QMG Cold War - outing number two

After the last outing, we were all keen to have a go at QMG Cold War again having now got slightly more idea how to play it. One thing I'd completely missed the first time around was that you get VPs for each army you have, rather each supply base as in the WW1 and WW2 versions. That partly explained why the Non-aligned Powers wiped the floor as they spent their actions building armies, while NATO and Warpac spent them fighting WW3!

The game board once more, this time with a very high tech looking addition. I can't for the life of me remember what we used the iPad for in the game though.

Tim had recently obtained a very budget British Generals hat, so naturally had to play NATO.

While John had acquired this rather grand original PLA hat, so played Non-aligned.

That left me with the Warpac, so in the interests of international solidarity, I wore my Castro Cap (sourced in Havana!). I also rather unfairly read the notes at the back of the rules, which suggested the best plan for Warpac was to build armies, lots and lots of armies while building up a huge hand of Espionage cards to unleash a devasating attack (as you can play as many Espionage cards at a time as you like). Well, that sounds like a plan.

In the three player version, you get one deck each, with each of the two power decks shuffled together.  Jerry advised that this worked much better than the six player game.

Mid game, and India and China seem to have expanded quite a bit while Nationalists overrun the middle and far east. At least the USSR has some troops and planes in Central Asia to stem the tide. Eagle eyed readers will spot a big blue NATO counter on the far right. That is Israel (established as a NATO ally early on by Tim).

A distinct lack of WW3 going on in 1955. NATO have Italy and a strong presence in the Balkans though. Warpac have just built armies, and lag behind in the points.  Amusingly the US has just successfully completed a manned mission to Moon.

By 1960 I had a fair crop of Espionage cards and deployed WMDs. This was one  of my carefully planned Espionage coups. A revolution in Central America, supported by an extra army build and some tactical nuclear weapons manages to take the USA. I had planned to do this in the last game but didn't get to pull it off.

This was followed in 1965 with Soviet Fleets and Air based in the USA contesting the North Atlantic. Air power drove away the allied ships and this was followed up with a Soviet Army landing in Britain! Well, that went well. To rub salt into the wounds, we launched Sputnik too. 

At the end of 1965 the scores were much closer than before. NATO lagged behind but Warpac was only a couple of points behind China/India. We called it a day there. We still don't seem to have figured out how to stop China rampaging all over Asia, but at least NATO and Warpac didn't mutually destroy each other in futile combat this time.

So, I think we are getting there slowly. It does seem to take a while to play this one and I'm not convinced we'll ever get to finish a game in an evening, but the three player game did seem to rattle along a lot faster and we had a bit  more idea what we were doing. There are some NATO and Warpac events cards which stem the Nationalist tide in Asia, but we didn't get a chance to play them.