Tony Prokes hosted our first Diplomacy event in Des Plaines yesterday, and it was a smashing success. We had two boards, plus an interested observer who dropped by for a few hours. The group included four novices, so we had a big board and a little board.
Game No. 175 was the big board. The sharks played in Tony’s basement, which is a nice gaming lair. And Tony continued two trends. For the second straight house game, the host drew Italy and topped the board. For a time, it even looked like he’d better Lokken’s massive Italy on the 3rd, and largely at Lokken’s expense. His Austria was out by 1902.
Interestingly, last year on St. Patrick’s Day weekend, Mike Morrison’s Italy topped a board at Ted McClelland’s home. Apparentely even the board wants to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day.
The game ended in Spring 1910 in the following center counts:
England (Don Glass): 2; 1.493 points.
France (Kevin O’Kelly): 9; 30.224 points.
Germany (Nate Cockerill): 7; 18.284 points.
Italy (Tony Prokes): 11; 45.149 points.
Russia (Mike Morrison): 3; 3.358 points.
Turkey (James Barr): 2; 1.493 points.
The newbies did the sharks a couple better in Game No. 176. First, on a beautiful March day in Chicago (and those are almost as rare as Don Glass board tops
), they played in Tony’s backyard. DiPaola even played in bare feet. Secondly, they actually played till Spring 1911. The game finally ended in the following center counts:
Austria (Ben DiPaola): 7; 23.558 points.
England (Brad Harrington): 8; 30.769 points.
France (Tony Ardolino): 6; 17.308 points.
Germany (Ted McClelland): 0; 0.000 points.
Italy (Ulysses Peterson): 5; 12.019 points.
Russia (Jeremy Wujcik): 3; 4.327 points.
Turkey (Justin Voss): 5; 12.019 points.
I was the 15th, which worked well, as I was able to run the game, answering questions, checking orders, and explaining the adjudication. After the Spring 1905 turn, I turned the game over to Lokken and went home. A couple of hours later, I got an amusing text from him: "Ted, Ulysses and Ben are all getting hosed by the new guys." We try to teach our Weasels well.
You can find the supply center charts for both games here. (I’ll add the Spring 1901 moves tonight.) Hopefully the players will provide some of the detail by commenting below.
Our observer was Mike Whitty, who lives in Wilmette. Whitty played at DipCon 21 in San Antonio in 1988. Recently, he’s been playing on playdiplomacy.com. While chit chatting, we had an interesting exchange.
"How did you hear about us?" I asked him.
"I heard about you on DiplomacyCast," he answered. "Then I did some research and found the Weasels."
When I told my wife that story, she said, "Wow, you’re like a Diplomacy celebrity." I don’t think she meant it as a compliment.
Whitty may join us at CODCon and really wants to make it to WDC.
Next up, Meghan and I are hosting a game on Saturday. Then Tony is looking for players for a game of Colonial on Sunday in Itasca.
Finally, thanks to Tony Prokes and Kevin O’Kelly for their recruiting efforts. Each recruited two new players. And special thanks to Terri, Tony’s wife, for putting up with us all day.
"Terri especially found it entertaining to listen to some of the conversations in passing," Prokes said.
Terri is a birdwatcher, but after a day of eavesdropping on us, perhaps she’ll become a Dip player watcher. No binoculars required.
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Almost forgot: Thanks also to Nate Cockerill for securing a prize for the top new player in Game 176. Brad received a copy of Carcassone with the river expansion.
I just wanted to send out a quick note of thanks for everyone that came out and either played, assisted in running the new player game, or just hung out.
It seemed that everyone had a great time, even Lokken who must have been so stunned at being taken out so fast that he forgot his Coffee Travel Mug.
While the new players sauntered outside to play in the sun, the “sharks” dove for deeper, cooler waters and played in our basement. With everyone’s agreement on the experienced player board, we tried out a new way to select powers which was a work in progress from the game at Peter Lokken’s house two weeks ago.
The opening moves were pretty typical, other than my opening moves for the second game in a row had the table talking, as I move VEN-TYR, ROM-VEN, and NAP-ION… obviously Peter was nervous as Austria, but I don’t think he really expected me to actually take TRI and keep pushing against him with some Russian and Turkish support.
All in all, a two board house game was fun to run. It was almost like a mini-pyle, just without the anthem being sung. Hrmm… perhaps next time. š
What’s the new system? I’ll need to game it somehow.
For power selection that is.
Matt, first country is drawn by a player, he views the country (privately), then passes it to his person of choice, who also views it privately. Thus only the passer and the receiver are knowledgeable of the exchange. Then the guy who just received his country picks another country randomly, and passes it to someone else in the same way. The last person to draw passes it to their choice recipient just like the others, except that they will receive, in exchange, the country that the receiver already had. So one person on the board will have actually had two exchanges. So theres a 1/7 chance that the country you receive will not actually be the one you will be playing with (1/7 chance of getting a second exchange).