"Now the trumpet summons us again" —John Fitzgerald Kennedy, First Inaugural 1961.
Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa is a two-player, stand-alone, card-driven game that builds on the award-winning Twilight Struggle. The year is 1974, and the Soviet Union and the United States have been locked in a life-or-death struggle across the globe. As so often happened during the Cold War, a relatively obscure region of the world suddenly took center stage. Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, a bedrock U.S. ally in Africa, had grown old and increasingly dictatorial. In 1974, a group of young Marxist officers staged a coup and took hold of the the reins of power. This revolutionary leadership sparked a chain of events that upset the regional balance of power and unleashed all the familiar elements of Cold War competition in the Horn of Africa.
Twilight Struggle: Red Sea asks players to once more answer the summons of the trumpets and bear the burden of a twilight struggle, this time centered around East Africa, the Arabian Gulf, and the vital sea lanes stretching between them. Twilight Struggle: Red Sea is an addition to GMT's Lunchtime Series and packs deep decision-making into a time frame that allows players to get in a quick game or explore different strategies several times in one session. With a more limited scope and much shorter playtime, Twilight Struggle: Red Sea is the perfect way to introduce new players to the Twilight Struggle system. And yet, this game maintains all the tension, decision making, and theme of the original classic.
As an added bonus for a longer game, cards from Twilight Struggle can be integrated in TS: Red Sea and players can add new decisions and Cold War events to their games of Twilight Struggle by incorporating cards from TS: Red Sea.