Scenario
Cold War - March 1947
The Truman Doctrine commits America to containing Soviet power, and the wartime alliance hardens into rivalry. The United States holds an atomic monopoly. The Red Army holds Eastern Europe. From Berlin to the Aegean, the world splits into two camps.
This is the scenario where the war you don't fight decides the game.
The starting state
March 1947. What is true on turn one:
- -America alone has the bomb. The atomic monopoly is real and it is temporary. Every decision you make with it is made in the shadow of how long you think it lasts.
- -The Red Army sits in Eastern Europe. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia start inside the Soviet bloc. Holding them is a governance problem, not just a military one.
- -Greece and Turkey are the seam. The Truman Doctrine exists because of them. They start Western-aligned and pressured.
- -The empires are still standing - barely. India, Burma, Malaya, French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, the Belgian Congo, French and British Africa all start as colonies. Decolonisation is a live process you can accelerate, resist, or exploit.
- -Korea is already split. North and South start as separate countries, five years before it matters.
- -The UN is a real actor. Founded 1945, five permanent council members with veto power, and resolutions that bind. Not set dressing - a lever.
The two camps
Every country starts assigned to a bloc - or conspicuously not.
Western Bloc
United States
The largest economy on earth by a distance, a 20-carrier navy, and the only atomic arsenal. The strategic problem is not capability - it is deciding what containment actually costs and where to spend it.
Soviet Bloc
USSR
Enormous land power and a satellite belt across Eastern Europe, against a shattered domestic economy and no bomb. Time is the resource: close the atomic gap before the gap decides something.
Western Bloc
United Kingdom
Victorious, broke, and holding an empire it can no longer afford. Every colony is an asset on the balance sheet and a liability in the field.
Western Bloc
France
Rebuilding at home while fighting to hold Indochina, Algeria and West Africa. The choice between reconstruction and empire is the whole campaign.
Soviet Bloc
Poland · Czechoslovakia · Hungary
Occupied, aligned, and not necessarily willing. Playable, and the most interesting seat in the scenario if you like governing against the current.
Soviet Bloc · Independent-minded
Yugoslavia
In the bloc on paper, with its own army and its own ideas. Historically the first to walk. You can make that happen sooner, or never.
Contested
India
Starts as a colony months from independence, and is a UN member from the outset. The prize of the non-aligned world - and the reason both blocs need a foreign policy that is not just guns.
Contested
North & South Korea
Two states on one peninsula, three years before either has a functioning army. The flashpoint that turned the Cold War hot, sitting on the board from turn one.
Three arcs, forty-four years
The scenario carries scripted historical checkpoints across three eras. They fire on schedule if nobody changes the conditions - and they don't if you do.
1947 - 1953 · The Iron Curtain Descends
Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, the Berlin blockade, the Soviet atomic test, Korea, and the armistice. The decade where the rules get written.
1955 - 1975 · Brinkmanship and Thaw
The Warsaw Pact, Suez, and the long middle where both sides learn what they are willing to risk.
1979 - 1991 · The Long Decline
The end state - if you get there, and if it still looks anything like the one in the books.
How you win
Outright conquest of the other superpower is on the table, and it is the hard road. The other path is the one the Cold War was actually fought over:
Conquest
Take the Soviet Union as America, or the United States as the USSR. Total, unambiguous, and extremely expensive.
Bloc dominance
Paint the map. Win when your bloc's share of active countries crosses the threshold - which means recognition, aid, coups, decolonisation and UN votes are your primary weapons, not divisions.
Why it plays differently
WW2 rewards mobilisation. WW3 rewards magazine depth and air dominance. The Cold War rewards neither, because the main event is a war neither side wants to start.
- -Espionage and ideology carry the game. Worldview stance, faction loyalty and recognition decide who flips - and flipping a country costs a fraction of taking one.
- -The UN is a battlefield. Resolutions, membership and the veto are levers with real mechanical consequences.
- -Proxies over armies. Sponsorship leaves a trail, and attribution has a delay. Deniability is a resource you spend.
- -Occupation is the hard part. Every satellite is a governance decision with an insurgency attached. Holding Eastern Europe is a campaign in itself.
Try the Cold War scenario
Free browser demo. Pick Cold War 1947 from the start menu. Take either superpower - or one of the countries caught between them.
Play Free DemoOr read more: the WW2 scenario · how espionage works · all scenarios