While the Royale raged upstairs at Dan Burgess’ home in Downers Grove, the Undercard game in the basement kicked off Season 6. The game ended after 1909 in a four-way, E/F/R/T draw. John Gramila, playing Turkey, topped the board with a 12-center Turkey, earning 47.059 points out of a possible 100 in the Sum of Squares system, which we’re using to score games in Season 6. The final center counts were:
Gramila joined the club as a true newbie at a Guthrie’s game in January. He has now topped two of his past four boards and appears to have joined the growing ranks of the club’s up-and-coming players. We’re glad to see it.
Click here to check out the supply center chart. Be sure to click the Undercard tab, as the file also contains the Royale results. The World Diplomacy Database has been updated as well. No rest for the Bull Weasel.
Players, let’s hear your endgame statements.
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John, beware! I’m returning from India on the 24th, and driving straight from O’Hare to the Moot, raring to earn some points.
P.S. Congratulations!
My summary of the game is pretty simple… it’s all the fault of Don Glass. 🙂
When I drew England, I knew I wanted a fast start. Eric Brown was in Russia and I didn’t want to go over the top. At the start, I spoke with France for quite some time and ask about attacking Germany, he seemed OK with it, but didn’t seem overly eager to move east. Germany on the other hand was quite interested in moving into France. So the course was set. Italy was also interested in moving in on France. France was done… but then order writing gets in the way.
I didn’t open to the Channel because Germany and France promised me Belgium, but I had to take it with a fleet. Don and I talked about the Fall moves and he said he’d let Russia have SWE, talk HOL and order to BUR from RUH. Instead, he bounced Russia (angering the mighty czar) and ordered RUH to MUN instead of BUR. Those moves changed the dynamic in the west. If Don ends 1901 in Burgundy, I don’t stab Germany that next turn, Italy may have made it around the corner and turkey may have pushed west earlier on.
Russia was upset with the Kaiser’s change of heart and asked for help pummeling him. I built fleets in LON and LVP and held the knife to Josh’s back for most of the rest of the game, as he said. But the situation of the game never allowed for me to stab him, as Turkey was just running away with everything he wanted in the southeast. France and I were able to team up to work well together after my aggressive builds. EFR tackled Germany in a few short years and then we put up a nice defense in the Med to halt Turkey’s progress. France and Turkey sandwiched Italy into submission and left us at 4 players. Austria went out in 1904 after a couple of bad luck turns cost him some early gains.
The technical play that ended the game how it did was Turkey not grabbing a center from Russia when he had the chance. If so, this game could have been 16 or 17 for Turkey, with 8 or 9 each for France and England. But Eric was able to outfox Turkey to reclaim MOS.
John played a nice game, and made some great guesswork to hold on to his center count. We called the game with a little play left on the board, but a 7 hour game was fun for all and the results wouldn’t have changed by much.
Just as an interesting (to me, anyway) aside, Italy’s elimination here ended a streak of nine straight games in which Italy finished in the draw. No other country had a string of more than two going into this game.