There are only three scoring cards in the Early War and all appeared this turn, which means it’s likely none will turn up until Turn 3 and the deck is re-shuffled. So Turn 2 will be a mess. Turn 1 was a special kind of mess, since we both tried to get points very early.

I didn’t have the best hand. Holding two scoring cards meant that I could choose to dictate the pace early, especially in Asia, but that was two cards that I didn’t get to play to help me. Instead of improving my position in the Middle East and Europe, I had to waste two cards tallying up points, including getting slaughtered in Europe.

But it wasn’t the worst hand, either. I used the China card to set myself up for the Asian scoring round and forced the Yanks to burn a high point card on a coup in Pakistan. I made sure to play the scoring card before the Japanese defense treaty came into play.

The MilOps points at the end could come back to haunt me. I could have launched a coup, and those are limited by DefCon status (every step at 4 and above takes a region out of play) but I could have made a run at the MidEast. But having to spend one more play on scoring cards than my opponent meant that my moves were pretty limited.

One option would have been to just burn off the cards early when the point difference would have been fairly small, especially in Europe. At the start, things are really tight and I wouldn’t have run the risk of Truman and Marshall screwing me over.

The Blockade card led me down the garden path. There’s always a chance that he doesn’t have a 3 point card, meaning that West Germany is back in play. The more likely scenario is that he just tosses out one of my events (which he did) but in any case that was 3 points of Influence he didn’t get to spend.

And I can’t lose sight of the fact that Europe is where it’s all at. If you can control all the European battleground states, the game is over. And there are some nasty cards that will certainly weaken my hold on Poland or the rest of the Eastern bloc. Asia is a sweet plum, but losing Pakistan means I need to take a long walk to India or Thailand, the only big states still in play.

Options?

(Check out what happened in Turn Two.)