First off congrats to Dan, a well-deserved DCI win, owed mainly to some good play in the 2nd round. For me, the game kinda went in two phases... call them phase 1 and phase B.

In Phase A, I was thinking about how to approach the game, in any sense other than it just made sense for me and Clark to attack Jorge, cuz Jorge had won in round 1, and we had to outperform him in game 2 to have any DCI chances. (This is where tournament play did alter my strategy a bit). Eventually tho, for some reason, we all came to the idea of opening in a triple. It took a lot of convincing on the part of all parties, but I think ultimately, Jorge wanted to see my fleets go into the Med, cuz two of his opposition for the DCI were Mikael and Dan, so he surely wanted to see them hit before himself... and so we (after a lot of back and forth) agreed Jorge would open hard to the north, I would open straight for the Med (passing up on Iberian centers in 01) and Clark would open to the Baltic Sea and set up a capture of Sweden real quick.

It all worked great in 01, we got the jump in every direction. At this point I started talking to Mikael, to see if he'd want to work w us on our team, and go for Turkey, or if he wanted to fight me instead... and we didnt really beat around the bush too much, he pretty much said he was going to shore up against me - before I'd even made a move against him. I would have liked to see what would have happened if I'd been given the chance to go against Turkey, my original preference... overextending the French navy clear to the east. Who would have stabbed me and when?

It was bad enough, at one point France had 6 fleets and a single army, and was ripe for an invasion many turns. If I'd gotten my fleets that far into the Eastern Med, it would have been even that much more appealing, but alas, nobody made a move against me! Despite spending multiple rounds completely exposed, my allies stuck with me, and this really enforced my committment to stick with them.

Then we had a few botched orders, which really messed up our team, mainly by playing with peoples' minds I think. After the initial conquest of StPete, Jorge made the "doh" blunder of being over-aggressive, and trying to take Livonia before securing StP for a fall turn, and he walked right out of StP leaving it uncaptured. This left a Russian fleet alive way longer than it should have been, and really slowed us down. Then, Clark started ordering a bit conservatively, keeping a fleet posted in Sweden instead of moving it back into the Baltic, and then Jorge started keeping a fleet posted in the North Sea. All of these were just cascading conservative measures, and what happens once the trust gets tainted in some way. I was still confident at this point that both parties on my team trusted me, and so I kept my push into the Med going... leaving my north shore wide open. But eventually the breakdown between EG was too much to overcome, so I had to pick one side or another... i.e. Phase 2.

Being that I had not a single army, I really couldnt stab Clark, (by design) and so I made the shift north towards England. He tried (somewhat successfully) to get Austria and/or Turkey on his side, to deal a crippling blow to Germany and lighten the pressure on himself, but I think it was too little too late. Even if Austria had gotten a good stab into Germany, our 5 fleets outnumbered the English fleets by 1, so we would have succeeded against England in time. It did surprise me the turn Jorge helped Nigel into Sweden instead of himself, since that cost him the necessary equalizing fleet which could have gone right into Liverpool.

Then we had a few flipflops from Austria... and I never really knew whos side you were on Garry! (true Diplomacy - I think that is how the game is best, always fluid and dynamic) Sometimes you were with me and Clark, other times you were with Jorge, but the good thing for me, was that Dan stabbed you... then you tried to work with him again, and he stabbed you again. I'm not sure how things would have played out differently if Dan had not made those stabs - you would have gained ground in Germany, Dan would have had to work around the edges, and with StP and the Med blocked, there wasnt a good path for Dan to keep growing in that plan. In any case, I'm glad the stabs occurred, cuz it turned Austria around from the German front, and after that it was all downhill.

We did consider trying for a 3-way AFG instead of FGT, but once Turkey had pillaged most of Austria, that became too much of an impossibility. I also considered what I could get that would be better than a 3-way draw, and my conclusion was: nothing. With Turkey destroying Austria, I felt Turkey was going to lodge himself squarely onto 13-14 centers, and a pretty impenetrable position. He didnt have Italy, so it wasnt technically a stalemate line, but it would have taken a good 10 years of play to try to push him back, and MAYBE score a 2-way, but it was just too hard to pull off once Turkey is that big. So I figured the 3-way was the best result I could get, so I took it.

Good game to all, excellent GM'ing as usual by Steve, congrats to Dan for the win...

-mike