Europe in Turmoil (EiT) has been out for a couple of months but it hasn’t yet had a written review. I think the game deserves more attention so I will attempt a brief review.
I have only played the game twice so far, so I am only a novice with the game but I can offer some initial impressions.
General description:
EiT is very much based on GMT’s Twilight Struggle (TS) and 1989. That is no bad thing, Twilight Struggle has been a highly regarded game since it was released in 2005, GMT has kept it in print and it is listed as one of their best sellers of all time. So it is a good heritage to base a design on.
The first time designer, <PERSON>, has closely followed the system of those two games for the basic game engine. What he has added is the theme of the game, more than anything for this system that is a question of the cards and their events. For EiT and its predecessors it is the story created by the historical events, as much as the basic play, that really makes the game.
The interesting decision <PERSON> made is in the struggle that he has chosen to represent. You might expect a 2 player game about the lead up to War to represent the players as the Central powers and Entente powers. That angle probably requires a multi-player game where each country seeks to advance it’s own cause through alliances. Instead EiT casts the 2 players as the forces of Authoritarianism vs Liberalism.
So the Authoritarian player represents a range conservative cause across Europe, from the strict monarchism of a ruler like <PERSON> to the religious and cultural conservatism of peasants from France across to Russia. The Liberal player represents ideas such as parliamentary democracy, new artistic expression and the rising power of industrial workers in central and Western Europe.
The point of the game is not to build an alliance of nations to win a coming world war. The point is to win an early version of the culture wars, to shape Europe down one path or the other. The game can end with the calamity of the World War but it doesn’t have to. If the game does end because war breaks out then the outcome of the war will affect each players’ final position. An Entente victory in the war will aid the Liberal cause as a Central Powers’ victory will aid the Authoritarian cause. 993
Think of the war, if it happens, as an extra big event in the game, like any other event it changes the game situation and will benefit one player but it does not simply determine who wins the game.
When I first heard about EiT and its focus I was not sure. The period very much appealed to me but I was not sure about the nature of the struggle it represented. In TS it is not hard to see the struggle as the USA and the USSR vying to be the number one world power. The contest may have been expressed in ideological terms and many of the flashpoints may have been about very local issues but primary driver was two empires in conflict. As a player you can identify who you are.
In EiT each player’s identity is not so specific, you represent a range of causes with some shared ideology but no single or central driver. None the less the struggle was very real. Think of the current era, commentators look at Brexit in the UK, the election of <PERSON> in the US and the rise of Right wing parties in Europe as having common roots in populist politics. No one is implying that there is a single country or group driving these events but the culture struggle is common and events in Europe, the UK and the US do affect each other.
Once I started to play EiT the player role worked for me. Playing the Liberal side I could see myself as representing Silesian coal miners looking for Socialist change, Viennese intelligentsia promoting the art of <PERSON> and the psychology of <PERSON> and Russian democrats trying to modernize their government. Ranged against me were the forces of Chancellor <PERSON>, the ossified <PERSON> dynasty and the Russian Orthodox Church. All disparate forces but playing it as a binary contest works.
For me, EiT succeeds in capturing the flavour of Europe in the decades before the First World War. It was complex world, partly locked in Europe’s past but also sign posting major changes that would drive the coming century and in many ways it disappeared forever with the First World War. Decades ago <PERSON> set out to show this in her book The Proud Tower. EiT takes you back to that world and immerses you in the issues of the day.
Game play
EiT plays very smoothly. Even though it uses a tested engine, a game that has 110 card events can suffer if it they are not well designed and tested. 72