Quick one for me, I'll reply to Michael's since it was the most relevant to my short existence...

He's right on that Britain sold the farm to attack me. Andrew told me pretty honestly that he was set on going for me no matter what, which was disappointing coming from such a reputable player. A closed door policy usually gets you nowhere in this game, and it got us both eliminated. I take solace in Britain being eliminated too. Good game all, particularly Michael for being ready to capitalize on the board dynamics to wipe out two players, and the others for locking down a draw. Of course it was perfectly GM'd for the short while that I was in it! Michael - perhaps a Spain working for you vs Egypt might have made some impact?

Anyways, 0 for 2 in Modern, definitely not my variant...
-mike






I echo comments about the GM - well done Alan!!

Interesting game, albeit it died a bit of a death towards the end. The game started for me with Britain offering the world if I joined him in attacking Spain. As Spain was the most notorious player on the site, I quickly decided to go with this, making a peace with Italy and Germany, my other nearest neighbours. The campaign against Spain went well but Germany and Italy started getting twitchy and turned on me...I managed to hold them off until Spain was finished, at which point the original British player left the game. Fortunately, it was around then that German and Italy were being pressured from the east, so they both wanted to cut a deal with me, and as a consequence I chose to go after the new British player, with a good degree of success. This put me in a good position to stab Germany and Italy - somewhat bizarrely, this was shortly followed by an offer from the German player to cede most of his centres to me in return for a survival and allowing him to go after/frustrate Poland - I'm not sure what went on there in the early part of the game, but Isaac was clearly pissed at Joey!

Overall, I guess I could have made a run at a solo - I made a superficial attempt with a limited stab of Poland - however a solo would have been very unlikely - there was no way I could have taken on both Egypt and Poland and I was rapidly reaching a stalemate against Poland anyway.

I think I was lucky in the game in having a strong, determined early ally, and the other subsequent twists and turns in the game fell kindly for me.

Thanks to the other players - hope to see you in future games!

Michael