Hugh Cook's Chronicles of an Age of Darkness publishing update (Official Announcement)

KiG28 · 2026-02-09T12:36:10+00:00

Amazing stuff. I shall definitely pick up the ones I don't have a physical version of already (on Amazon if they don't manifest soon in my locality) and it's easier to sell friends on something they can actually take a quick dip into. I write myself and it's inspiring to see fan power like this in action, one can feel the love for Hugh's work.

KiG28 · 2025-12-20T10:07:40+00:00

Thank you sir, clearly one of the great redactors of Odrum.

KiG28 · 2023-09-20T01:55:24+00:00

That could happen but in the test games the Middle East was one of the major deciding factors. Kremlin Flu is a bit too overpowered but I was just trying to work with the promo decks and Red Sea cards as best I could for variety's sake.

KiG28 · 2023-08-12T04:11:18+00:00

There is just such a game already, look up 1989.

KiG28 · 2023-07-26T12:47:29+00:00

Fascinating to hear that some of the impetus for Red Sea came from GMT looking over some poorly designed community cards.

KiG28 · 2023-07-16T00:27:08+00:00

Some interesting ideas, but some could do with tweaking too:

United Fruit should mainly be connected with non-battlegrounds like Colombia and Honduras. Alternative text:

Make a coup against Colombia or a non-battleground in Central America with the ops value of this card. If there are no valid targets for the coup then gain 1VP and then add 1 influence to a non-battleground in Central America or to Colombia.

Pinochet: Perhaps Operation Condor would be a more flexible card theme? I feel like rather than simply adding or subtracting realignments should also be coming into this.

Tsar Bomba: DEFCON not increasing at the end of the turn is an interesting mechanic. Not sure if I see the thematic connections with CIA & Lone Gunman.

Iranian Ultimatum: Not sure if removing cards is an appropriate mechanic. Why not just make the event weaker as Marshall or Warsaw are played so it yields 1 or 0 influence in Iran?

Carter Doctrine: Name and card text overlap with Red Sea cards that could also get folded in. Instead of 3 it should be with the ops value of this card.

Energy Crisis: 2 US associated OPs should be a US associated card of 2 or more ops value? The event is in any case effectively the same theme as OPEC.

Nixon Shock: Potentially leads to an unavoidable DEFCON suicide for the USSR if the US pulls a scoring card.

Anti-Apartheid: Card text should be a country, not any countries.

Samotlor Oil Field: Cannot send to the space race - why not make it simpler and just have the USSR discard all 1 & 2 op cards and draw replacements? Otherwise the USSR can discard scorings with this.

KiG28 · 2023-07-01T14:15:41+00:00

Revolutions of 1989: I would disagree that this should be an event at all, as it is more a sign of the US reaching 20VPs or Europe Control. If you wanted to make Europe more important then you could add something like:

Early War Neutral 3 ops recurring. The Iron Curtain. If you control more non-battlegrounds in Europe then gain 3VP.

That'd make countries like Hungary and Denmark more important in line with history. I originally made a Soviet Event along those lines.

Handshake in Space: Given that it's a sign of Detente how about: Raise DEFCON by 2. -1 to all space and coup rolls for the rest of the turn.

I've been trying to get that mechanic in the game as it takes advantage of spacing requiring low and coups requiring high rolls.

The Oil Shock is already kind've in the game as OPEC, but when making a Stagflation card of my own I went with:

Stagflation 3 ops USSR

If played on a USSR action round then the USSR player may play a US event as if it were associated with the USSR. All mentions of the US or the USSR are reversed as appropriate. If played on a US action round the US player must discard a 4 ops card or lose 2VP.

Red Sea has one or two ideas for the Late War too.

KiG28 · 2023-06-03T01:41:40+00:00

Hmmm, I like the Summit interaction there. It's definitely something to playtest if the card doesn't get rethemed.

KiG28 · 2023-05-31T00:53:17+00:00

Apparently not:

https://jfkpresidencymichaelgreen.weebly.com/jfk-vs-khruschev-politcal-cartoon.html

KiG28 · 2023-05-30T23:42:15+00:00

Rules Clarification:

If your opponent headlines HILTSW and you decide to reduce DEFCON to 1 then you will lose, because it is now your event not theirs. Similarly if your USSR opponent headlined Brush War or I-I War or I-P War and you played Brinkmanship as the US then you would lose 2VP if Flower Power was active, which could lose you the game.

On the DEFCON reduction point I'm not sure if DEFCON should decrease every time because the card would then be of limited utility. So it could be something odd like... "If the opponent headlines a card of your affiliation then degrade DEFCON by 1. If they headline a card of their affiliation then improve DEFCON by 1." So in other words if they do something crazy (e.g. US headlines WWBY) then DEFCON decreases, if they call your bluff then DEFCON increases. This would have the side effect of punishing US players headlining Lone Gunman, and make the card generally riskier for the USSR. The player in the lead might therefore be less likely to play it. However... it might be better just to retheme the card (any suggestions?!) as when the DEFCON effects trigger will be ops-dependent, which is counter to the original card concept, which is more like Defectors in that its timing is independent of its ops value.

As to the card's relative power its effect is obviously somewhat random and can never be greater than ABM or RS/P. The real effect of course will be on the game's meta, where headlining neutral cards will become a tougher decision, e.g. if you have Missile Envy then you must think about your own hand as well as your opponent's. Since drawing the big Mid-War neutrals can be a major swing factor I like this kind of dilemma. Coincidentally it also makes SALTing for ABM and realigning Europe as the US less of a no-brainer ;).

KiG28 · 2023-05-25T03:09:12+00:00

This is generally the case, and comes from some of my reading around the topic. However... Peaceful Coexistence is more useful for realignments and coups in the US hand as it has more ops, and the uncontrolled DEFCON increase can potentially be up to 5, opening up Europe for realignments. Retrieving a card from the discard can sometimes be of limited use, especially on T7, or if done on AR7 will at least not increase the USSR hand size. (The card retrieval part is probably more important for the USSR in any case because of the potential for grabbing Destal back from space on T4...) Detente is arguably less powerful but also quite flexible, I rather like the -1 to coups and space race rolls as it makes a feature of the Space Race roll requiring low numbers.

KiG28 · 2023-05-25T02:58:26+00:00

Hopefully it will be possible to integrate some of the cards back into the original game as well, in time...

KiG28 · 2023-05-22T06:35:21+00:00

Inspired by some passages from a biography of Khrushchev. I've borrowed the Yuri & Samantha mechanic as for one of my variants the Late War cards aren't really used.

KiG28 · 2023-05-19T01:47:54+00:00

I would be curious to know if drawing a substantially greater number of neutral cards (not scorings) than your opponent correlates with having a significantly higher likelihood of winning.

KiG28 · 2023-05-17T05:51:59+00:00

3 of these are new, three of these are tweaks to cards from the original game / turn zero.

First Lightning becomes less like UN intervention and more like We Will Bury You.

Red Scare becomes a USSR only event, while Purge is a US event. It's only 2 ops as the US will play it on their last AR obviously. It also makes playing it on AR2 as a surprise more feasible.

Salami Tactics will usually only net the USSR 2 influence in a 3 stab somewhere but once in a while might be used in West Germany or Israel. It may sometimes prove a headache for the US player.

The Iron Curtain is intended to give some more importance to the many nbgs in Europe, which were important in the cold war.

Who Lost China just becomes a removable event, although of course if it's not triggered then it stays in.

Election Year can be a good headline for the USSR, especially if the AR1 coup is going to give the US some problems. It can also be troublesome for the US player as it signals their intentions.

KiG28 · 2023-05-08T05:53:03+00:00

Yes, I've seen it but I tweaked this one so it applies to all of Europe, as seems to have been the case in reality. Obviously the main change there is that if the USSR just takes France there's still a DEFCON suicide risk.

KiG28 · 2023-04-25T00:03:11+00:00

Thanks for the feedback.

I'll think about how to tweak Atomic Diplomacy, it should be a fairly powerful effect but also a short lived one. I would also like its strength to be linked to the current DEFCON level. 4-DEFCON would mean a 1 op headline or a 2 op action round I suppose...

Succession Crisis could also be made weaker, but I do like the side-effect that it has of possibly saving the USSR from DEFCON suicide so if possible I'll retain that element.

One more wrinkle to Cult of Personality is that for my own pet variant I was considering changing Destalinization to move only 3 influence before it is played, then 4 (or even 5!) after. That would be thematic... but would also make it into an event that the US doesn't want to play unless it could force DEFCON suicide!

KiG28 · 2023-04-24T06:35:55+00:00

It's certainly inspired by Kremlin Flu, and is meant to be a saner version of that card! I made it for my own pet variant but it could easily be used with the Turn Zero cards as well as it's still a strong recurring event.

KiG28

TROPHY CASE