After a fair bit of experimentation I have made pretty solid update to the Twilight Struggle 3.1.2 module that is designed to help PBEM players keep track of some important information.
With a single additional click prior to a reshuffle, cards in the discard are marked with a ★, but only for a card list window that shows cards in the draw deck and/or opponent’s hand. After the reshuffle, the card list can be viewed to easily see which cards are definitely in your opponent’s hand, because they are the only ones in the list that aren’t marked. Note that this is open information that anyone could figure out by looking at the discard prior to a reshuffle. Actually trawling through the discard wouldn’t be done in real play, but most experienced Twilight Struggle players certainly have this information figured out and leveraged. Not so easy when playing a game over days and weeks when playing by email, hence this tweak.
How it works:
A few extra traits added to the card prototype (Marker, two triggers, and a dynamic property (dp)).
Two side-specific game piece inventory windows.
A global key command in the icon bar.
The global key command adds a ★ to cards (marker) in the discard (2nd trigger > dp) and removes a ★ from any cards not in the discard (1st trigger > dp).
The inventories list cards in the order dp > alphabetical card name, so starred cards are sorted to the end of the list.
How it could be improved by a Java programmer with access to the source code:
Automate the process so that the US player doesn’t have to remember to make the click before the reshuffle.
Everything could be implemented as an option to be toggled, for people who don’t want to have access to such information in a real-time game on the clock.
If anyone is interested in trying this out, please let me know how it goes!