Wir Sind Das Volk! -- is German for fantastic game!

Actually, for those of you that don't remember your high school German, it is translated We Are The People!, an East German protest slogan
www.histogame.de/e_wir.sind.das.volk.html

A 2-player historical weuro hybrid game about divided Germany 1945-1989 by the same guy who designed Maria and Friedrich. It is sort of a CDG, but not in the Mark Herman house style of CDG. I would put it part of the new wave of war games that eschew hex and counter or tons pieces in favor of abstracted political mechanics. Tons of theme and historical insights to be found in this game.

As West Germany, your goal is to build up your economic infrastructure in order to place living standard markers into your province that represent the benefits of western capitalism. As East Germany, your goal is to survive economic disparities that come from a neighbor that is enticing your best workers away and causing you to put down civil unrest. Both sides have to deal with civil unrest (marked abstractly by blue cubes) as having 4 unrest markers in a province causes a full scale civil uprising marker to be added. If any side has 4 uprising markers during end of turn scoring, they lose.

Economic infrastructure and unrest are added or removed by playing a card either for its point value or for the event. Play occurs over 6 half decade turns with a scoring round at end of every turn. Each decade has its own deck of cards which keeps the game historically on the rails.

Everything here is tight, tense, and immersive due to the historical events. Nothing feels scripted at all and big swings in fortune can be had based on which cards come out for a given decade. One of my favorite games from this year.

This one is on my wishlist already, haven't heard much about it until now though. I think I'll see if I can get the game store where I have store credit to order it for me.

Glad to read more about it... it has been sort of sitting on my wishlist for a while.