Ya know I wasn't planning to write an EOG in this one due to my miserable performance but it was such a nicely done effort by Steve that I feel he is due that for his excellent playtest. This was truly one of the most delightful games I've ever played, in terms of GM'ing. The storylines were incredibly creative, and I had to wonder if Steve was reading thru 4 or 5 fantasy books while he made up all this stuff or if he was just making it up himself. However he came up w it, it made for a fantastic setting. Well done, Steve.

As far as game play goes tho... All this talk of Keys? Orchids? Yeah it made no sense to me, then thinking back, I do remember that I picked up some key, and hadn't thought twice about it. I was getting beat up by Jorge at the time, so keys and storylines were taking 2nd place to Jorge who simply was not open to negotiation - which really killed my game...

So now I went back and reread my mails from Steve to see where and when I got that key, and yes, I disbanded that army carrying the key having completely forgotten about ever receiving it. Disappointing. In myself that I got so discouraged by the lack of diplomacy in the game, and that I neglected the stories when I held such a powerful piece of it.

Fredrik - I think our conservatism to share anything beyond our relative borders hurt us. Had you told me you were being besieged from the east by Jorge, it would have totally altered my strategy. As we were, we weren't sharing much, and so I decided to try to take you out, and you went down incredibly easily given your double-sided attack. In hindsight I should not have made this move on you, and I should have used the Hatch / Swan passage to sneak-attack Matthew instead. This may have put me toward the upper middle of the board where I might have found the Orchid and won.

Then I met Frank, with whom I had many great talks, and we were on the verge of cooperating many times. I think what did it for me Frank (and why I went for Golf) is because of your constant insistence that I reveal the center of my land to you, a region that you really didn't need to know about unless you wanted to attack me. You say yourself in your own EOG that you revealed too much of your homeland, yet you repeatedly beat me up about my reluctance to share mine w you. Otherwise I would have loved to work more w you. I think we had some really good ideas.

Drew I owed a lot of my initial strength to, cuz we divided up a lot of centers and avoided early war. We lived in peace for so long that it didnt make sense to stab him when I knew I had a hostile Jorge to my east.

Matthew, I dont know why you sided w Jorge till he could take my centers, and THEN you stabbed him. That makes no sense. If you'd have turned on him while I was alive you would have done so much better. I would have helped you and you may have won for it.

Jorge, was disappointing that you were coming at me and nothing I could do would convince you otherwise. This proved to be my downfall. I do not believe in a closed door policy to negotiations, I think it kills the game somewhat.

Trout and Sam, I never once encountered either of you in this game! Tho I'm sure we were unknown allies if we were against Jorge.

Good game to all, and again Steve the stories and unexpected bits we found were great. The monster tho - I dont like randomness in Diplomacy - it is, after all, a game that has no randomness and that's part of the draw to it. So I guess, like Jorge not liking the raising of the key from the ocean, I didnt care for a monster moving at random. It makes for an element of chance you cannot interact with, and the Monster hit me right when I was at the crux of defending from Matthew / Jorge. It did some damage that I would have been able to mitigate better had it not been there. I think it hit me 2 or 3 turns in a row and totally crippled my northeastern defenses and sent me on a downward spiral. Of course had it hit someone else and not me I'd probly like it more. Perhaps if 10 monsters hit Jorge.

It's also a bit of a bummer that the turn after ppl eliminate me, everyone agrees to a mushy draw. So much work put into taking me out and then just call the game after a mere 2 out of 8 players had been eliminated. Woohoo. I wish I had been in it still since I actually wanted to play it out it was such a great variant. I probly would not have agreed to many if any draws if I was in the game just due to the experience of it all. Again kudos to Steve, I looked forward with great anticipation to every adjudication and reading about them, up until I hit my brick wall where I was simply outnumbered.

See you all next game,
-mike
Fuselage Survivors (who didn't quite survive after all)