If Aash Anand resolved to top more boards this New Year, then he’s doing a better job of sticking to his resolutions than most of us. Playing in his 10th game with the club, Aash posted his first board top, gobbling 12 centers as Turkey at Peter Lokken’s home in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood on Sunday. Game No. 122 ended after the Fall 1911 turn with the following center counts:
Austria (Peter Yeargin): 0; 0.000 points.
England (Christopher M. Davis): 11; 34.571 points.
France (Mike Morrison): 0; 0.000 points.
Germany (Peter Lokken): 2; 1.143 points.
Italy (Nate Cockerill): 9; 23.143 points.
Russia (John Gramila): 0; 0.000 points.
Turkey (Aash Anand): 12; 41.143 points.
The supply center chart is here. Players, how ’bout some endgame statements?
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End of game statement for Turkey:
Sweet, sweet, sweet game. Looking at my notebook for moves, here are the highlights:
1901 – Russia and I successfully DMZ the Black Sea. I promise to support Italy into Greece, since Nate (Italy) and Peter Yeargin (Austria) are at odds due to their proximity at the top of the league points table. But Italy convoys to Tunis instead! Now I am afraid of a lepanto, and so I build F SMY. With a fleet in Aegean and a new fleet in SMY, a lepanto will be harder, but not impossible. The clincher came with Peter Yeargin misordering his move F TRI-GRE instead of F ALB-GRE, thus leaving Greece empty and not having the extra fleet against my forces in the Aegean Sea. This misorder cost Peter Yeargin invaluable position, and, ultimately, I’ll argue – the game.
1902 – In the Spring, I send BUL-GRE with one support, hoping to bounce Peter out of Greece, but no! He gets in with Italian support! The new Italian fleet just moves from NAP to APU and now I’m stalemated in the Ionian AND in the Balkans. Things are looking bad. I need to break out, and I need to break out bad. I approach Nate and ask him about walking into an open Trieste, while letting me have Greece, thereby crippling Peter Yeargin and getting us both up one unit. We agreed that he should have the Austrian home centers, while I get GRE, SER and RUM (then a Russian center). But Nate wants it done his way – he wants GRE and TRI this year, and I am to later collect Greece from behind as he walks up into the Austrian centers. I grudgingly agree, and in the fall, Nate has armies in GRE and in TRI.
1903 – In 1903 I took Greece, and Nate got Serbia and Budapest to gain one more build.
1904 – Peter Yeargin, down to one dot (Vienna), decides to leave a parting gift to Nate (who has F TRI, armies in BUD and SER). Peter supports Russia into BUD, while I support myself into Italian SER. Russia also manages to take Vienna, thereby eliminating Austria and making up the loss of STP and Berlin in the North (against an E/G alliance up there).
1905 – Nate is quite annoyed at my stab. Having built an ambiguous F CON (which Russia didn’t seem to have noticed), I secretly decline Russian support into Italian Trieste, instead supporting myself into RUM (where an unprotected fleet sat), and moving into BLA in the same turn. Italy moves in to take Budapest (and eventually Vienna). Now the tables have been turned on Russia, and I am in board top position of 7 dots (tied with France).
1906 – After 2 failed attempts to take SEV, I am still at 7. Nate has moved up to 8, and is in good position against France. Meanwhile, France is severely harassing England, but not really able to do much damage in terms of SCs.
1907 – I successfully take SEV to go up to 8, but out West, something strange happens to offset my potential board top position – France (Mike Morisson) collapses by submitting no moves, losing 3 centers to Italy and 2 to England, thereby going from 6 to 1 in one season! Now Nate is in board top with 10 centers.
(Mike, was this on purpose? I still have that theory about how you manage to screw me over every single time your country dies!)
1908/1909 – Now that Nate has strong position in Iberia, I tell him to continue onward towards upper France, while I work on Moscow and Warsaw. After successfully lying to Chris a few times about Moscow (sorry Chris!) I eventually make it into both. Nate also gives me one of his Austrian centers. Now I am at 11 centers, and convoying armies by the season into erstwhile Russia.
1910 – Peter Lokken gets a nasty surprise as I move LVN-PRU, WAR-SIL, and GAL-BOH, taking Munich and Berlin from him in one fell swoop. Nate takes back his Austrian center from me, making it only one build, though.
1911 – I veto the draw for one year trying to see if I can make it past John Gramila’s 47 points for Best Turkey. But it looks like the odds are against me, with only 4 players in the game and 2 of them at 9 and 11 dots respectively. After a year of mucking around, I decide to accept the draw since Nate Cockerill has 3 fleets protecting Ionian. I could’ve gotten up to around 14 with some of the Austrian home centers, but not more than that.
I ended the game with 12 centers – 3 home, 3 Russian, 2 German, and 4 Balkan.
Excellent game, everybody! Thank you for hosting, Peter, and I look forward to more games like this (where I board top, obviously š )
I’d like to hear more about why E/F/G were fighting so much the whole time, and how it all went so wrong for Russia up North.
Aash
Lesson of the game: “Don’t trust Dutch dippers!”
A bit of history for Aash: to the best of my recollection, I haven’t yet played a game with Chris Davis in which he hasn’t done well at my expense (but with the new database they’re putting together, I expect they’ll find that he’s in a somewhat smaller majority than most of you suspect.)
So, news that I was in France and him in England probably led both of us to suspect it was a race to the English Channel. I was fully intending to move there Spring ’01 on the basis of 3-way negotiations with Germany and Russia that sounded very encouraging, but Germany had sounded equally convincing during the Western Triple negotiations with England, so I was hoping to confirm one or the other but England pulled me aside and we talked until the bell rang.
After the builds of fleets in Brest and London and two armies for Germany, I was hoping to make peace with England, and moved Brest to Picardy. It was not to be, and I spent a year or two in defensive mode while England grew at Russia’s expense.
On one of the fall turns, convinced G was welded to E, Burgandy tapped Munich for Russia’s gain, and it was shortly after that I enjoyed a brief (two year, I believe) period of growth which ended with taking London.
Who knows how long I could have held out were it not for the Italians sending everything south-west just as England was retaking London.
And, for the record, my NMR was not premeditated. I can’t say it wasn’t intentional. When the box was passed around to throw in the moves, I looked down at my pad to realize that all I’d written was the season name. I knew the game was over for me, and I didn’t see any reason not to speed the process up.
And Aash, if you were negatively impacted in some way (although it seems to me this would have helped you, since it meant Italy’s sudden growth which would force England and Germany to focus more on him than on you, no?), I can neither complain nor rejoice.
Ruhr!
Greetings from England!
Right off the bat, I heard that Russia was going to STP. France suggested to bounce in the channel, and I said that I would not bounce him. All I hoped for was Norway. Russia’s plans were thwarted when France did not open to the Channel.
France, though, built a F Brest, while Germany went with Armies. At that point I committed to Germany. France reinforced that decision when he attacked. Too bad for France that I had two armies on the island. With help from Germany, I punished both France and Russia for their naughtiness.
By that time, though, Italy was over running the Iberian and Germany was also having issues. I was trying to keep Germany alive, but he was in danger of collapse, so I had to help myself to some of his centers.
Germany managed to stay alive, so I helped him regain his home centers. I was stymied in the med by Austria. We had our line, but I was afraid that if I pushed on Austria, he would throw centers to Turkey, so I accepted the draw.
In general, I did what I said I would the entire game. I was even forgiving of France of his transgressions a few times.
I decided to open North as Russia because I had rarely done it before. I tried putting my orders in the box, then conducting my negotiations. At first it went well, I had agreed to DMZ both Galicia and the Black Sea, and a love festival was shaping up in the south.
I also had talked with both Germany and France about hitting England and received positive feedback from them. Then, France didn’t move to the English Channel, which meant England was getting a build and Austria moved to Galicia. Then Germany bounced me in Sweden, so I didn’t have a second build for fleet StP(nc). Fortunately I didn’t believe Austria’s offer to support me into Rumania, and bounced him in Warsaw or I would have lost in ’03. I learned in the process that the National Champion got to where he is today by being a big and consistant liar. I was in dangerous territory in the North with a English army in Norway and fleet in NwgS so I switched sides, offering England Sweden in the hopes that Denmark and other German territories would become too tempting for him to pass up. So, I moved to the Baltic, Lvn, and Silesia, then managed to convoy into Berlin. Unfortunately, France joined in the attack on England a year too late. This made allies of necessity out of England and Germany and turned my darling positioning of England in Sweden into a liability aimed right at StP. At this point I couldn’t see a great way of making things right with a German who wouldn’t consider taking English dots, and after a year I was facing a full court press for StP from England. Rather unwisely, I fought that, using units that would have prevented a stab in the south to bounce an English fleet out of (a German controlled!) StP, only to see an English army take it after I agressively resisted for a year and a half. I would claim some responsibility for the chaos in the North with my aggressive attack on Germany and forcing England to commit 4 units in to the taking of StP in the midgame.
Because I had emotionally and materially committed up North I was happy being the weak sister in the South, which is part of the reason I was taken aback by Turkey’s stab. I thought I had offered the best option to him, with the eventual cracking of the Ionian for the mere price of nothing, and a West still in chaos, so I really didn’t see it coming, even though the fleet Con had set off warning bells.
Good report, John.