Well, first of all a big French thank you to Michael for running the game so well. We had no GM errors in this game at all, and I know that is a great achievement. Everything ran like clockwork and that kept the game enjoyable to the end. Thanks also to all players for their contributions, but especially to England, Germany and Russia who gave me the best interactions.
Congratulations to Mike and Sean for their part in this draw.
So... How was it from my point of view.
As France it was clear that I would have to deal with the eternal E-F-G triangle. The first German player was somewhat flaky and not interested in this issue at all. He was hell-bent on destroying Russia for some obscure reason. I played on this and encouraged Russia to kill him in return, whilst plotting with England. Matt was a very good ally and we clicked quickly and came up with a plan to take out the German. The outcome of this was the German drop out. When Frank joined the game I remained determined to work with England to remove Germany and I remember telling Frank this. I was also poised to attack Italy, who had said virtually nothing to me throughout the game. However, at this point Matt got very greedy and advanced a plan that would give him 4 sc very quickly with me gaining nothing. I couldn't let this happen so worked a stab with German support. Matt was caught completely cold and I even scammed him with a not particularly honourable follow up whereby he disbanded a very annoying army that had retreated to Picardy. I gave up on the plan to attack Italy to focus my attack on England and I guess I was lucky that Brian was so focused on Turkey. This gave the space to throw a great many fleets northward.
Frank and I worked well together and gradually pushed England back and then when the right time came I went for the German centres too. This was a big gamble as together Frank and Matt were a formidable force to contemplate taking on. I think I judged it just right though, particularly as I had the help of Sean. Sean played a great game here and after a really poor start ended up holding the balance of power. He wielded this to great effect and I am happy to say I had his support for a lot of the middle portion of the game. His disruption of G-E operations in Scandinavia really helped me a lot.
It became clear at the start of the last game year that I was not going to be able to force a solo win, although up to that point I had very high hopes. Throughout the game R and T had been skirmishing and did not appear to have much of a working relationship and too many of the Turkish units were fleets. However at the end Russia and Turkey formed a good alliance (Russia saw my final stab coming a mile off) and Italy just folded rather pathetically. Italian actions really annoyed me as the Italian centres were just handed over to Turkey without any fight at all. Turkey grew at an alarming rate (finally getting some armies into play) and that was that. The way Italy played the last 2 years turned an interesting game into a stone dead draw. NMRs are always annoying but when coupled with play that is so ill-considered really wrecks a game.
Overall, DC302 was one of the good games- I will remember it fondly.
Simon
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