Twilight Struggle

by Twiface

Setup: How the Heck do we Play This?

Author's Note:

This whole thing was a writing experiment for me, to see if I could make a feasible story out of playing a board game. I'm happy with the result, but I'm well aware that it's far from perfect.

This first chapter is more of an introduction, which explains the basic rules of the board game 'Twilight Struggle,' a game about the Cold War which will be the focus of the story. It's a little boring, but still a worthwhile read, even if you already know the rules. I've also made a few changes, the most notable of which is adding another 'China Card' in place of Russia.

Challenge yourself and see if you can trudge through it. Victory for Twilight and Spike isn't certain, but absurd antics are. This took about a week to write, and I sure hope it's worth reading.

P.S: The map that they're using is a [heavily] modified version of this one where, among other things, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast have been merged into a totalitarian communist superpower shithole, Russia and China are now battleground countries, and all of the leaders' faces were replaced with pictures of ponies. I designed the map myself, but FimFiction won't let me upload it as the cover photo, probably because it's too big.
Original Map
Ponified Version

--Setup: How the Heck do we Play This?--

“Liberty Prime is Online! All systems Nominal!”

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria…

…there came an era when the ideals of friendship gave way to greed, selfishness, paranoia, and a jealous reaping of dwindling space and natural resources. Then Discord was defeated and everything turned back to normal. Then there came another era in which the ideals of friendship gave way to greed, selfishness, paranoia, and a jealous reaping of dwindling space and natural resources. But this time Discord wasn’t responsible, and it lasted much, much, much longer than the Discord era, and it pretty much couldn’t be stopped. Lands took up arms against their neighbors, (heh, heh, ‘neigh’ bors. Ahhh, too much…) the end of the world occurred much as we had predicted, abyss of balefire and dark magic, blah, blah, blah, 99.99% of the ponies died, in vault 101 stable 2 nopony ever enters and nopony ever leaves, the republic and the legion kill each other over a stupid water chip, Littlepip ate a kebab of Iguana bits, you get the point.

…But all was not lost. At least, not yet. For, although negotiations between the two powers broke down quickly in universe 4.1-S02-P, the ponies and zebras in alternate universe 4.3-S04-P were far more cautious and went to greater lengths to avoid war altogether. They were also more calculating and had gone ahead and developed ‘megaspell’ MLP nukes twenty years earlier than their 4.1-S02-P counterparts. Our story begins when tensions were high between the two nations, but they were not yet trying to squeeze the piss out of each other on the (conventional) battlefield.

“Yo, Twilight!” said Princess Celestia as she barged into Twilight Sparkle’s brand-spankin’-new season 4 alicorn friendship princess castle in Ponyville one bright and sunny pre-war morning.

“Aaagghhh!” screamed Twilight in semi-frustration but mostly surprise the way ponies do when they get snuck up on.

“P-P-Princess Celestia?” Twilight stammered. “I didn’t know you were coming here to Ponyville.”

“Well, I’m here now” said Princess Celestia. “I didn’t tell you because I wanted it to be a surprise!”

“Well….I don’t really like surprises,” said Twilight. “I like things nice and orderly.”

“And that’s why you’ll like this new job so much!” said Princess Celestia. “Because it’ll pretty much involve you doing the same things over and over again for the next ten years.”

“Ten years?” asked Twilight incredulously. “Is this job going to take up a lot of my time? Because, well, I hate to complain, but between all of my studying and my friendship princess stuff, I don’t have much time for anything else.”

“Oh, it will take all of your time,” said Princess Celestia. “All of it. Don’t worry, though. It will go by quickly. And besides, now that you’re an alicorn princess, you’ll have all the time in the world since you’re virtually immortal.”

“Alright,” said Twilight. “So… what’s this job you want me to do?”

“Well,” began Princess Celestia, “You know how tensions are heating up between Equestria and the big, bad Zebra Empire?”

“Yeah…” said Twilight.

“I’ve been thinking,” continued Princess Celestia, “That, in order to better steer Equestria through this crisis, that Princess Luna should reorganize the government.”

“What?” exclaimed Twilight, shocked. “You mean… you want Princess Luna to take power and then create six new ministries, five of which become the tools used to mold Equestria into a fascist dictatorship and living hell???”

“Nah,” said Princess Celestia with a downward flick of her hoof. “I’m not going that far. All I’m doing is making a few minor reorganizational changes and forming a new Ministry of Homeland Security, granting more power to the already nearly omnipotent monarchy, and turning our budgetary surplus into a deficit. You know, George Bush stuff.”

“Ahhh,” said Twilight in agreement. “I get it. So… what’s this got to do with me?”

“I need somepony to handle all of the diplomacy stuff for me,” said Princess Celestia. “And since you’re the Princess of Friendship, I figured it’s within your job description. I don’t know how I survived for a thousand years without appointing a foreign minister, but what the hey. You’re stuck with it now.”

“So do I have to do what Hillary Clinton did?” asked Twilight.

“Yes. You’re now Equestria’s version of Hillary Clinton,” said Princess Celestia. “Or John Kerry. Or Condoleezza Rice, or Colin Powell, or Madeleine Albright, or whoever you want to be. It might help though if you tried to act like Henry Kissinger or Dean Rusk…. And by the way, please don’t pull a William Seward. We don’t need any more land.”

“Alright!” cried Twilight with delight. “I’m ready! First of all, do we have any diplomatic compounds in dangerous places that I can inadequately defend? And are there any other mares that Flash Sentry can cheat on while I’m away?”

“You’ll have to figure that out for yourself,” said Princess Celestia. “I’m sure you’ll do fine. In the meantime, while you’re hauled up in this castle trying to manage all of Equestria’s world affairs on your own, I’m going to abdicate my crown and go on an extended vacation until all this blows over. Have fun!”

Then Princess Celestia began trotting towards the door.

“Wait!!!” cried Twilight. “But how am I supposed to manage all of Equestria’s foreign relations from right here? And on my own? That’s impossible!”

Princess Celestia stopped mid-trot and came back over to Twilight.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” said Princess Celestia.

Princess Celestia did some magic and suddenly a map of the world appeared on Twilight’s table. The map contained most of the important countries in the world, as well as trackers for all the important metrics that she would need to keep track of in the race against communism zebra-ism. Appearing next to it were three decks of cards, and two piles of small cardboard squares.

“This high-tech management software will allow you to manage world events from the comfort of your own home,” said Princess Celestia. “I’ll leave the help notifications on since it’s your first time. I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got to go now. Bye!”

And with that she was gone. She might have ran out, or maybe she teleported, but as the great Kkat once said, ‘the details were pointless.’ All that mattered now was that Princess Celestia was gone and Twilight had to balance the fate of the world all by herself. She peered over the board, trying to make sense of it, but was overwhelmed by its infinitely complex nature.

“Oh, no!” said Twilight. “I can’t seem to make heads or tails of this map! I wish one of my friends was here to help me!”

Suddenly, Spike’s head appeared in the upper right hoof corner of Twilight’s vision, as if he was some sort of tutorial in a strategy game.
“Spike?” asked Twilight. “What are you doing here?”

“You said you needed help,” said Spike. “And that’s what I’m here for!”

“But I said I wanted help from one of my friends!” whined Twilight.

Spike glared at her.

“Are you saying that I’m not one of your friends?” asked Spike.

“No, I’m not saying that…” said Twilight, “but I was thinking somepony like Pinkie, or Rarity, or—“

“I’m the new Rainbow Dash,” interrupted Spike, “In case you forgot.”

“Ok,” said Twilight. “Rainbow Dash will do. Speaking of Rainbow Dash, where is she?”

“I don’t know,” said Spike. “But that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to help you understand this game.”

“Ok,” said Twilight. “Walk me through it.”

“The first thing we’ve got here is the map,” began Spike. “Which shows all the countries in the world. These countries are divided into six continents, two of which are further divided into sub-continents. The six continents are as follows:”

“Primus is a continent east of Equestria, on the other side of the ocean,” continued Spike. “It’s full of old buildings and rich snobby ponies, like Canterlot, but bigger. It’s the most important region in the game because it’s the richest, and if you lose the region, then you lose the game. Also, Primus is divided into two sub-regions, East and West. Besides the West being richer and more important than the East, some events will only affect one of these sub-regions. Everything making sense so far?”

“Yeah,” said Twilight. “Keep going.”

“Ok,” said Spike. “Anyway, the second most important continent is Kadur, on the far eastern end of the map. It’s kind of poor, but it’s important because there are a lot of people there. There is one sub-region, Southeast Kadur, which is affected by certain events and scored differently.”

“Before we move on, there is something you should be aware of in Primus and Kadur,” said Spike. “In Eastern Primus and non-Southeast Kadur, there are two large countries, the Changeling Kingdom and The Three Kingdoms. Both of these countries are called ‘Card Countries’ because there they both have cards associated with them that make it easier to do stuff in their respective regions. These are very important battleground regions, so you should try to keep influence over at least one of them.”

“Ok,” said Twilight. “I’ll make a mental note of that. Continue.”

“Next, near the center of the map, we have Centralia,” continued Spike. “Centralia is a poor and deserty place with lots of explosions, but it’s important because it has oil. Next comes Emerelda, which is really poor and full of mosquitoes and stuff. That’s where the zebras live, so they have a lot of power there (which is probably the reason why they’re so poor), but there are also a lot of other countries that could easily be turned against them. West of Emerelda is Prekt, which is jungly and poor, and generally a place that nopony really cares about. The last continent is Solace, just to the north of Prekt and immediately south of Equestria. It’s also poor and jungly, but it’s kind of important to you because it’s so close to Equestria. Don’t let the Zebras take control of it, or else Equestria will be in some really big trouble.”

“Most of what you’ll be doing for the next ten years is fighting over control of the world’s countries,” said Spike. “You won’t be invading them directly because this is a cold war, but you can bribe their leaders and launch coups against governments you don’t like. What you’re essentially is trying to gain enough influence so you can easily manipulate each country into doing what you want, or in a nutshell, making friends.”

“Great!” said Twilight. “I’m great at making friends! Through both kindness and coercion!”

“That’s the spirit!” said Spike. “But keep in mind that the zebras are also trying to do the same. It’s kind of like Equestria Girls all over again, except that this time Sunset Shimmer doesn't have such incompetent assistants. And that we’re dealing with people’s lives here, and not just some stupid homecoming dance.”

“It wasn't just an ordinary homecoming!” protested Twilight. “She took my crown!”

“And the zebras will incinerate it if you fail,” said Spike. “Pay attention. We still have stuff to cover. Now then, where was I? Oh, yeah! So, the game works by playing cards. At the beginning of each turn, you will be dealt some cards, and then you will be dealt your cards, and then you will have to play one of them at the same time as your opponent. Then you and the zebras will take turns playing cards. Cards may be played in one of two ways: as events, or as operations points. If played as events, the event on the card is carried out. If played as operations points, you will have the number of points in the upper left hoof corner of the card to ‘make friends’ with. Note that the events on most cards are associated with either Equestria or Zebrica. If you play a card with an event associated with Zebrica for operations points, the event still occurs.”

“At the end of each turn, the amount of ‘Friendship’ operations you carry out will be compared to the current DEFCON number. If you fail to carry out the required ‘Friendship’ operations, you will be docked one victory point per operation. The player with the most victory points at the end wins.”

“What’s this ‘Space Race’ track for?” asked Twilight, eyeing the Space Race track in the upper right-hoof corner of the board.
“Ah, yes, the Space Race track,” said Spike. “The space race track is another competition in which you and the zebras will be playing against. Doing better in the space race can give you bonuses that can help you in the Twilight Struggle. To advance in the space race, you must spend Operations points and roll a die to see if your endeavor is successful.”

“Gotcha,” said Twilight, comprehendingly.

“And one last thing,” said Spike. “The most important thing on the gameboard is the DEFCON status. The DEFCON status tells us how close we are to getting in an MLP equivalent of a global thermonuclear war. It starts at ‘5,’ but can be changed by the actions of ourselves and our zebra counterparts. If it gets all the way down to ‘1,’ then all of us will be dead. So don’t let it do that, ok?”
“Ok!” said Twilight. “Now can we start?”

“Why, of course,” said Spike. “Draw eight cards from the deck.”

Twilight drew eight cards from the deck.

“Now you need to place your influence markers,” said Spike. “These represent the countries you already have good relations with. Most of these will be pre-determined, but you have seven points you can spend freely in any country in Western Primus. Be careful, though. The friends you choose today might change the lives of millions tomorrow.”

“Okay, okay,” said Twilight dismissively. “Just let me place my influence markers now.”

“Ok,” said Spike, “Go ahead.”

“Hmmm…” said Twilight as she glanced over the map.

Her eyes were set upon the Lost Unicorn Kingdom, which was split between east and west.

“The zebras already have two influence points there, so I think I’ll place two points to match them.”

“Five points left,” informed Spike.

“Ok,” said Twilight. “It’s just hard because there are so many countries.”

“The names with a blue background are battleground countries,” hinted Spike. “They’re more important for scoring.”

“Ok,” said Twilight. “There are four battleground countries in Western Primus, and I have five points left. I think I’ll place two points in North Griffonia and one in Prance. The Zebras’ three points in Reiterland concern me, so I think I’ll place my last remaining two points there.”

“You now have control over North Griffonia,” announced Spike. “The Zebras control Reiterland in Primus and North Chollima in Kadur.”

“How do I know when I control a country?” asked Twilight.

“You control a country if you have influence points equal to the stability number – the number next to the country’s name—and more points in the country than your opponent.”

“You could have told me that earlier,” said Twilight.

“You didn’t ask,” said Spike.

“Well…” said Twilight, “Is that it? Am I all set up? And is there anything else I need to know before my first turn?”

“Nope,” said Spike. “You are now ready to begin turn one.”