by spartax
Marty78 wrote:
Atleast I have never heard of any chess or poker tournaments where the rules aren't known.
Chess and poker have both been played by a much wider audience for a lot longer than Twilight Struggle. And neither one of them is full of event cards that interact with the base rules in interesting ways. In a game like TS, it's hard to weed out every single edge case. For a better analogue, you should consider Magic: The Gathering, whose tournament rules are constantly being tweaked.
The case you cite is an edge case because Nuclear Test Ban is so rarely played for the event. I myself would only ever consider playing it at DEFCON 4 if its points would push me over the 20 mark. Or maybe if my opponent were suffering from Bear Trap, so I could be guaranteed a coup in Europe . . . it could happen in theory, but in practice, I almost always just take the 4 ops.