Hey everyone and welcome to this, the three-hundred and fourth game of Diplomaticcorp Diplomacy! (boy seems like I just put out one of these starts yesterday)... This is Camel Spotting! Played on the outstanding Ancient Med map. If you've received this email and you thought you were signing up for Camel Speaking, that's the next door down. Camel Spitting, unfortunately, was cancelled for reasons of liability.

Our goal here in this game is to spot camels. Lots of them. Tons. Well, maybe a few. Ok to be fair, there are no camels to be spotted anywhere in the game. But we'll still have fun trying. Along the way, we may pick up or lose some centers here and there and if someone happens to gather 18 - we'll call them the winner! Sound good?

Ancient Med is one of my favorite maps. It is such a simple design, yet perfectly balanced in every way. It's got a very neutral start, in that no particular power is really at a disadvantage like say Italy in the Standard game... each power faces two neighbors, one to either side, and two other powers further across the sea.

In most of my games I tend to do completely random assignments, and given none of you have played this map before I see no reason not to do the same here! So courtesy of some help from random.org, here we go!

ID : AlanRFarrington
Ctry : Rome
Name : Alan Farrington
Email : alley_cat_1990-at-hotmail.com
Location : ME, US

ID : ConradW
Ctry : Carthage
Name : Charles Welsh
Email : welsh_stroud-at-msn.com
Location : Ellicott City, MD, US

ID : nairenvorbeck
Ctry : Persia
Name : Benjamin Hester
Email : screwtape777-at-gmail.com
Location : DFW Metro, TX, US

ID : ponkwilliams
Ctry : Greece
Name : Robin Carroll-Dolci
Email : ponkwilliams-at-yahoo.com
Location :

ID : Presto
Ctry : Egypt
Name : Tim Miller
Email : thewizard.tim-at-gmail.com
Location : IA, US

Let's set the first deadline for next Thursday March 4, at 3pm Central US time (2100 GMT).
That's 1 week from today.

For this first turn, prelims are required. That is, you have to send me something asap, by early next week at the latest so I get something on file for you. Most of you will know that I don't send out reminders, and once we're out of the first year, NMRs will just fall how they do. Expect adjudications to be timely - no fluffy delays, extensions, grace periods, etc. Even tho you probly dont know what you want to do yet, just pick your best guess and send in prelims -every turn- It will save you someday for when you get stuck in meetings, your internet goes out, or aliens land in your back yard and steal your camels and you dont get to the game when you thought you would. In almost every case, it's better to have turned something in early so your units dont doodle about and hold for the turn.

I think that's about it for now! If you have any questions shout them out, and feel free to send out an intro or whatever for your country.
Enjoy,
-mike