Welcome
to our round 1 game of DC Winter Blitz 2012, 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 over 5 years.  Most of
my Diplomacy in recent years has been limited to GM duties, as the task of
locating billions of dollars for a cratering state budget has taken up much of my time.  I work in the budget
office of the Governor of Illinois, an unenviable task, as Illinois recently passed California
as the US state with the lowest bond rating from Moody???s.  Even with a big income tax increase that took
effect last year, our state still can???t pay all its bills and balance its
budget.  Does anyone know where to find $5-$10
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/tournament.php
-- be sure to click the "Rules" option near the top of the main
screen once you go to this page.  Notably,
all spring deadlines will occur on a Monday, fall deadlines will be on a
Thursday, and winter adjustments will occur on a Friday.  GMs are able to choose the time when orders
are due, so for this game, I am setting all game deadlines at 3pm Central (US)
/ 21:00 GMT.

An
important note: when submitting orders, make sure to include the game
identifier "dc-408" in the subject line, and also cc: the
tournament's Orders box (orders-at-diplomaticcorp.com) -- 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 was actually some good press in the
dc-274 game, so you can read the different turns from 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_page.php?game_id=dc408
-- 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! We have a nice mix of experienced and newer members of DC for
this game:  Austria: Mike Hoffman (mrh-at-panix.com)
  England: Scott Johnston (johnston.scott-at-comcast.net)  France: Andrew Tanner (amtrating-at-gmail.com)  Germany: Alex Maslow (blueraider0-at-gmail.com)  Italy: Dorian Love (dlove-at-roedeanschool.co.za)  Russia: Brian Lam (briankingfox-at-hotmail.com)  Turkey: Timothy Crosby (tim_crosby-at-hotmail.com)

Please be sure to introduce yourselves to your fellow players.  Also, take note that two of our players are not based in the US, so keep those time zone
differences in mind when communicating with other players. The
spring 1901 deadline will be Monday, January 23 at 3pm Central (US) / 21:00
GMT.  Preliminary orders are strongly
encouraged!  Thanks for playing,
everyone, and happy stabbing! Cory