What's 1989?

1989: Dawn of Freedom is a card-driven game based on the Twilight Struggle system about the Democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989.  The game is designed by Ted Torgerson and Jason Matthews and is available from GMT Games.

Official 1989 Rulebook
1989 FAQ, Clarifications, and Errata

1989 can nicely be summed up as "Twilight Struggle with Battle Cards." The core system is directly modeled after Twilight Struggle: TS players will have very little trouble stepping in and playing right away.

The map is of Eastern Europe, with the spaces set up exactly the same as those in Twilight Struggle: stability numbers and battleground status. In addition to these two attributes, each space is further broken down by type (farmer, worker, student, etc.), which factors in with certain rules and events. Spaces are grouped by country, as they are grouped by region in TS.

The card playing mechanic is identical to Twilight Struggle: you choose whether to play a card as an event or for operations, and the exact same mechanic is used with respect to enemy events triggering when you play one of their cards. There's even the equivalent of the TS Space Race: the Tiananmen Square Track. The method of resolution is slightly different, but it pretty much serves the same purpose, and gives bonuses for advancement much in the way the TS Space Race does.

Influence placement is exactly the same as in TS (although influence is called "support" in 1989) You need to be in or adjacent to a space in order to place influence in it, and it costs 2 Ops to place influence in a space controlled by your opponent.

The coups and realignment rolls of Twilight Struggle are rolled into a single mechanic called a Support Check. It's basically a coup, but the die roll is modified by number of controlled adjacent spaces as are realignment rolls. A card played for Support Checks gives 2 Support Checks as opposed to the single coup allowed by TS.

1989 has scoring cards too: the same TS principles of Presence, Domination, and Control are used to score the country in question. But before the country is scored, there is first something called a Power Struggle, which can both change the position and even result in a toppling from power of the Communists in that country.

The Power Struggle is resolved by a separate deck very much like the Battle Deck in Hannibal. The same match and counterattack mechanism is used: one side has the initiative and plays a card, then the other side must match the suit or lose the battle. If he matches, he can then make a die roll to steal the initiative.

The battle cards have a few twists, though. The cards in each suit are broken down further by rank, with varying strengths from 1-3. The strength of a card influences the counterattack roll. There are Reserve cards which can match any suit just like Hannibal, but they can only be used if you control a space in the country of the type (farmer, worker...) that the card requires.  There are also a few wild cards that provide a few extra twists and layers of strategy.

That's the general overview.  Give the game a try!

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