Last year, we saw the savage destruction of three once-glorious empires. But this morning, birds were singing, the sun was shining, and my daughter informed me that she could hear dinosaurs approaching. Life goes on, heedless of the corpses of the fallen.

There are an awful lot of successful moves this season. Indeed, if you tally those *unsuccessful* tags from the adjudications, there are only eight this season:

*Bounce* - 4
*Fails* - 2
*Cut* - 1
*Dislodged* - 1

Everything else proceeds according to plan.

Adaria accounts for half of those *tags*. Neatly, he has one of each: bounce, cut, dislodge, and fail. Trigspor, in contrast, got everything he wanted, including a pop gun for Christmas.

As you can infer from the above, there is one retreat. It belongs to Adaria. So, Maslow, which will it be? Fleet Smyrna retreats to: Eastern Mediterranean Sea, Syria, or off the board. Due tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. CST.

A more sober assessment of the turn notes that Itea at long last ends the unoccupied status of the North Sea, while Adaria consolidates his French holdings. Zonotrichia moves to complete his collector???s set of Turkish home centers, and he swaps centers with Trigspor as well. But with vacancies in Budapest, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Trieste, there is certainly dynamic tension in the Balkans.

I don???t want to alarm anybody, but we???re finally coalescing around some of the familiar mid-game country identities from Standard diplomacy (with occasional oddities). Adaria = France. Trigspor = Italy. Zonotrichia = Turkey. Hembria = Germany. Itea = Were-Hamsters. Okay, so not everybody is a traditional power yet.

Spring 1905 Adjudication:

Adaria:
Lon to Yor
Yor to Lvp
Bre supports Mar to Gas
Mar to Gas
Pie to Mar
Mun to Kie (*Bounce*)
Smy H (*Dislodged)
ECH to Nth (*Fails*)
Bel supports ECH to Nth (*Cut*)

Hembria:
F Norwegian Sea S Norway - North Sea
F Edinburgh S Norway - North Sea
F Holland - Belgium (*Fails*)
A Denmark - Kiel (*Bounce*)
A Silesia - Berlin
A Warsaw - Silesia
A Paris ??? Burgundy

Itea:
F nwy - NTH
A mos - ukr
A stp - mos (*Bounce*)
A swe H

Trigspor:
F Ion -> Aeg
F Rom -> Tys
A Ven -> Tyl
A Tri -> Vie
A Nap Hold
A Gre -> Alb

Zonotrichia:
A Sevastopol - Moscow (*Bounce*)
A Armenia S F Constantinople - Smyrna
F Constantinople - Smyrna
F Ankara - Constantinople
A Bulgaria - Rumania
A Serbia - Greece
A Budapest - Galicia
A Bohemia S A Budapest - Galicia