Nearly thirty years after the Berlin Wall fell, much of this paradigm looks wrong, and even paranoid. Nonetheless, the game illustrates how people viewed the world at the time. Of course, this cutthroat philosophy just happens to be the fabric of gaming, which is about winners and losers. Thus the geopolitical conflict of the Cold War makes for an ideal contest that can be finished in three hours or less over a kitchen table.

For those too young to remember the Cold War, Twilight Struggle is a treasure trove of history:Not just familiar events they have may seen on Youtube such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, but others such as Kruschchev's de-Stalinization or Shuttle Diplomacy. Yes, the historical flavor is just a headline and a photo on a playing card, followed by instructions on which pieces to move or remove from the map. But this is also what makes historical gaming different from a college history textbook or a reminiscence from a parent or grandparent. Historical gaming is applied history, or history that you actually use, and therefore it becomes much more vivid. There is a difference between a Cuban Missile Crisis documentary, and playing a Cuban Missile Crisis card and watching the game's Defcon marker rise toward the mushroom cloud box.

With U.S.-Russian tension again on the rise, Twilight Struggle is a reminder of a fate the world was lucky enough to avoid.

(Twilight Struggle is also available on Amazon and as an app for the PC and mobile devices.)

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

This first appeared last year.