Hey everyone, and welcome to the 4th Annual Winter Blitz!
This is about to be the best Winter Blitz ever. We've got 70 entrants for a whopping 10 boards of play! I will be one of your hosts - my name is Mike, and along with my Co-TD Garry we will be bringing you this little tournament. If you have any questions, concerns, or even compliments, send them on to one of us and we'll get back to you ASAP.
This year our tournament is going to be put on by 6 returning vets from the WB10, plus 3 new GMs for this year. That's Christine, Cory, John, Fredrik, Vegas, Darryl, Chris, Hamish, and Brian. Remember to tip your GM! Without their help the WB would not be possible. Of course if you would like to be a part of a future WB team just let us know...
Also just for 2011, we have a special bonus as thoughthammer.com has offered to sponsor our little event by upping our prize fund by 50%. This should make the competition all that more fierce - and remember even if you have a bad showing in round 1, stick around for round 2 as there are separate prizes for each round.
Now before we get started, a few things to go over...
* If you cannot play, now is the time to let me know!
* Remember this is a speedy tournament (for PBEM). Time is of the essence. GMs are not going to track you down for orders each turn, they will just put out the results w whatever they have turned in. There is no Civil Disorder, so if you NMR, you are still in the game and can continue to play on! Never give up - never surrender!
* If you ever spot a problem with an adjudication, it is imperative that you bring it up quickly. There is a 24-hour hard cutoff for bringing up any issues in a game. Once 24 hours passes, the window to bring up any errors in the adjudication is closed, and things will stand as adjudicated. Also if you do raise a challenge, be able to respond readily to your email. In order to keep the games on track, we have to close any issues shortly after we open them.
* When submitting orders, be sure to copy orders(at)diplomaticcorp.com every submission. This can only help you, and failing to do so can only hurt you. 1) It is a backup, in case a GM cannot find your orders, to which we can look to see if something you sent just got lost. And 2) it is there for when a GM is not available and we, your moderators, have to cover a turn for them. In such cases, we will adjudicate with whatever orders we find were copied to orders(at)diplomaticcorp.com. If yours weren't, they will not be counted in those cases!
* Winter retreats and builds are combined into one turn, every Friday. Do not wait for retreats to turn in your builds, cuz once retreats come out, the build turn is done! If you're not sure if you'll get a build or not, (a retreat could alter the course) then turn something in, just in case. You can use conditionals, like "If he retreats here, build this, but otherwise build that."
* Each member has been subscribed to the Winter Blitz forum with a Weekly Digest. This means each Saturday, you should get an overall email summarizing all the adjudications and everything that went on the past week. If you *don't* want to receive this weekly email, you can adjust your subscriptions in your profile. Note any press or general interest stuff that you post to the Winter Blitz forum will go out to all 70 members and our administrators in that weekly digest. You can post two ways - either via email, to blitz(at)diplomaticcorp.com, or by visiting the site - but make sure you don't send your orders to the blitz forum!
Stay tuned, you should be hearing from your GM in the next day with your game starts.
Enjoy,
-mike
