--- product_id: 4224172 title: "Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition" brand: "gmt games" price: "AED 413" currency: AED in_stock: true reviews_count: 8 category: "Gmt Games" url: https://www.desertcart.ae/products/4224172-twilight-struggle-deluxe-edition store_origin: AE region: United Arab Emirates --- # 45-year Cold War timeline Global influence map 2-player strategic duel Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition **Brand:** gmt games **Price:** AED 413 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Summary > ♟️ Command the Cold War. Outsmart history. Own the board. ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition by gmt games - **How much does it cost?** AED 413 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.ae](https://www.desertcart.ae/products/4224172-twilight-struggle-deluxe-edition) ## Best For - gmt games enthusiasts ## Why This Product - Trusted gmt games brand quality - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - • **Fast-paced yet deep gameplay:** Experience a low-complexity game that still delivers over 3 hours of gripping play. - • **Dynamic historical simulation:** Play through Early, Mid, and Late War phases with evolving event cards that force real historical compromises. - • **Perfect for intense 2-player battles:** Engage in a cerebral duel that tests your strategic wit and nerve. - • **Relive the Cold War's high-stakes drama:** Immerse yourself in 45 years of geopolitical tension and strategy. - • **Master the art of influence and compromise:** Balance power, risk nuclear war, and outmaneuver your opponent in a game where every move counts. ## Overview Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition is a critically acclaimed two-player board game simulating the 45-year Cold War conflict between the USA and USSR. Designed for ages 14+, it features a global map where players use event cards and strategic moves to spread influence, conduct coups, and advance the Space Race. With a playing time of over 3 hours, this deluxe edition offers a rich historical experience blending fast-paced gameplay with deep strategic complexity, making it a must-have for history buffs and strategy enthusiasts alike. ## Description Product Description This Deluxe Edition of Twilight Struggle seeks to capture the feeling of that earlier era. Twilight Struggle is a two-player game simulating the forty-five year dance of intrigue, prestige, and occasional flares of warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States. Twilight Struggle recreates the conflict between the most powerful nation states the world has ever known. The scope of the game covers the entire world as it was found in 1945. Players move units and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for their superpower. From the Manufacturer Twilight Struggle is a two-player game simulating the forty-five year dance of intrigue, prestige, and occasional flares of warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States. Review: Excellent Game: Win by Compromise - This is one of my favorite board games. It gets you involved, it gets you stressed, it gets you jubilant at things that go well, and crushed when the situation is bleak. In other words, it's the Cold War, all over again, on a board! Besides that, this game will mention neat things about history, and the strategy will get you thinking. This isn't a "win by the rules" game. It isn't a "win by the people" game. It's a "win by compromise" game. This truly is an excellent game. However, it is involved to learn the first time, so if you're playing for the first time you should be determined to put in the effort. It's best to learn with an experienced player who goes a bit easier on you to teach you, or, if you know how to play (or can put a solid hour in to read the rules), pull a friend in and go easy to get them hooked into learning it! The goal is simple. Score 20 points. Or, score the most points by the end. And whatever you do, don't start nuclear war. The actual method of doing that is more complex. You have a deck of cards. Cards are essentially of 4 types. Soviet events, US events, Neutral events, and Scoring. Scoring cards when you play them let you score a region (and they must be played during the turn). Apart from that other cards can be played one of two ways: for the event, or for the points. Here is where the most clever mechanic of the game comes in. I'm the US player. I have a Soviet event card in my hand. Hey, I'll just play it for points instead of the event! Except that when you do this, the event happens anyways. The game literally forces history to happen as you play. The events are split into three decks - early, mid, and late war (and each is shuffled in throughout the game). But that's also where the genius of the game lies, and the stress of the game. You have to compromise. You have to do things which benefit your enemy. And yet, you still have to find a way to mitigate, and hopefully come out on top, even as you play the event that brings your enemy to the brink of victory. Have I played turns where the US player had entirely Soviet events, and the Soviet player had entirely US events? Yes, yes I have. Those are the most interesting rounds, and the most entertaining. The other dilemma: what if you need the operations points (and it's the max amount), but the event is yours and also really good? The game is a game of compromises, and balancing. Think - if people played this, and were used to a give-and-take with their opponents, compromising and yet still achieving, how would discourse look between people? How would politics look? If only we realized, as you must in this game, that the ideal and the perfect are out of reach and aiming for them ends only in disappointment. Instead, we must work together and do our best. And this game - despite you and your opponent being enemies in the Cold War, teaches you to work together even which fighting each other. Again, it takes some time to learn. But every person that I've taught the game (you don't need to read the rule book to learn the game if you play with someone who knows it already) has enjoyed it and become hooked, even if they weren't previously incredibly interested in detailed or complicated strategy games. By mid-war, they're giving me a run for my money (or countries!). Incredible game. Recommend 10/10. Review: Twilight Struggle doesn't struggle to bring the past to life - One-Line Review: Twilight Struggle is the game Risk wishes it could be as it cries itself to sleep at night. Welcome back everyone! This week, we're headed back to 1945 to kick off a game of Twilight Struggle; my absolute favorite game. Ideologies will clash, dictators will rise and fall, man will step foot on the moon, and one superpower will emerge victorious!It's been a long road, but World War II has finally ended. Humanity breathes a little easier as the world's nations begin to pick up the pieces, but the respite doesn't last very long. As the dust settles, two superpowers emerge from the wreckage poised at the start of a new age; a nuclear age. Armed with the power of the Atom, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics hold the fate of the world in their hands. It may come as no surprise to you that I'm a huge history nerd. The Cold War is a really interesting topic to study because the Superpowers weren't fighting for land or resources, but for influence; they were fighting for the hearts and mind of the people. Shadow wars, spies, dictators and coups litter the timeline of the Cold War, but the thing that's always really stood out most to me is the fear. For the first time, the threat of global thermonuclear war was hanging over everyone's head. People built bomb shelters under their homes, children grew up learning to duck and cover, and most telling of all, there was a Doomsday Clock. Every new piece of foreign policy, every troop movement, every new technological advance, every day had the potential to move us closer to complete and utter destruction. I didn't live through the Cold War, but I can tell just from reading about it that it was terrifying. Twilight Struggle brings this feeling to your tabletop. Playing Twilight Struggle, you feel like you're balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff with no easy way to back down. You feel the stress of what it's like to lead a nation during a time when everything you do can be viewed as an act of war. It is in creating this feeling that Twilight Struggle completely succeeds. Twilight Struggle is a game of influence and ideology. There's no fighting and no conquering; not directly, anyway. Each player tries to spread their influence among world nations, scoring points when their influence in a region outweighs their opponent's. Each game of Twilight Struggle begins with the setup phase. The US and the USSR each start the game with some influence spread across the globe. Each player also receives some influence they get to place where they think it will benefit them the most based on their starting hand (in Western Europe for the USA and Eastern Europe for the Soviets). In this, Twilight Struggle resembles the many aggressive and defensive setups seen in Chess. There's a whole slew of articles over at BoardGameGeek that simply cover the merits (or lack thereof) of each setup. Each player maintains a hand of Event Cards that get replenished each turn. These ards are separated into three decks (Early War, Mid-War, and Late War) that are added to the game as play continues to simulate the passage of time. On each Event Card is printed an event and an Operations Value. On a player's turn, they may play a card for its event (removing it from the game if it's a one-time event like Castro taking power in Cuba) or for its Operations Value. Events usually have an effect that occurs immediately like the USSR gaining influence in Cuba or the USA advancing in the Space Race. Operations Values, however, allow players to gain influence in three ways: (1) Players can add influence to any country they already influence or adjacent to a country they influence, up to the Operations Value, (2) Players can attempt a Coup in any country in the world to remove opponent's influence and potentially add their own, and (3) Players can attempt a Realignment in order to weaken their opponent's influence over a country. Players can also discard cards from their hand to try to advance in the Space Race. The Space Race provides advantages to the player that's ahead, but also functions as the game's discard mechanic. There's more to the rules, of course, but those are the basics. Twilight Struggle really is a brilliant game. Each of its mechanics adds something great to the experience but I think that the best thing about TS is the tension that it creates. For both players, there are fires all over the world that need to be put out, and many problems are calling for your attention at once, but you only have so many turns to solve them. The USSR player might agonize over whether to commit more influence to Europe before the region is scored or to focus on the Middle East instead where the US is threatening to cut off access to Asia. The US player meanwhile fears the Soviet incursion into Latin America but is conflicted over whether to protect his interests in Asia or South America. You'll find yourself feeling like the President and the director of the CIA all rolled into one as you attempt to coup an opponent's regime or build up influence in Africa so your opponent doesn't expect your sweeping realignment of Europe on your next turn. I'm not sure that I've done justice to Twilight Struggle in this review, but I find that I can't recommend this game enough. If you're a history buff or a fan of strategy games, Twilight Struggle is a must but I encourage everyone to give it a try if you get a chance. Twilight Struggle is game for two players that takes between one and three hours to finish. It's sitting pretty in the #1 Board Game spot as ranked by players over at BoardGameGeek. ## Features - Deluxe Edition - Relive the cold war and change history - Quick-playing, low-complexity - 2 players - Ages 14+ - 2-player game - Great strategy game - Playing time is over 3 hours - Historical simulation game ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | ASIN | B0060L6EE4 | | Age Range Description | Teen | | Are Batteries Required | No | | Best Sellers Rank | #190,551 in Toys & Games ( See Top 100 in Toys & Games ) #4,742 in Board Games (Toys & Games) | | Brand Name | GMT Games | | CPSIA Cautionary Statement | Choking Hazard - Small Parts, No Warning Applicable | | Color | Multicolor | | Customer Package Type | Standard Packaging | | Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 559 Reviews | | Edition | Deluxe Edition | | Educational Objective | Historical understanding, strategic thinking, critical decision-making | | Estimated Playing Time | 180 Minutes | | Genre | Wargame | | Global Trade Identification Number | 00817054010691 | | Included Components | 2-player game | | Is Assembly Required | No | | Item Dimensions | 12 x 9.13 x 2.13 inches | | Item Dimensions L x W | 9.13"L x 2.25"W | | Item Part Number | GMT0510 | | Item Type Name | Game | | Item Weight | 1.6 Kilograms | | Language | English | | Manufacturer | Flat River Group | | Manufacturer Maximum Age (MONTHS) | 180.0 | | Manufacturer Minimum Age (MONTHS) | 156.0 | | Manufacturer Part Number | GMT0510 | | Manufacturer Warranty Description | No Warranty | | Material Type | Cardstock | | Minimum Age Recomendation | 14 | | Model Number | 0510-14 | | Number of Items | 1 | | Number of Players | 2 | | Operation Mode | manual | | Set Name | Deluxe Edition | | Size | One Size | | Sub Brand | Twilight | | Supported Battery Types | No batteries required | | Theme | war Game | | UPC | 817054010271 817054010691 667562010238 793631312542 767485406269 777904570099 823010000002 | | Unit Count | 1.0 Count | ## Images ![Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51lV+P3q6eL.jpg) ![Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51GQ4jVARaL.jpg) ![Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition - Image 3](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/516RW1wTiWL.jpg) ![Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition - Image 4](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51eofzalN5L.jpg) ![Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition - Image 5](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61an+8hPZ3L.jpg) ## Available Options This product comes in different **Style** options. ## Questions & Answers **Q: Is this an English version of the game? The photo of the game contents has everything in Spanish.** A: I ordered from this same source and received an English version. **Q: Now that it's 2015, have recent purchases of this been the latest 2014 Deluxe Edition (NOT the 2012 Edition)?** A: Mine is stamped 2014 Deluxe Edition. **Q: Is it really just two player?** A: It's just a two player game. It's meant to be one player portraying the US and the second player the USSR. The game basically recreates The Cold War between the two players. **Q: Is this the 2012 version with the mounted board? Thanks much** A: I bought this in 2013 so I assume so. It's very thick stock like you find on most quality board games. If you're saying it was a mat or something before, it's definitely not that. No complaints about the board. ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Excellent Game: Win by Compromise *by A***T on June 9, 2021* This is one of my favorite board games. It gets you involved, it gets you stressed, it gets you jubilant at things that go well, and crushed when the situation is bleak. In other words, it's the Cold War, all over again, on a board! Besides that, this game will mention neat things about history, and the strategy will get you thinking. This isn't a "win by the rules" game. It isn't a "win by the people" game. It's a "win by compromise" game. This truly is an excellent game. However, it is involved to learn the first time, so if you're playing for the first time you should be determined to put in the effort. It's best to learn with an experienced player who goes a bit easier on you to teach you, or, if you know how to play (or can put a solid hour in to read the rules), pull a friend in and go easy to get them hooked into learning it! The goal is simple. Score 20 points. Or, score the most points by the end. And whatever you do, don't start nuclear war. The actual method of doing that is more complex. You have a deck of cards. Cards are essentially of 4 types. Soviet events, US events, Neutral events, and Scoring. Scoring cards when you play them let you score a region (and they must be played during the turn). Apart from that other cards can be played one of two ways: for the event, or for the points. Here is where the most clever mechanic of the game comes in. I'm the US player. I have a Soviet event card in my hand. Hey, I'll just play it for points instead of the event! Except that when you do this, the event happens anyways. The game literally forces history to happen as you play. The events are split into three decks - early, mid, and late war (and each is shuffled in throughout the game). But that's also where the genius of the game lies, and the stress of the game. You have to compromise. You have to do things which benefit your enemy. And yet, you still have to find a way to mitigate, and hopefully come out on top, even as you play the event that brings your enemy to the brink of victory. Have I played turns where the US player had entirely Soviet events, and the Soviet player had entirely US events? Yes, yes I have. Those are the most interesting rounds, and the most entertaining. The other dilemma: what if you need the operations points (and it's the max amount), but the event is yours and also really good? The game is a game of compromises, and balancing. Think - if people played this, and were used to a give-and-take with their opponents, compromising and yet still achieving, how would discourse look between people? How would politics look? If only we realized, as you must in this game, that the ideal and the perfect are out of reach and aiming for them ends only in disappointment. Instead, we must work together and do our best. And this game - despite you and your opponent being enemies in the Cold War, teaches you to work together even which fighting each other. Again, it takes some time to learn. But every person that I've taught the game (you don't need to read the rule book to learn the game if you play with someone who knows it already) has enjoyed it and become hooked, even if they weren't previously incredibly interested in detailed or complicated strategy games. By mid-war, they're giving me a run for my money (or countries!). Incredible game. Recommend 10/10. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Twilight Struggle doesn't struggle to bring the past to life *by N***O on November 15, 2011* One-Line Review: Twilight Struggle is the game Risk wishes it could be as it cries itself to sleep at night. Welcome back everyone! This week, we're headed back to 1945 to kick off a game of Twilight Struggle; my absolute favorite game. Ideologies will clash, dictators will rise and fall, man will step foot on the moon, and one superpower will emerge victorious!It's been a long road, but World War II has finally ended. Humanity breathes a little easier as the world's nations begin to pick up the pieces, but the respite doesn't last very long. As the dust settles, two superpowers emerge from the wreckage poised at the start of a new age; a nuclear age. Armed with the power of the Atom, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics hold the fate of the world in their hands. It may come as no surprise to you that I'm a huge history nerd. The Cold War is a really interesting topic to study because the Superpowers weren't fighting for land or resources, but for influence; they were fighting for the hearts and mind of the people. Shadow wars, spies, dictators and coups litter the timeline of the Cold War, but the thing that's always really stood out most to me is the fear. For the first time, the threat of global thermonuclear war was hanging over everyone's head. People built bomb shelters under their homes, children grew up learning to duck and cover, and most telling of all, there was a Doomsday Clock. Every new piece of foreign policy, every troop movement, every new technological advance, every day had the potential to move us closer to complete and utter destruction. I didn't live through the Cold War, but I can tell just from reading about it that it was terrifying. Twilight Struggle brings this feeling to your tabletop. Playing Twilight Struggle, you feel like you're balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff with no easy way to back down. You feel the stress of what it's like to lead a nation during a time when everything you do can be viewed as an act of war. It is in creating this feeling that Twilight Struggle completely succeeds. Twilight Struggle is a game of influence and ideology. There's no fighting and no conquering; not directly, anyway. Each player tries to spread their influence among world nations, scoring points when their influence in a region outweighs their opponent's. Each game of Twilight Struggle begins with the setup phase. The US and the USSR each start the game with some influence spread across the globe. Each player also receives some influence they get to place where they think it will benefit them the most based on their starting hand (in Western Europe for the USA and Eastern Europe for the Soviets). In this, Twilight Struggle resembles the many aggressive and defensive setups seen in Chess. There's a whole slew of articles over at BoardGameGeek that simply cover the merits (or lack thereof) of each setup. Each player maintains a hand of Event Cards that get replenished each turn. These ards are separated into three decks (Early War, Mid-War, and Late War) that are added to the game as play continues to simulate the passage of time. On each Event Card is printed an event and an Operations Value. On a player's turn, they may play a card for its event (removing it from the game if it's a one-time event like Castro taking power in Cuba) or for its Operations Value. Events usually have an effect that occurs immediately like the USSR gaining influence in Cuba or the USA advancing in the Space Race. Operations Values, however, allow players to gain influence in three ways: (1) Players can add influence to any country they already influence or adjacent to a country they influence, up to the Operations Value, (2) Players can attempt a Coup in any country in the world to remove opponent's influence and potentially add their own, and (3) Players can attempt a Realignment in order to weaken their opponent's influence over a country. Players can also discard cards from their hand to try to advance in the Space Race. The Space Race provides advantages to the player that's ahead, but also functions as the game's discard mechanic. There's more to the rules, of course, but those are the basics. Twilight Struggle really is a brilliant game. Each of its mechanics adds something great to the experience but I think that the best thing about TS is the tension that it creates. For both players, there are fires all over the world that need to be put out, and many problems are calling for your attention at once, but you only have so many turns to solve them. The USSR player might agonize over whether to commit more influence to Europe before the region is scored or to focus on the Middle East instead where the US is threatening to cut off access to Asia. The US player meanwhile fears the Soviet incursion into Latin America but is conflicted over whether to protect his interests in Asia or South America. You'll find yourself feeling like the President and the director of the CIA all rolled into one as you attempt to coup an opponent's regime or build up influence in Africa so your opponent doesn't expect your sweeping realignment of Europe on your next turn. I'm not sure that I've done justice to Twilight Struggle in this review, but I find that I can't recommend this game enough. If you're a history buff or a fan of strategy games, Twilight Struggle is a must but I encourage everyone to give it a try if you get a chance. Twilight Struggle is game for two players that takes between one and three hours to finish. It's sitting pretty in the #1 Board Game spot as ranked by players over at BoardGameGeek. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Long, Deep & Wonderful! *by M***T on April 28, 2014* Decided to write a new review. I've played this game about a dozen times and realized that it is the best game I've played in that genre. I played three games in about 5 1/2 hours the other day against my son. Losing every game as both USA & USSR. There are alot of things to keep track of and strategies to use. One thing I was doing wrong, according to my son, was using my cards as events and not OPS. Specifically those cards that are removed from the game when used as events. When I did that I would loose my country's card so my hand was the color of my opponents. I really love the game and it does give you a Cold War feel. I'm 62 years old and I remember those times - especially the Cuban Missle Crisis when I lived in Florida. Does remind me of RISK a little but without the luck aspect. But there is dice-rolling in this game but you can get advantages to have your roll modified so less luck. I lost when I didn't pay attention to the buildup in Europe. Every game I would make sure that I didn't let Europe fall. The moment I let my guard down it was over. I haven't read any strategies, yet, because I needed to play enough to get a handle on the flow of the game. I do wish the instruction book had more detail on the cards and their involvement with other actions. I like the way DOMINION has their instructions layed out. I use the pdf of twilightstruggle.com that has like 450 pages of comments, which helps. However I wish there was a published book out there. I would definately buy it! I want to trick out this game by making the counters really thick and make vertical obelisks, out of wood, for those chits that alert you of restrictive actions. I've been trying to find extra counters without paying a ridiculous shipping charge. Local game stores don't carry these counters. This game is real intimidating to begin with. Action rounds, turns, Space Race, Ops track....confusing at first. I didn't want to give up on this game given the $50 price tag and the position on Boardgamegeek.com. I own many games: all Dominion sets, Smallworld,Blockus, Puerto Rico, Carcassome, Ticket to Ride. Plus play others like Tzolkin which I think is more difficult to learn. I can see why Twilight Struggle is rated so high. I hope, one day, to win at this game. This game is not for everyone. It is a two-person game. If you like to play intense strategy (not war) games, then pick up a six-pack and pretzels and begin a wonderful journey. ## Frequently Bought Together - GMT Games Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition - 7 Wonders Duel Board Game BASE GAME - Intense Two-Player Battles in the Ancient World! Strategy Game for Kids and Adults, Ages 10+, 2 Players, 30 Minute Playtime, Made by Repos Production --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.ae/products/4224172-twilight-struggle-deluxe-edition](https://www.desertcart.ae/products/4224172-twilight-struggle-deluxe-edition) --- *Product available on Desertcart United Arab Emirates* *Store origin: AE* *Last updated: 2026-05-30*