Firstly let me thank Chris for Gming the game so well & his quips on how he interpreted the moves.

Initially I had written to both England & France to see if I could make an alliance with either of them. To be honest, I was hoping to work with France rather than England, but I had a gut feeling after the initial correspondence that England would be a more solid ally & as it proved, I was right.

Got off to a flyer with 3 builds after the first year, but then had to move east earlier than I had wanted, as Russia was very nervous & told me he would be moving to Sil. I was hoping to ally with Russia to move against England once France was finished, but that wasn't to be.

Early on, (in my opinion) it looked like E, G & I would end up against A, T & R.

Once A was on his way out I wrote to him a number of times to see if we could cooperate against R/T, but he never bothered to reply.

Once A & F were out & R was a spent force, T & I tried so hard to get me to stab E (& I must admit, I came very close to doing so) but in the end decided it was not worth handing a 2 way draw to I/T & settled for "the bird in the hand"

A big thanks to E who proved to be a good ally, who early on had a chance to stab me in the "Low Countries", but refused the temptation. Thanks to everyone else & best of luck to you all in round 2.

Mick






-----Original Message-----

From: C Morse <camorse22(at)yahoo.com>

To: blitzforum <blitz(at)diplomaticcorp.com>; Bret Pollack <bret_pollack(at)hotmail.com>; Ed Bailey <EdBailey1946(at)yahoo.com>; Eric Palmer <eric.s.palmer(at)gmail.com>; Joe Babinsack <chaosonejoe(at)yahoo.com>; Mick Cox <mickstagman(at)aol.com>; Nick Saywell <nicksaywell(at)vip.hr>; Steven Cooley <tmssteve(at)gmail.com>

Sent: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 22:55

Subject: DC412 - Game Over!






Greetings, Gentlemen.




The votes are in and the AYES have it!  The DIAS passes.  Our official result is a 4-way draw including England, Germany, Italy and Turkey.




Final SC Tally:




England (:   Edinburgh, Liverpool, London, Moscow, Norway, Portugal, St Petersburg, Sweden.

Germany (9):   Belgium, Berlin, Brest, Denmark, Holland, Kiel, Munich, Paris, Warsaw.

Italy (7):     Marseilles, Naples, Rome, Spain, Trieste, Tunis, Venice.

Turkey (10):    Ankara, Budapest, Bulgaria, Constantinople, Greece, Rumania, Serbia, Sevastopol, Smyrna, Vienna.




I'll have the results posted to the DC site shortly.




I want to congratulate Mick, Nick, Eric and Steve for a job well-done.  That was as solid an EG as I've ever seen.  You quickly got over the stalemate line and pretty much forced the east to resolve as it did with Italy and Turkey set against you.  In my experience, it is a rare thing to see a IT pairing last into the mid-game, but there was little choice in this game.  Any break between those two and EG would have swept the board.  There might have been a chance in there somewhere for E or G to stab the other and try for the solo or a strong 3-way, but it would have been a risky proposition.  As it stands now, I'd say it will difficult but still possible for one of you to win the tournament.  A solo in round 2 would give you a few fractions of a point less than when I won two years ago.




Naturally, EOG statements are encouraged.  Please send directly to the group, and go ahead and include the blitzforum address, as well.  There are actually Dip junkies out there that want to hear what you have to say.





Finally, I'd like to thank all of you for being a great group to GM.  Only one NMR, and only one or two times where people were in slightly late.  If you've ever GM'ed, you know what a hassle it is trying to track down missing orders.  I really appreciate that there was very little of that in this game.  Best of luck to everyone in Round 2.  See you around!





Cheers,

Chris