Seven of us gathered at Peter Lokken’s home in Old Towne to play some Diplomacy. Peter had literally just moved into his new apartment the night before. Luckily it was only two doors down from his last place. Presumably, Peter gave the reason for the move as wanting more space. However, when pressed more, he let on that he just felt like he needed more windows. We all love some light, right? It wasn’t until later in the day that he happily pointed out that the apartment directly across the courtyard from his wall full of windows is more than likely a porn studio. We all should have a wall of windows like that!
Anyway, back to the game as it was actually a very interesting game and had a few major shifts that led to some frustrations by a few players and an early departure by the Cockerill when he still had a couple of Austrian dots still on the board. The game ended around 5pm after Fall of 1906.
The final center counts were:
The supply center chart is here.
Let’s hear from the players. Probably have some interesting commentary on this one.
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This was an interesting and fun game though frustrating for some. We started out in typical weasel fashion… late. But the countries were chosen randomly and I had the (mis)fortune of drawing France. Why misfortune you say… well it’s the country I probably have the least experience playing and for some reason I never do well with it. Peter Lokken after groaning of having pulled Italy actually declined a trade. Yep, I’d rather play Italy than France, go figure.
My game went South pretty quick as my opening to Burgundy was seen as an act of aggression by Peter Yeargin (Germany) who then allowed Chris (England) to take over Belgium. The thought on this was initial talks was that Peter Lokken (Italy) was going to move to Tyrolia… my move to Burgundy was to help cover Munich for Yeargin. However, two things happened 1) Lokken didn’t move to Tyrolia and 2) Yeargin during discussions preferred me to not move to Burgundy. Tactical/strategical error #1, but not insurmountable. And this was the first turn of the game.
Well I managed to recover, and the Southeast section of the map was in utter chaos with Russia and AH threatening to eat up Germany very quickly. This while I as France built two fleets and actually managed to gain control of Gulf of Lyon, MoA, and Spain(S.C.) with fleets. It was at this time that I made my second more costly strategical blunder… I reversed my fleets and headed for England. Why? Stupidity and gullibility…. I let Lokken (Italy) convince me that we could have peace despite the positioning of our fleets and that Chris (England) was going to stab me while working with Russia (Nathan Kos). So within the year I had landed an army in Liverpool but allowed Lokken control of the Med which ended up costing me in the long run Mars and Spain.
The other nail that sealed my fate was that Peter Yeargin actually managed to survive against Nate Cockrill (AH) and Nathan Kos (Russia) due to Russia backing off of Germany to pursue a vendetta against Chris (England) for invading St. Pete. So Yeargin instead of going 3/5/2/0 on the scoring chart … well you can read it, but the result was FAR different. Nathan’s pulling back had the opposite effect and ended up with him getting eliminated.
In an unforeseeable and what I thought was out-of-character action, Nate Cockerill actually left the game without telling anyone and had his units go into civil disorder (once we tracked him down on his cell phone). Considering where his units were, I think this just helped Yeargin solidify his position as the board top.
Again, my game was pretty much over, but as usual I stuck it out tenaciously and kept annoying Chris with my single army on his home turf. It took four units and 5 turns since the army invaded, but he finally caught up to and destroyed the French army that was devastating the English countryside.
So some lessons learned for me at least as well as a better handle on how to utilize France some more. Also, don’t listen to anyone in the club named Peter… somehow they manage to squeak out of tight situations.