Heya guys,

Figured I'd dive into the water here first with an EOG. My congratulations to Mike for the solo win... Although for me at least the writing was on the walls from the end of the first game year. As for myself, somehow I eked out a survival in this one which I humbly consider a small victory all in itself.

I think my first thoughts when I saw that I was Turkey and fully looked at the map was something along the lines of 'Damn am I screwed'. Sandwiched between Israel and Russia as it is, Turkey is very much the lame duck of this board. In fact, I can say with confidence that the only reason I managed to hang around till the endgame was because Russia went into CD and I had no northern front to contend with.

Before I get into map notes - strategy. This game was all about Israeli containment for me - and the result speaks all for itself. Until the last couple of turns, I threw everything I had at Mike and he just kept coming. Without assistance from Iraq to assist my efforts, Mike overpowered me at every turn. I managed to beat him to Lebanon early on, but knew that I wouldn't be able to hold it. After that, it was just a matter of the long retreat...

It was fairly clear from early on that Mike and Jon had formed an alliance - both agreeing to move north and not disturb the efforts of each other. Both Ray and I tried all we could to disrupt that - even in the end, out of desperation, telling them that I was going to throw the game to one or the other. At the very end, Jon suggested that he would hold my last unit in place to prevent Sims from taking it - but it was too little too late at that point and I had already agreed to help Mike win.

As frustrating as the game was though sometimes, I have to say that it was an interesting time. The variant has quite a bit of potential - if the map is tweaked in the right places I would love to be involved in the next playtest. Thanks to Tony for GMing, Jon and Mike for providing such brilliant adversaries, and Ray for being the guy on the other end of the line that I wrote to and said 'Well what the hell do we do now?'...

Cheers guys,

Trout