Some weeks ago, a new game named Order & Opportunity: Making of the Post-Cold War World Order entered GMT Games’ P500 list. This is the seventh in a series of articles covering different aspects about the game.

In this and a number of following installments, we will follow along a strategic, multi-turn example of how to play Order & Opportunity.

The year is somewhere early 2000’s and a new US administration — controlled by us! — has taken the helm. In this example, the EU, China, and Russia turns will be played by the bot system contained in the game, but we will abstract those turns away to allow us to focus on the US turns.

Setup

We’ll begin by finishing up the setup for the Short Scenario. Altogether nine Opportunities markers and six World Event cards are drawn and placed on the map. We’ll talk about which ones were drawn later as they feature in the example. For now, significant is that among the nine World Events we also drew the special 9/11 World Event. This card must be resolved before the get on with the first player turn.

Resolving the 9/11

The US player must now resolve the three steps of the 9/11 World Event:

• First, we’ll have to increase the Terror Threat level in the US home space by two, from “1” to “3”.
• Then, we’ve got to make a Terror Threat Check: we roll a 1d6 hoping to roll higher than the current Terror Threat level (yes, the one that just increased to “3”) to avoid losing a VP. We do have the option of spending Resources prior to the roll, for a +1 die roll modifier (DRM) per each Resource spent. We could even spend three Resources (currently we have five) to make the check an auto-success. We’ll spend two and count on our luck. The die roll is a “4”, so all is good, but oh boy, dealing with this stuff is expensive!
• Lastly, we get to pin the 9/11 attacks on someone, anyone. That is, we may add one Military Influence cube anywhere. The cube may be either a US or a NATO one.

Let’s think about our options here. The intelligence seems to indicate that the hijackers may have come from terrorist camps in Indonesia. Therefore, why not build up our existing Military Influence in Asia Pacific from “2” to “3”. Handily, that takes us one crucial step towards addressing the situation in the South China Sea as well — one of the World Events we drew at the start that puts us at loggerheads with China there.

An alternative strategic option might have been to increase the NATO Influence in the Balkans with an eye on bringing deepening our strategic partnership (a US associated Event card #6) and with that bringing the NATO enlargement talks onto the table there. However, we are in a good position to do this in Eastern Europe instead (see the main map graphic above), so we feel can ignore the Balkans for the time being. Of course there are any number of other crises on-going in the world that could use our attention — the Taliban or the Libyan Civil War World Events for example — but we’ve got a feeling that for the time being focusing on the Asia Pacific might pay off in the short term …

Action Phase Segment One: Development

Having dealt with the 9/11, we begin play in earnest by going through the Action Phase, segment by segment. First up is the Development segment.

Thematically, this segment begins with a look at what is dominating the headlines today, or what are the latest developments from around the world. In terms of the game mechanics this means, we draw a random Development Event from the Developments draw deck. This is a random event that changes the game state in some way.

During the Setup (outside of this example), we’ve already revealed a Development Event as a “preview” of what’s coming. Barring any surprises, it looks like Saddam Hussein will be entering the scene to complicate our dealings with the Syrian Civil War. However, speaking of surprises, when we draw from the Developments draw deck we get…

Oh no, this is the Terror Threat Check card! Check cards always get played immediately, that is, they override whatever non-Check card was already visible as the “upcoming” Development Event. Saddam Hussein will have to wait another day to enter the world stage.

DESIGN NOTE. You will have noticed that O&O does not adhere to a strict historical ordering of events. Rather, depending on the luck of the draw, we might get situations such that both the Libyan Civil War and Saddam Hussein play a role in the game at the same time. The design is focused on simulating some of the incentives, worries, and aspirations that historical actors of the post-Cold War might have had, not the temporal ordering of events.

This Terror Threat Check hits us at a bad time because we only just spent resources dealing with 9/11. But there’s no use to complaining: let’s pay up another two Resources and try our luck a second time with trying to pass the die roll check. With three levels of Terror Threat and two Resources paid for DRMs, we need anything but a “1”. We roll a solid “5” so all is good. We’re down to just one Resource now, though!

Let’s set the Terror Threat Check card aside within reach. In the short scenario that we are playing, the card will be needed once more during the Game End Phase at the very end of the game, so better keep it handy.

Action Phase Segment Two: Opportunity

In the second segment of the Action Phase, the active player (that’s of course us, the US) gets to try to resolve an Opportunity. Opportunities are useful because if you resolved one, you have the option of discarding it for an additional chance of playing cards later on in the Commands segment, more of which below.

Scanning the map we note that there is only one space where we qualify for resolving an Opportunity: the NATO Influence (which the US controls jointly with the EU) in Eastern Europe is at the requisite level (“2”) for seizing the Opportunity named “Corruption” there. Evidently training provided by NATO specialists there has exposed some corruption in the local forces there.

We conclude the Opportunity segment by drawing a replacement for the just resolved Opportunity marker. At all times, altogether nine Opportunities must exist on the map. The new Opportunity is “Emerging Markets” in South America.

Action Phase Segment Three: Commands

The third segment is the Commands segment. This is the heart of the Action Phase. Here we will get to play some cards!

Let’s look at our hand of five cards and think about what cards we’d like to play this turn. We are to nominate one of the four suits in the game and proceed to play and use as many cards of that suit as we hold in our hand. This “nominate, play, and use” process is know as executing a Command.

During each Commands segment you get one “free” such Command, but may discard Opportunity markers to take additional Commands or make use of various Event effects to generate additional Commands “on the fly”. We will see examples of this below.

Our hand of cards contains three Security suit cards (the shield icon), one Cultural (masks icon) and one Political suit card (the “Diplomat” icon), respectively. These cards give a good number of options for us. As you get familiar with Order & Opportunity, you will see that getting creative and playing huge turns with your given hand of cards is right at the heart of the experience of playing the game. Thematically, being in charge of the administration that leads a global Power, or an aspiring global Power, requires creativity, pulling the strings, outsmarting the opponents.

Let’s think through some of our options here:

• We could play the Political suit card “Benevolent Hegemon / Friend and Ally”, use it to add US Political Influence somewhere such that we gain Control in the space, which would trigger the card’s special effect and give us a second Command to execute this turn. If we can find a space where adding Political Influence sets up for resolving an Opportunity or maybe even a World Event, that would definitely be a bonus worth pursuing.
• We could play the “United Nations” Cultural Event card for its very powerful Event effects: be it at a considerable Resource cost, we could turn the world community’s attention at reducing regional Tensions or perhaps have them intervene in a number of the world’s crisis, such as the Taliban in Central Asia, or the Syrian Civil War in Levant. Doing this wouldn’t generate an additional Command but we’ve got plenty of Opportunity markers for discarding and generating additional Commands that way.
• Clearly we’ll get the most “bang for the buck” if we play the three Security suit cards in our hand, simply because from this suit we’d be playing three cards instead of just one. One draw back is what the game calls Consequences. That is to say, each two played cards of the Security suit will cause our contribution to the rules based world order to decline as recorded on the World Order track. Flexing the “unilateral military muscle” like that does not go down well with the global nor the domestic audience. That said, with those three cards, we’d get a whole lot done, though.

The above gives us a good road map for this turn. So let’s go about executing our turn as follows:

First Command: Nominate the Security Suit. We begin by playing the three Security suit cards, which triggers the Consequence of us having to decline our World Order contribution from “3” to “2”. This might come to haunt us depending on how the other Powers play their turns, we’ll see.

Resolve a World Event. One option players have of using the cards they’ve played is to spend two of them to resolve a World Event where you fulfill the conditions. This option has to be taken as the very first thing of your Commands segment.

You will recall that we used the Military Influence placement given to us by the special 9/11 World Event to maneuver ourselves in the position to resolve the “Flashpoint South China Sea” World Event in Asia Pacific (hey Harold!). Let’s now complete that process and go and resolve that World Event before the Chinese can do anything. Resolving that World Event gives us the rewards as detailed on the card for the type of Influence we use to resolve the World Event. In this case, we obtain two Military Agenda Point markers and discard the World Event. That World Event is done and dusted. Well done, sir!

We’ve got the third Security suit card remaining to play still — the US Event card titled “Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act”. Let’s use this card for its very useful Event effect that players of Order & Opportunity will make frequent use of. We can make use of the Intelligence Reform act to reduce the Terror Threat level in the US and, if we’re lucky with the associated die roll, maybe even generate and additional Command.

DESIGN NOTE. Historically, the intelligence reform act was a response to the failure of the US domestic and international intelligence agencies to detect the 9/11 attacks which was put down to a lack of inter-agency communication about the treats. For more information, see this piece on the reform from the Brookings Institute.

Following multiple terror alerts, we’re short on Resources, so even while the Event card gives us the option of spending Resources for die roll modifiers, we feel we must decline. We proceed to roll a 1d6 and it is … a “5”! That means, we get to remove five levels of Terror Threat halved (round up) — so all three levels are gone — and gain an additional Command. This concludes our first Command. Let’s leave the cards we played on the table for the time being, you’ll see later why.

Second Command: Nominate the Security Suit. We continue by nominating the Political suit and play the sole card of that suit that we hold.

Each card played this way may be used to play an Action associated with its suit or to play the card for an Event effect as detailed on the card. Let’s play this one for the Political Influence Action which allows us to add one Political Influence on the map. Let’s play this Action in the Baltic States which increases our Political Influence there from “2” to “3”. We must pay one Resource as the space selection cost which takes us from “1” to “0” Resources. That level of Influence means we Control the space as our Influence there now equals the space’s highlighted Stability Value (“3”) and no other Power there blocks us by equaling or exceeding our Influence there. This means, we get to play a third Command this turn still. This is turning out to be an epic turn for us!

Third Command: Nominate the Cultural Suit. We’ve got one last card left in our hand to play, so no matter what happens, this will be our last Command of this turn.

The “United Nations” is a very nice Event (see the graphic of the US hand of cards above), but costly in terms of Resources, and we’ve got all of zero Resources left! We could continue to spend up to four more Resources to go in Debt — the Resources track contains a negative numbers portion for tracking Debt. However, among the four Check cards in the Developments draw deck, we know there is the Debt Check card as well that has not come out yet. So we’re wary of going into Debt at this stage. Reluctantly we abstain from playing the Event and simply use the card for a Pass to gain two Resources. What a dud! But hey, sometimes that has got to be. Those Resources will come handy next time.

Free Horizon Event Placement. There’s one last thing remaining to do in this segment: we get to place one of our played cards onto the map as a so-called Horizon Event.

What’s this? You may have noticed that many of the cards in the game have two parts, one with text in the portrait orientation, and another with text in the landscape orientation. So far we’ve only been allowed to make use of the portrait orientated parts of the card because that’s how the cards are orientated when played from the hand.

To make the landscape orientated Event card effects available for use, we need to bring those cards into play and onto the map which sees them getting placed in the landscape orientation. See those slots along the edges of the map connected to specific Regions? That’s where the Horizon Events live.

Mechanically, we have two ways of placing a Horizon Event:

• When held in hand (portrait orientation), many cards have the Event option to place the card onto the map — the Event option text says: “Place in a free Event Slot in a Region with your presence”. Instead of using the card for an Action corresponding to its suit as we did above, we could have used the card for that Event option instead. What is the Event text talking about? The text mentions “Event slots” which are those slots marked at the edges of the map and connected with a line to the Region that they belong to. Having “presence” means having a piece in the said Region.
• The other option is to use the free placement option, which is what we’re doing just now. However, this allows us to place just one of the cards onto the map.

PLAY NOTE. You’ll have noticed that Order & Opportunity is not an ordinary card driven game (CDG). The card structure will be vaguely familiar — you have a suit instead of operations points and you have an event text. However, understanding and getting used to the multi-turn process of first bringing cards onto the map as Horizon Events, thereby making their Event and Reaction options available for play during later turns, and then making effective use of those options, represent something of a learning curve.

Of the cards that we played this turn, three of them have a landscape orientated part. These cards come to question for now placing onto the map. Inspecting the cards, we see that each Event text has its merits:

• Sending Colin Powell to the United Nations to make the case for the existence of weapons of mass destruction is a good option. How the card works is, we’d place it onto the map now and trigger its Event option during a later turn by nominating and playing an Economic suit card. After use, Powell will be discarded.
• The Event called “War on Terror / Operation Enduring Freedom” has a so-called Reaction ability as its Horizon Event. That ability would allow us to React to any Political and Security Actions played in this Region by other Powers outside of our own turn. Note that unlike the Powell Event, Reaction abilities do not get discarded after use!
• The card “Benevolent Hegemon / Friend and Ally” has a rather special Horizon Event as well, one that places a so-called Alignment marker. This card works like the Powell Event: place onto the map now and trigger its Event option during a later turn (by nominating and playing a Cultural suit card). Placing Alignments requires Control in the target space but placing them unlocks certain additional effects depending on the Alignment you place, such as increasing the hand size by one, automatically modifying our die rolls by +1, and other such useful effects.

Each one of these is a great Event. Spoiled with choice, we opt to bring the Alignment placing Event to play, in the Baltic States. Time will tell whether we’ll ever get to politically align the Baltic States with us. It will be necessary to maintain Control in the space for placing the Alignment.

Action Phase Segment Four: Planning

The next segment of our Action Phase is called Planning. This is where we get to “build” and/or “thin” our deck.

First some terminology. Each Power has its “cycle” of cards. The “cycle” consists of your hand of cards, the cards in your draw deck, and those in your discard pile. During Planning you may remove any one card from your cycle and/or add one card to it from a separate pile of cards referred to as your Planning cards that were set aside during Setup (outside of this example). An additional alternative option is to acquire a so-called Pivotal Event; we will talk about those some time later.

How you “build” or “thin” your deck represents something of a strategic choice with a number of dimensions:

• You may want to bring in a card with a particular suit in order to increase the chances of getting to nominate and play more cards of that suit per each Command you take. There are certain ways of scoring in the game that encourage this. The turn side is, playing more cards of a given suit will increase the impact of the suit’s Consequences — remember, each two played cards of a suit will impose a Consequence.
• You may choose to bring in a card for a particularly advantageous Event option printed on it. But then, the Event effects tend to be somewhat contextual in order to be at their most useful, so there is a risk involved.
• Generally, adding more cards into your cycle will bloat it and threaten to make your deck unwieldy and not very agile. During each Planning segment you have the option of removing one card from the cycle to fight the bloat, but then, that is a card whose suit or Event option will no longer be available to you. Tough choices!

In the light of the above, we choose to bring in the Political suit card called “The American Dream”. From past experience we know, this card has a very useful Event option to it: if we have it in the hand, we can discard the card to avoid the effect of a Check of our choice.

Action Phase Segment Four: Discard & Refill

One last segment remains to be done. Here we may first discard any cards remaining in our hand (we have none as we played every card we had), then draw our hand to five cards again. This concludes the US turn.

Other Powers Play Their Turns

Let’s conclude this article with a quick run through the other Powers’ turns. In the next installment we continue with the second US turn.

The EU Turn

The Development segment brings the aforementioned “Saddam Hussein” Development Event in play. As instructed on the card, we place the card in a free Event slot in the Middle East. The new “upcoming” Event is “Economic Crisis”. Interesting times ahead!

In the Opportunity segment, the EU is not in the position to resolve any Opportunities.

In the Commands segment, the EU does the following:

• In Central Asia, where the Taliban rages on, the EU bring in a Civil Society marker.
• In the Levant, the EU brings in two NATO Influence to address the Libyan Civil War there.
• In the Baltic States, the EU adds one Economic Influence going from “2” to “3”. This is bad for us as the EU Influence there now equals our Political Influence there, meaning the EU now blocks our Political Control there and thus prevents us from placing an Alignment there.
• Lastly, the EU places a Reaction Horizon Event in the Middle East.

Note that we’re using the bot system to play our opponents’ turns and in this system the Planning and Discard & Refill segments do not take place at all.

China Turn

The Development segment brings the special “Economic Crisis” Event into play. We’ll talk about this Event more in due course. “Hugo Chavez” becomes the new “upcoming” Development Event.

In the Opportunity segment, China is unable to resolve any Opportunities.

In the Commands segment, China does the following:

• In South Asia, China Contests the US Economic Influence there twice, removing our Influence there altogether. This creates two levels of Tension in the space. The China World Order contribution declines from “3” to “1”. Note that since the US is no longer upholding the World Order at the requisite level (“3” or more), China is exempt from the Resource penalty despite hitting “Low” on the World Order track. We knew our unilateralism earlier during our turn was going to come to haunt us!
• In Central Asia, China places its first Political Influence in the space.
• In Central America, China places a Tension marker there.
• Lastly, China places a Reaction Horizon Event in Asia.

Russia Turn

In the Development segment, the “Hugo Chavez” Development Event is placed in the Americas. “Ethnic Tensions” in Central and East Africa is the new “upcoming” Development.

In the Opportunity segment, Russia cannot resolve any Opportunities.

In the Commands segment, Russia does the following:

• In Central Asia, Russia increases their Political Influence from “1” to “2”.
• In the Baltic States, Russia Contests the US Economic Influence there reducing it from “2” to “1”. One level of Tension is also placed in the space, which means, the Civil Society marker placed by the EU there is simply removed. The Russian contribution to the World Order declines from “3” to “2”.
• In China, Russia places an Economic Influence there. This gives China one Resources going from “3” to “4”.
• In South America, Russia triggers the “Hugo Chavez” Development Event there. This Event increases the Russian Economic Influence from “2” to “3” and removes the US Political Influence there. The Russian World Order contribution declines down to “1” but, again, no Resource penalty results. The “Chavez” Development Event is removed from the map and discarded to the Developments discard pile.
• Lastly, Russia places a Reaction Event in Asia.

* * *

As was to be expected, the EU, China, and Russia turns unraveled some of the gains we were able to make during our turn. This concludes the first part of our extended example of play. We pick up the pieces in the second installment in due course.

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