Welcome to our round 2 game, everyone!

For those of you who don't already know me, my name is Cory Burris, and I have been a member of DC for nearly 4 years. Most of my Diplomacy activity recently has been limited to GM duties, as the task of locating billions of dollars for a cratering state budget has taken up a fair amount of my time in recent months. I have the (mis)fortune of working in the budget office of the Governor of Illinois, who took office a year ago after our previous Governor was impeached and removed from office! No, I am not related to our state's junior US Senator, who was appointed by that former Governor before he was sent packing. Incidentally, given our state's backlog of unpaid bills, does anyone know a good way to find $13 billion fast?

Since this is a tournament game, there is a common set of rules and season deadlines that all GMs are observing. This can be found at www.diplomaticcorp.com/winterblitz -- be sure to click the "Rules" option near the top of the main screen once you go to this page. Timing is the same as in round 1; my deadlines will all be at 3pm Central (US) / 21:00 GMT.

An important note: when submitting orders, make sure to include the game identifier "dc-316" in the subject line, and also cc: the tournament's Orders box (orders-at-diplomaticcorp.com ([email]orders-at-diplomaticcorp.com[/email])) -- this is for your protection in case your e-mail doesn't get through to me, or if I am not available and need a moderator to run a turn. One of my players in dc-291 sent an e-mail that didn't arrive in my inbox for a day, but fortunately did reach the Orders box, saving him from an NMR.

Press is allowed and encouraged. For those who are unfamiliar with press, that is simply generic messages that are made public as a part of the turn's results. Typically, press is just generic silliness that may or may not pertain to the game. There is actually some good press in the dc-274 game, so you can read the different turns on that game to see some examples.

Don't forget to check out the game's page on the DC web site at www.diplomaticcorp.com/?game_id=dc316 -- I will update it after each adjudication. I will also e-mail each adjudication to everyone, as well as a .dpy game file for use in the Realpolitik adjudication software.

And now your lineups!
Austria: Matthew Jones (matthew.jones.d-at-gmail.com ([email]matthew.jones.d-at-gmail.com[/email]))
England: Michael Penner (mvpenner-at-yahoo.com ([email]mvpenner-at-yahoo.com[/email]))
France: Matt Ruhlen (mruhlen-at-hotmail.com ([email]mruhlen-at-hotmail.com[/email]))
Germany: Scott Ellis (crimson_93-at-yahoo.com ([email]crimson_93-at-yahoo.com[/email]))
Italy: Eric Brown (ecbrown88-at-yahoo.com ([email]ecbrown88-at-yahoo.com[/email]))
Russia: Marc Peters (madpeters-at-earthlink.net ([email]madpeters-at-earthlink.net[/email]))
Turkey: Mikael Johansson (m_don_j-at-hotmail.com ([email]m_don_j-at-hotmail.com[/email]))

The spring 1901 deadline will be Monday, March 29 at 3pm Central (US) / 21:00 GMT. Preliminary orders are strongly encouraged! Also, since Europe's clocks advance this weekend, we should all be back to our usual time difference. Mikael, please let me know if I'm still off an hour.

Thanks for playing, everyone, and happy stabbing!

Cory