sirhumphrey wrote:
Michael--One way around this is to believe that the conducting of operations is itself a series of events. That coup war in Uruguay? The Uruguayan "Guerra de los Montañas". Marshall Plan getting played for two into Algeria, one into Angola and one into South Africa? The "Food and Peace" aid programme of the US state department to stabilise post-colonial Africa.
No question this is the case, but I wonder more about events. Other than the Soviets landing on the moon -which in itself is not really a card-driven event in the way that others are - there is no real way to set up an alternate history scenario.
Consider the "great man" theory of history, in which the right person can change the world at the right time. This is an even more important a staple of alternate history. There are many more of these for the Soviets (Fidel, Nasser, Che, Allende and Willy Brandt), than for the US (the Iron Lady - though this is as much because of the Falklands War than for Thatcherism); anyone who argues adding John Paul II to the US list should also add DeGaulle. But they leave out plenty of interesting personalities (Peron? Sukarno? Lumumba and Mobuto?). The Nasser card basically exists to get negated later on... Some of these could have been made into a generic "Charismatic Politician" event in the way that Brush War is said to apply to a number of low-intensity conflicts.
Even cards like Socialist Governments could have effects in more than one place. After all, both Mossadegh and Allende were elected to power democratically - though in the former's case an ahistorical Soviet coup of Iran is a virtual certainty in every TS game!
NOTE: If Jason or Ananda reads this, I am scraping the bottom of the complaints barrel indeed :)