I tapped Jane Fonda, my opponent tapped mother Theresa. To each their own…

KGB v CIA Is a fairly simple two player game where opponents duke it out for world dominace (what else is there?) in the cold war era.

The game comes in a small box and consists of a stack of

BOOM!

Objective cards (worth points)

BOOM!
Groups (various groups you deploy to exert influence on the objective and hopefully claim it all with abilities and variable influence points)

BOOM!
Agents (your operatives who have special abilities)

The game is split into rounds where an objective is revealed showing a place and how many groups can operate in that theater along with the “ah now stop lads you’re taking the piss” level of influence that can be exerted before the region rebels and hands the win to the other player. Often a region will have a global affect as well that affects the round so every time you play its nicely different.

each player picks an agent to do their dirty work for that round and you take it in turn to draw and place groups from a face down stack up to the max that can be shoehorned into that objective. It’s awfully like blackjack where you want to get close to the max level of influence for that region but not go bust. Go bust and your opponent wins. Unlike black jack however you have a lot more control of the cards once picked and it’s quite possible to recover from a losing position

The cards you play in addition to exerting influence each have a special once off tap ability like remove or steal an enemy card. Tap any card and so on

It’s quite the little plate spinning exercise trying not to bust, keeping under the pop limit, trying to mess up your opponents play and planning which agent to employ in the next round not to mention drinking coffee and sledging your opponent “PAH! Call THAT an army I’ll show YOU an army”

Each round of the game yields roughly 5 – 15 points and first to 100 wins it.

You won’t go through the whole deck in a given game and I’m always a fan of this sort of thing when it comes to replays

I like this game. It clever it’s snappy and as two players games go it’s one of the better ones. Now it’s not twilight struggle it’s not even twilight lite it’s a different animal altogether and to a certain extent the setting has been tacked on. It is a solid game . It’s very tasty. Earning points is s struggle and anyone can be a winner in any given round. In fact losing a round convincingly is a valid tactic too when assassins are used.

For what you get its a great value game. Shop around and you’ll pick it up for a tenner

If you’re looking for a good two player game that will play out in under an hour has pictures of both mother Teresa AND Jane Fonda this is definitely the one to go for

Huzzah!

Vic