Business Cards

We are presented with a number of cards with pieces from various board games on them. At first glance, they appear to consist mostly of pieces from wargames, especially games that take place during the Cold War. While some pieces are easier to identify, some of the pieces are very difficult, and it can seem that the theme isn’t totally consistent due to board games referencing the 1960 US election or Star Wars.

The consistent blue background and grayed out lines of text suggest that we might be looking at cards from a single game. Searching around, we’ll find Twilight Struggle, a popular Cold War themed wargame with cards representing various events that happened during the Cold War. Each board game references a card in the game. With careful reading about which events the cards represent, we should be able to derive a 1:1 relationship between the cards and games. Sometimes the associations aren’t obvious: Vietnam 1965-1975 refers to the Quagmire card which is about the Vietnam War involving the US, not the Vietnam Revolts card which refers to the earlier First Indochina War involving France.

Once we have identified enough of the board games, we can sort by card number, and use the bar graph at the bottom to reorder the entries. Taking the card number mod 20 and adding or subtracting the given number on the top of the cards gives an index, which is indexed into the card names, getting the final answer CONSULTING DETECTIVE.

Authors' Notes

I wanted to write a puzzle that’s about one big board game encompassing the themes or events of a number of smaller board games. Twilight Struggle seemed like a natural fit, since each card in the game is a noteworthy event in the Cold War. This being Mystery Hunt gave me the excuse to geek out fully and make the puzzle heavily involved in researching historical wargames, most of which I’ve never even heard of. Hopefully the process wasn’t too terrible; I like to think of these kinds of puzzles as digging for gold– very boring most of the time, then a huge rush when you strike gold and find the right ID.

If you’re interested in these kinds of games, Twilight Struggle is of course a good starting point, it used to even be the highest rated game on BGG. I think Paths of Glory is a true masterpiece of a game though, if you find yourself deeper in the rabbit hole and craving more.

Appendix: Full List of Games

Given order	Twilight Struggle Card	Card number	Board Game with BGG link	Picture
1	Arab-Israeli War	13	The Arab Israeli Wars Tank Battles in the Mideast
2	Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You…	77	1960 The Making of the President
3	Bear Trap	44	Invasion Afghanistan: The Soviet Afghan War 1979 1989
4	Colonial Rear Guards	63	Colonial Twilight The French Algerian War 1954 62
5	Cuban Missile Crisis	40	13 Days The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962
6	East European Unrest	29	Days Of Ire Budapest 1956
7	Fidel	8	Cuba Libre
8	Indo-Pakistani War	24	Next War India Pakistan
9	Iran Iraq War	102	Bloody Dawns The Iran Iraq War 1980 1988
10	Iranian Hostage Crisis	82	Raid on Iran
11	Korean War	11	The Korean War June 1950 May 1951
12	One Small Step…	80	One Small Step
13	Portuguese Empire Crumbles	52	Angola
14	Quagmire	42	Vietnam
15	South African Unrest	53	The White Tribe Rhodesias War 1966 1980
16	Star Wars	85	Star Wars Rebellion
17	Suez Crisis	28	Suez 56 Anglo French Intervention In Egypt
18	The Iron Lady	83	Mrs Thatchers War The Falklands 1982
19	Vietnam Revolts	9	Dien Bien Phu The Final Gamble