Playing England today in Dan Burgess’ annual hockey day in Downers Grove event, Peter Yeargin netted the board top he needed to not only retake the lead in the league standings for Season 6 but also to potentially ice the Weasel of the Year award. Yeargin now has a lead of more than 20 points over Nate Cockerill.
The game ended after the Fall 1908 turn with the following center counts:
Austria (Peter Lokken): 2; 1.198 points.
England (Peter Yeargin): 12; 43.114 points.
France (Christopher M. Davis): 0; 0.000 points.
Germany (Mark Weiskircher): 11; 36.228 points.
Italy (Ted McClelland): 0; 0.000 points.
Russia (Nate Cockerill): 1; 0.299 points.
Turkey (Aash Anand): 8; 19.162 points.
The supply center chart is here. Hopefully the players will tell us how it all went down, and maybe Dan can share some of the hockey details as well.
Next up are games in Lincoln Square on the 19th and 24th and one in Lakeview on the 26th. Those are all full, but we’re trying to fill a second board on the 24th. Three of the four March Madness games are currently open. Take a look.
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Come on Jim! What happened to your plan of winning the cup with three solos?
Step 1: Lull people to sleep…
We had a total blast yesterday. The game got off to a late start because Nate was recovering from being burglarized the day before. (Which sounds very unpleasant.) But upon his arrival, we used preference lists to determine powers, and the play got underway promptly.
I’ll let the players talk more about the action on the board, but we watched a combination of English and Spanish soccer action before 2pm, when the Ottawa and Edmonton hockey game began. Both those teams are struggling this year, but we watched it anyway. Then at 4pm we put on more Spanish soccer to take us until 6pm when Toronto played Montreal. The Diplomacy ended around 7pm, and even though he had been eliminated hours earlier, Ted McClelland stuck around, and then we played two games of Wits and Wagers, with Ted spanking the group and winning both times running away. I want a rematch in Wits and Wagers Ted!
During the Diplomacy game I was able to track all the orders using RealPolitik and output maps in .png format, which I uploaded to our windycityweasels.org server, and then had players in each conference room refresh the web browser at the start of negotiations. It worked very smoothly, and a player or two who hadn’t enjoyed that before (I want to say Peter L, Mark, and Aash) remarked about how useful it is. I truly enjoy having the best negotiating accommodations for my guests and fellow Weasels.
The finale of the evening was Vancouver playing Calgary, but the only Weasels who stuck around until midnight were the hosts, your Prime and Sub-Prime Weasels who live in the house. Three of my fellow Canucks fans did join us for a joyous and raucous few hours down in the basement as our team from Vancouver prevailed 4-3.
More Diplomacy action is slated for March 5 here in Downers Grove, and as of this writing there are still three spots open, so please consider joining us!
After drawing Italy, I decided to go big or flame out, rather than hang around with 4 or 5 centers until Turkey finished off Austria and attacked me. I wanted to start with a bold move, so I proposed to Mark, playing Germany, that he open to Burgundy while I opened to Piedmont. Mark agreed. Unfortunately, Peter talked him out of it just before the deadline, and Mark never told me he’d changed his mind.
The army in Piedmont did make life difficult for Chris Davis in France. Two players told me he was going to self-bounce Spain and Gascony in Marseilles. So I supported Spain into Marseilles, robbing him of both a build and a place to build. This cemented the England-Germany alliance, which ended up dominating the board.
Peter Lokken as Austria had originally suggested a Lepanto, so he may have figured I was a worthless ally because I didn’t send an army in Tunis. Whatever the reason, he made the mistake of aiding Turkey, supporting a Turkish fleet into the Ionian. Turkey did have more growth to offer Austria in the short term, but whenever Austria or Italy help Turkey grow, they’re just setting themselves up for a stab. At a point when four-center Turkey was spread out between Italy and the Balkans, I offered to support Peter into Rome, telling him he was mad to allow Turkey to grow to six centers, but he refused. Just before I was eliminated, I convoyed A Naples to Albania, mainly to give Peter a hard time. (Who called that “a sick move”?) Sure enough, Turkey stabbed Austria, grinding him down to two centers by the end of the game.
This was my 5th or 6th game as Turkey this year. I started off by making a DMZ BLA agreement with Russia, which we both honored, and soon Austria wanted in on the alliance and we decided on an R-A-T right from the get-go. Austria got Greece and I waited a couple years after BUL for my next build (Rome). Through a lucky set of moves I also got Naples the same year to go up to 6. I build 2 fleets and went into the Med. Since Italy had convoyed their last unit from Tunis to Albania, I was able to walk into Tunis. I also stabbed Austria for Venice and Greece (hoping to go up 3) but unfortunately I told Russia about this plan 30 seconds before negotiations ended and he walked into my empty Bulgaria to help himself to some of the spoils. Not to worry, I continued charging forward after renegotiating peace with him (by offering him Vienna as I was in Trieste and BUD as well), but again he stabbed me for Serbia (declining my offer of Vienna) despite this not getting him any gains (since the strong E/G was eating his Northern centers). This was the most surprising development for me. Instead of working together to stall E/G and A who had loaned his last 2 units to the highest bidder who was not Turkey, we were all fighting each other and E/G took advantage of this to get up to 11 and 13.
P.S. Ted – I was the one who called the move “sick”