there's no strategy, play whatever and hope for the best; if the crises are not balanced, then you will almost always want to play a 'good' card (+2, +1, or Joker) on the powerful crises and a +0 on the weak ones regardless of situation, because you don't know your opening hand yet.
Current kneejerks...
V-E Day: Due to the way people play modern TS, on the weak side because the Soviet player tends to pile tons of influence into E. Germany & Poland and ignore the Independent Reds / EEU threatened rest of Eastern Europe.
V-J Day: Awesome. As we all know, Asia is very powerful in TS. While it's just 1 influence, South Korea is very influential and makes the threat of Korean War scarier. Powerful effects on 1 & 6 but mostly balance each other out.
Israel: Average? Median result is swingy, as surprise USSR Presence in the Middle East means headlining ME Scoring becomes great for the USSR and terrible for the US (or, if you're playing with a +US handicap, fair for the USSR due to US presence from handicapped Iran). 1/6 are both awesome.
Chinese Civil War: Not a big deal... unless the US gets a 6, which is bustedly good. Free Battleground you control from the start AND a really good card in Nationalist China?! Could be a useful YOLO strat for US I guess, but still average overall.
Yalta & Potsdam: Powerful. Guaranteed T1 Marshall Plan headline = gg for Soviet Europe hopes, and that's a middle result of 4-5! (Slightly creepy flavor, though. You're rolling dice to try and kill FDR, secret Soviet agent? wut)
1945 UK Election: Who cares, especially if US can win Yalta & Potsdam. Extreme events are weak so not worth investing in. Also I'd like to point out that the Suez Crisis took place under a moronic Tory government and Eden was a fool, so why electing Tories sooner prevents the Suez Crisis is a mystery to me. (Maybe it means that Churchill's popularity means the US backs it and prevents a rift with the British & French? Yeah that'd have gone well.)
So rough instincts on where I want to play my high cards at the moment:
V-J Day = Yalta & Potsdam > Israel > Chinese Civil War = V-E Day >>> 1945 UK Election
On the whole decently balanced, with the one obvious exception at the end. That said, since this ultimately comes down to raw dice rolling and nothing will save you from bad luck, I'd probably be in favor of some differential rigging to make sure that the game isn't total nonsense... I'd be in favor of a house rule that the 6th Turn 0 Crisis isn't actually rolled, but is rigged to even things out. 6*3.5 = 21 on average. So take into account the rolled values (NOT the adjusted ones) of the first 5 crises, and then make the 6th roll not a roll at all, but rather automatically whatever value would add to 21 (or, if already over 21, a 1, or if at 14 or less, a 6). This still isn't perfectly fair since adjusted rolls could be "wasted" (e.g. you played +2 on a natural 6), you could have a lot of 2s & 4s (bad for Soviets, relatively) or 3s & 5s (bad for Americans, relatively), and truly horrible luck will only guarantee you a single 1 or 6, but still. Should make things not TOO shenanigany. (At least if 1945 UK Election's roll mattered more.)
Anyway, I'm pretty interested in giving turn 0 a try with the 6th-roll moderation rule in effect, seems interesting and a good way to mix up openings.
Promo cards in the next post, this is actually kinda long.
