Hello everyone,

Sorry this has taken me so long to get around to but I managed to land myself
with moths of work to get done in 21 days. Needless to say, I managed to get
precisely three weeks worth done.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for an interesting game and special thanks to Mike
to for a great GMing job. No fuss, just a real ‘feel’ for the game. It can’t be
done better mate.

I think it’s widely accepted that it takes a little bit of luck to do well in
Diplomacy and, as we all know, luck evens out in the end. This has to mean that
I’m going to get creamed in the second round and in every other game I play for
years to come!

I had luck in spades here and I admit to being a bit embarrassed by it all.
Whether it was Alex and Jason’s NMRs, misorders that worked out better than the
ones I had planned to issue, Will and Jean-Luc’s seeming inability to conclude
any kind of deal or Garry’s ‘scented earth’ policy toward the end, it seemed I
was living under the protection of some reverse version of Murphy ’s Law. One
where everything that could go right, did go right!

Reading the runes of the opening diplomatic round, my decision was to go along
with the G/I/R triple which had been proposed and to regard G/R as the primary
relationship within that. This was based on slow communications from Austria
and strong rumours, which soon proved accurate, that England and France weren’t
getting along. This implied an opportunity for early gains in the North and
dictated close cooperation with Germany. I also tried to keep an open mind
toward working with Turkey but this ended quickly when, having first agreed to
DMZ BLA, Alex made a fall ’01 pitch to be allowed into that area. Serious
thoughts of a Turkish alliance died right there.

As it turned out I stuck with these decisions right to the end but this was far
from intentional let me tell you. In fact I was well down the road toward
switching my main allegiance to Italy and to stabbing Germany when our Kaiser
to beat me to the punch by shifting against me first! It may be that Will just
wasn’t getting that warm fuzzy feeling from our alliance. Either that or
perhaps he had gotten wind of my, not yet immanent but certainly coming, stab.
On the surface G/R was going well enough but, though mostly small and
surmountable, the number of disagreements was growing all the time. One of
these was certainly not small and it eventually led, I believe, to Will’s ‘NMR’.

I had for some time been asking for a German move against France to distract
any idea Jean-Luc might have against Italy but there was always delay. My
reading was that Will was promising anti-Russian moves to France and anti-
French ones to Russia. Eventually he ran out of room for manoeuvre and so chose
a diplomatic NMR instead of committing one way or the other. This was, in my
opinion, brilliant play from Will’s point of view but to say that I was not
happy would be putting it mildly! It also indirectly caused another,
subtle, change in our relationship.

Although it had had no bearing on my choice of ally I had, up to that point,
thought Will was a fellow Englishman because of the time stamp on his emails
and because of the times of day when he seemed to be online. Around this time
however he wrote a message which included the noun ‘cookies’ and I realised I
had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Cookie is an American word we all know of
course but it simply does not get used in anything other than a computing sense
here in the UK.

Anyway, I had responded positively to an invitation from Garry that we might
consider a two-way I/R finish instead of the three-way G/I/R. Actually, VERY
positively is a better description but my problem in pushing on with this was
France. I wanted to ask Jean-Luc to join a partnership against Germany but it
was very difficult to believe that anything I said to him would remain
confidential between us. Then, after Will had aimed his units at Russian supply
centres, it quickly became clear that Jean-Luc preferred to try to gain
Germany’s trust rather than work with me.

This left things looking pretty bleak. If France was openly telling me that he
would work with Germany against Russia then he must be telling Germany the same
thing and this could only encourage Will to press on with his plans against me.
Will had written immediately after his move against me to explain his motives
but his initial response to my, “Let’s fix this”, suggestion was so lukewarm
that it didn’t give me much hope. I thought it signalled a lot of confidence,
not only in his position against me, but also in his anti-Russian alliances. I
calculated that this must mean Italy was in on it. Garry has never said
anything to confirm this but I’ve more than a sneaking feeling that this
assessment was correct.

Whether I was, in fact, right about this or not the plan to stab Italy grew out
of that thought and did not change when Will suddenly became a lot more
interested in talking about a way forward for G/R. Stupidly, I did not believe
him but it later became clear that he meant it. It looks like he and Jean-Luc
had had a falling out and it was this that saved my beacon.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that France was the centre of gravity
throughout this whole game. It was his row with England that dictated the early
plans of everyone in the north, my fear that he might attack Italy and so leave
me without an effective ally in the south that caused me to press Germany to
move against him, his pro-German, or at any rate aggressively anti-Russian,
stance that prevented me moving against Germany and his fall-out with Germany
that eventually kept me alive when I might have been squashed.

I really enjoyed playing this game with Jean-Luc. His messages were always
either interesting or entertaining and I really respect the way he never gave
up pitching his ideas including an almost daily stream of reasons why I should
claim the solo. One of his earliest notes told me that I was a liar, an idiot
and that he didn’t like the way I played the game. Just in case I was left
wondering how he felt about me, he then signed off with the email equivalent of
slamming the receiver down. This was not to be the last time he ‘put the phone
down’ on me!

Jean-Luc I heartily apologise for all the anger I caused you. I hope you know
it was not meant and that it absolutely certainly was not personal. In fact I
tried really hard not to lie to you at all throughout the game. I think I did
OK in that attempt but you may not agree I suppose. One apology I certainly do
owe you though is in voting for the final outcome. I guess that my good fortune
put me in a situation where I could have insisted that you be allowed to
survive but I just went with the path of least resistance and voted as I did.

That vote meant that Will finished with a good result which was the least he
deserved in my opinion. It seemed to me that Germany was in the diplomatic hot
seat almost throughout the game and always facing heavy criticism whatever
choices he made. In the end however he talked me out of wanting to move against
him, didn’t produce a knee-jerk reaction after I took EDI and showed a lot of
courage in making a choice to stick with Russia on diplomatic grounds. Yes he
took risks, but the results show that he made the right decisions and that,
ultimately, is the test. I’d say Will is the true winner of this board and he
didn’t have the benefit of outrageous quantities of luck either!

I would also like to play tribute to Garry. He came up with a great strategy
that not many would have gone with. By laying dot after dot in my path and
forcing me to the point of having either to leave him alone or to give Germany
strategically important SCs and so risk my own position. I thought it was brave
and brilliantly executed. I learned something from you mate. I know you were
frustrated with me when I stabbed you but I’m immensely grateful that you were
even more frustrated with someone else when he didn’t stab me!

I think, and really hope, that everyone from this board will do well in the
second round. Obviously I hope that includes me but, if there is a God, I’m
headed for the drain!

Good luck,

Paul.

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