Congrats to Scott and thanks to Mike--another great job GMing as always. I want to say that this game was a bit of disappointment for me in how it was played out by most of the players.

I also wasn't crazy about the map and layout of the powers but on thinking about it I think it was more how the players played this game than the game design. The map appeared to be too small and too overcrowded to me but on reflection I think it has more to do with the players lack of communication that kind of soured this game for me. Except for John and Scott, no other players wrote me regularly. Here is how the game went for me.

Trout and Jerry allied against me from day one so I never really had a chance to try and ally with either power. Jerry was especially non-communicative, basically telling me that I shouldn't bother trying to talk to him. Trout only talked to me after it was obvious that I would not be taken out. However, he would only ally with me if I returned his centers to him. Sorry, but that's not how Diplomacy works--its strictly a cash and carry business--you want me to do something for you, then you have to do something for me now. Trout's offer was return my centers and then he'd talk about our alliance.

Quite frankly I never believed that the Jerry/Trout alliance was ever over and until I saw a real fallout between those two I wasn't giving Trout anything--besides I was the aggrieved party, why should I give up centers because Trout's stab of me didn't work--that's hardly my fault?!?--I also never had more than five centers anyway, Trout should get them from Jerry, his ally. Jerry had more dots than both of us combined.

Scott, John and myself formed an early alliance as we realized that no one else was answering our notes. The alliance worked out well at first as John and Scott made progress while I was barely able to hold off J/T with their help. All was not well in our happy little alliance--Jerry started to take more than his fair share from Scott and myself gambling that we had little choice but stay with him.

John was certainly right in my case--I had no choice but to stay firmly allied and I couldn't reach Jerry in any case--Scott was between the two of us. However, Scott was not under the same threat as I was and he wasn't about to put up with John's new "two or three for me and one for you" philosophy regarding centers in this game. Scott attacked John and got the upper hand as John was distracted by other powers and Scott had me protecting his other flank.

Eventually with no diplomatic activity and a static front, I lost most of my interest in the game and Scott ran my armies for the last several years of the game. Trout you wrote me about stopping Scott but I had lost all interest in the game at that point and I really had no desire to survive as a measly little 4 or 5 center power when I felt Scott and John were the only players who played the game the way it was meant to be played. I gladly toadied to Scott and helped him win his solo.

What I found most disappointing is that no one else ever wrote me more than two notes other than Scott, John and Trout. A small mapped variant calls for lots of writing yet in this game there wasn't much at all. I've written at least twice as many notes already in dc201 "Mandate from Heaven" as I did in this much longer game dc162. If you don't want to write, you should not play in small variants then players should only play in the much larger variants like WWIV or imperial--there you don't need to write nearly as much.