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Europe Divided - a game of an expansionist Europe, a resurgent Russia, and a new Cold War
The end of the Cold War ushered in a new age of European expansion. Central and Eastern Europe had emerged from dictatorships and wanted to consolidate their democracies. They sought European integration to ensure they would not fall back into the Russian sphere of influence. Russia — a shell of its former power as the Soviet Union — could do nothing to slow the European expansion.
But then things changed.
Oil prices increased, bolstering Russia's economy. Putin came to power, and despite political discontent in Russia, his popularity remained strong. In 2008, war broke out between Russia and the NATO-aspirant, former Soviet country of Georgia. Russia's resurgence had begun, exemplified by the 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine.
In the game, you control of one of the two powers: Europe (controlling both NATO and the European Union) or Russia. Europe is powerful and rich, but bureaucratic and slow to react. Russia lacks Europe's resources, but can respond rapidly.
Players score victory points by having dominant influence in contested countries in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus. They can also score victory points by bringing key historical events to fruition. Gameplay is rich with history and includes today's potential flashpoints, but it features a fast-playing card-driven core mechanism. Players use cards associated with countries they control to establish political and military influence, gain financial resources, and deploy their military presence. An elegant deck-manipulation mechanism weakens players' decks as they increase their influence, creating tension between seeking to expand and overreaching.
Will the Velvet Revolution result in the split of the Czech Republic and Slovakia? How will the Bosnian War end? The players will decide the fate of history throughout this period of Europe Divided.
- Multi-use cards are always cool
- Headline-driven objectives create interesting choices
- Good head-to-head gameplay
- Plays in about an hour and a half
- Tutorial for digital version (iPad) was terrible
- Bad card draw in digital version led to a bad experience
- Influence and conflict between Russia and the EU/NATO
- Post-Cold War Europe
- Twilight Struggle
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area Control — Players compete for influence cubes in different regions.
- Asymmetric gameplay — One player is Russia, the other is EU/NATO.
- Card Drafting — Players draft cards to add to their hand.
- Influence tracks — Players track their influence in different areas.
- Multi-Use Cards — Each card can be used for multiple different actions.
- variable scoring objectives — Headline cards provide objectives that score victory points.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- we are going through something is probably going to be remembered for a very long time and that's the I guess is a pandemic of the corona virus
- there is a fine line between common sense and hysteria
- why do you need that much TP why do you need two hundred-plus rolls
- I just wish people just used a lot more common sense
- people got to make their own decisions and and people have said you know what we're not gonna take the chance and that is fine fine people regular people recommend
- favorite euro games over the past several years is Great Western trail
- deck building yes we like our deck building games and it's really cool to have this kind of medium to heavy euro with deck building in it
- the theme of it has to do with ships selling around the Caribbean picking it goods selling goods etc
- multi-use card
- the idea was that maybe over the course of 12 or 13 games it's kind of a legacy style game
- combat the ability to do combat on the high sea
- this was the trickier part of the scoring of the game over the course of the game there's three tracks three countries where you can gain influence in
- Asmodee is in the news a lot recently
- Colby Dauch sold his company and it was eventually picked up by Asmodee and now Colby has balked Plath hat back and is now an independent company again
- this whole coronavirus thing we had predicted it in 2020 there was a lot of companies those gonna have to make some hard decisions
References (from this video)
- Thematic focus on the post-Cold War period is interesting to the designer.
- Playable in a quicker amount of time compared to Twilight Struggle.
- Copies are not currently available in distribution in America.
- The learning curve can be steep initially.
- The post-Cold War period.
- Post Cold War
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this is undaunted normally if you have not played this game this is a world war two themed game it is a deck builder and and what's really cool about this it's a deck building game but it has a war game theme because you're moving tokens around the board and everything like that
- the Germans goal in this scenario is different they're trying to actually pin my rifleman and so let me fix my scout there so you have to pin both of my rifleman counters meaning you have to get both riflemen counters off the board and how did all the board yep
- the big help you have in this scenario is this is our introduction to the machine gunner
- with attacking you're attacking a token removing a card suppression you don't actually remove a card so it's not hitting the guy you're just pinning him down so you flip this counter over to show that he suppressed and once a guy is suppressed I have to take an action with the guys to play a card to flip them back over
- this came first this is it had a I think I first pitched the Osprey in 2014 so we it was designed it was actually signed by different publisher who didn't publish it for a couple of years so it was on contract and didn't come out and so during that time the co designer Trevor Benjamin and I were like hey what if we took undaunted and distilled it down to its you know absolute your chorused form and made sort of an abstract game out of it and that's what that's what turned into war chest
- the production is just top-notch on war chest the poker chip right everything and even the insert in the box is so well done because you got those plastic trays they'll hold all your poker chips and everything is it's an amazing box set in itself aside from the game which is really good
- North Africa will be here in July
- Mac says is North Africa standalone and it is you do not need Normandy to play it that's right yep
- then you know Sniper Elite which was it originally had had been scheduled to be on Kickstarter a couple of months ago like many things has been delayed so that'll be probably on Kickstarter this summer at some point so that's the the board game based on the video game Sniper Elite and it's a it's a hidden movement game so one player takes the role of the sniper and everybody else is the defenders
- The problem with that game is it came out right as distributors for not shipping games so there's not any copies in distribution yet in America geesh
- The post Cold War you know period like I you I told you I work for the Department of Defense so I'm what we call a cold war warrior right that's the what I grew up in so that's that's something that is really interesting to me so hopefully people dig it
References (from this video)
- Very fun game
- Relationship between the EU/NATO and Russia
- First 20 years of the 21st century
- Twilight Struggle
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- area influence — The pips are used to show who has domination in these states.
- Dice utilization — This uses a lot of dice, but the dice are not rolled. They're actually the pips are used to show who has domination in these states.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Does the International House of Pancakes answer to the United Nations or is it the other way around?
- This is the great granddaddy of all diplomatic games.
- This Many people have said this is the meanest game ever made. It's certainly up there.
- I've never played a game that forces players to so consistently make the best of bad choices.
- It's the game that keeps on giving.