Pictured: A four-peat was in the cards for the Italians early on. Here’s a look at the board in 1904. What went wrong?
One of the great things about the Weasels is that regardless of how frequently you play with us, when you’re ready for a game, you can usually find one. (Especially true during March Madness. Yesterday, we played our third game in three weekends!) Guys like Nate Cockerill and Don Glass and Matt Kade–while he lived here–deserve much of the credit for that.
Cockerill has played in 13 of 20 games this year. Glass has played in 11. Kade played in 10 before defecting to Berkeley.
The more guys we have like them who want to play Dip every chance they can, the easier it is to fill boards when guys like Craig Reges want to play.
Reges was one of my recruits from the old Dip World Yahoo group, where I dabbled prior to diving into the face-to-face hobby back in 2005. I found him there along with Eric Brown, Christian Kline, Kevin O’Kelly and Barry Johnson. Those first three have been core members of the club since our first season. We haven’t seen Johnson in five years, but he was fairly active in the early years, playing in 10 games and hosting three of them.
Reges, however, hasn’t played much with us. He’s a high school referree and umpire, so his weekends typically aren’t his own. He made it to CODCons in 2008 and 2011, but prior to yesterday, his only league game with the club was a bar game at Guthrie’s Tavern in March 2008. But he had an opening in his schedule yesterday, the Ides of March, and there we were with Game No. 240 in Des Plaines, our third offering in this year’s March Madness campaign.
Reges shook the rust off with an eight-center German board top. The game ended by draw vote in Spring 1909 in the following center counts:
Austria (Mike Morrison): 4; 7.547 points.
England (Mike Whitty): 7; 23.113 points.
France (Brad Harrington): 7; 23.113 points.
Germany (Craig Reges): 8; 30.189 points.
Italy (Chris Cantine): 0; 0.000 points.
Russia (Tony Prokes): 3; 4.245 points.
Turkey (Don Glass): 5; 11.792 points.
The supply center chart is here. Hopefully the players will chime in with their thoughts on the war. In the meantime, here are a couple of noteworthy items from me:
- Cantine ended a three-year run of Italian board tops in our St. Patrick’s Day game. Perhaps Italy was doomed when this year’s edition fell on the Ides of March?
- The game counted for score for six of the seven players. Weasels league scoring is based on each player’s best three results. Host Prokes was the only player who didn’t score. (Well, technically, Cantine didn’t score either, but the game counted for him.)
This week is another big one for the Weasels. We have a bar game scheduled for Thursday night at the Red Lion, and then a game at Peter Lokken’s home in Logan Square on Saturday. Lokken’s game is full, but there are plenty of spots open for Thursday, and we’d love to field two boards. Come on out. Shake the rust off. Maybe even top the board, like Craig Reges.
If you can’t make that one, don’t worry. When you’re ready, you’ll find the light on for you.
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The game was off to a good start, everyone showed up on time, we did a preference list and only one person ended up with a 5th seed choice. I took the country that I seem to have the most problems with (Russia) and had a good chuckle that Don Glass drew Turkey. Don and I always seem to have a problem working together. We both wanted to work together this game and solidified an R/T alliance. We didn’t even bother to hide it as SEV-RUM and ANK-CON were ordered for our fleets.
By Fall 1903 I realized four things:
1) Always do your best to hide an R/T for as long as possible.
2) Even when Don and I want to work together the board conspires to separate us as much as possible (see the map above)
3) An obvious R/T alliance will drive together a Western Triple so fast it’ll make your head spin… it gets worse when Austria & Italy play along with it, even after the strength of an R/T has obviously collapsed.
4) I made some tactical errors in Scandinavia which easily increased my downward spiral. This meant I needed to change my strategy if I wanted to survive.
I managed to stay alive for far longer than I had any right to. When Don and Mike questioned how I had managed to stay alive Craig helpfully answered by merely stating “He made himself useful”. There were several times I thought I was going to be ousted, however I kept managing to pick up a center every time I lost one, thus at the end of the game my three supply centers included Venice, Trieste, and Warsaw. At one time France had taken Venice away from me in the Spring only to vacate it in the Fall, his rationale was that he didn’t want to give me a reason or opportunity to slip into the EGF backfield and cause the havoc I had been causing to Austria.
All in all, I think it was a fun game had by all. Kudos To Mike W., Brad, and Craig for their strong alliance and holding it together. They vetoed the draw vote just long enough to make sure that their scores and supply center charts were all within one.
-Tony
It was a glorious start, but the Ides of March caused the ruin of Rome. Et tu Prokes.
Still getting used to this style of play. In the ancient days there were no draws. We played till someone got 18 centers. I see now that players will settle for less to get points and to get home at a decent hour. In college there were no decent hours; just first, second, third, and fourth watch, and if you fell asleep the centurion would beat you silly.
Fun game nevertheless. I am indebted to Austria for enabling me and mentoring me. Many thanks to Tony and wife for hosting and providing the fine feast.
Carthago delenda est!
I’d like to thank Tony Prokes for hosting a terrific event. It was a
great site and game and you couldn’t beat the hospitality (or lunch).
As mentioned, we used preference lists and I got my first choice of
Germany. Negotiations started quickly and everybody paired off quickly to talk. Except me. Talk about feeding your paranoia!
Anyway, Brad and Mike W got back to me pretty quickly and said that they suspected a strong RT was coming and that we should prepare.
That would naturally require me to bounce Russia (Tony) out of Sweden. I moved to allow that. After spring moves, as mentioned before, the RT was pretty evident. So for Fall, I made my preparations with EF and prepared to bounce Russia. And then I didn’t because I out thought myself as is sometimes my wont in this game.
I figured that Tony, knowing that I would bounce him out would probably move to Baltic and I didn’t want to do that dance. So I outsmarted him and held in Denmark. And then the lying, sneaking
weasel moved to Sweden, just like he said he would. Isn’t there some house rule somewhere that says you can’t do what you said you would do?
Meanwhile, Italians were in Trieste. Venice was to take a far ranging tour during this game eventually making it to Rumania as you can see from the photo of the board in 1904. Spring, 1902 was perhaps the height of the RT which seemed to fall apart rapidly (not due to stab but just due to pesky invaders). Meanwhile, Italy seemed to have plenty of time to annoy France and distract him. I had moved to Burgundy in S03 figuring to steal some centers from the French but the rapid disintegration of the Russian Empire convinced me to help him a bit. England had gotten knocked down to three in 1902 by losing Norway and managed to retake it in early 1903.
At this point I saw Russia slipping fast, Turkey not growing, and despite my invasion of France I wasn’t really sure that I could grab enough stuff before Italy did if I interfered so I pulled back.
Meanwhile, I struck a deal with Tony to give him back Norway in F03 since I figured it would prop him up and I really didn’t like the idea of four English fleets floating about. Three was bad enough. So I agreed with Tony that I’d support StP to Norway in the fall. Which I did but Tony forgot that it was StP I was supporting and attacked with Barents. So I had some ‘splainin to do. Fortunately, Mike W listened to my explanations for both letting Russia in Sweden in 1901 and this little episode in 1903 and agreed to keep the alliance going.
I got to five in 1901 and seven in 1902 and just stalled from there but no one else seemed to take charge either. Things were pretty balanced. In the end, though, Austria got into lots of centers but
was unable to hold them because he was spread all over the place. As well, as Tony said, he made himself useful and kept popping up in places where he could do damage (Trieste, Venice and Vienna all had Russian occupiers at some time or another). His units provided very useful distractions that caused considerable consternation in the southern powers at one time or another.
In Fall, 1905 the first draw proposal was made and Turkey vetoed it. I somewhat understood that one but it was also vetoed in 1906 and 1907. I was pretty sure it was Don doing the vetoing. I told fellow players that it was my mission to make him regret that decision. From self interest, I was on top so I was happy to end where we were. Especially since more time might make somebody else get greedy. From a results standpoint, Don did go from second place with six centers to fourth with five when we finished in 1908. I vetoed the draw in summer 1908 but only because I wanted to get England a seventh center. I thought he earned from me a share of second. Mind you, I had nothing to do with the actual giving, that was France. We really did all work well together.
I never felt particularly comfortable in this game because of the positioning but the EFG worked out very well for the duration of the game. My fears were unfounded. Tony played very well down the stretch, keeping himself alive and growing from two to three as the game ended. I was sorry to see Italy eliminated but circumstances were that he was England’s seventh. Whaddaya going to do.
I would like to thank all the other players for a fun time and again, Tony for hosting. I hope to see you all again soon. WIthout the multi-year wait maybe.
Thanks for the shout out Jim. I miss the weasels already! Though I have to admit that the Bay Area fellows are much friendlier. They let me get to 17 in my first game, instead of shutting me out mercilessly.