A two-player Cold War simulation where players represent the US and USSR. Twilight Struggle is a two-player game simulating the forty-five year dance of intrigue, prestige, and occasional flares of warfare. Between the Soviet Union and the United States. The entire world is the stage on which these two titans fight to make the world safe for their own ideologies and ways of life.
Through card-driven events, they compete for global influence during historical conflicts.
Although Twilight Struggle was designed to be simple and playable, it has strongly thematic gameplay. That is, the rules reflect the logic of the Cold War, and the cards refer to actual historical people and events, generally being illustrated with historical photographs.
In 2022, GMT released Jason Matthews‘s game Twilight Struggle: Red Sea. Based on the Horn of Africa in the 1970s, especially the deposition of Haile Selassie, it is designed to play similarly to the original game but only take 35 minutes to play. In addition, cards from Twilight Struggle and Red Sea may be used in either game.
Twilight Struggle inherits its fundamental systems from the card-driven classics We the People and Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage. It is a quick-playing, low-complexity game in that tradition. The game map is a world map of the period. Whereon players move units and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for their superpower.
