End of game Statement: Russia

First of all a big thankyou to John. Once of the first games he has GM'd on our site and I think he did
a fantastic job - consistent deadlines, good communication... good work John - I hope you run another.


Secondly, I have to think my allies Germany and Austria. Thanks Sam and Greg - 2 very good players who let me stab them at the right time.

This game was all about communication for me. In the beginning stages of the game, Austria (Greg) was a much better communicator with me that Turkey (Jyri). It made sense for me to work with Austria, attack and eliminate Turkey. Italy was initially onboard with this plan and sorry to Jyri but the writing was on the wall from the beginning.
In the north, I made peace with both Germany and England and was nicely sitting on the fence being very neutral.


Turkey eventually collasped and Greg/Austria stabbed Italy moving west and I thought about who i would work with in the north. In the end the decision was easy. Sam was an excellent communicator, and we traded many emails whilst Andy (NOTE to Andy - second game with you both times i've found poor communication) seemed to not wish to communicate. France had abandonded the game so I allied with germany, stabbed england in norway and the plan was for me to move on england whilst Sam mopped up in France. I kept trying to sow seeds of doubt between Austria and Germany but they were very focussed on their own problems and just would not move on each other. During this time, I kept promising to return RUMunia to my Austrian ally having snagged all of Turkey's SC but i deloberately kept my orders going so that I was holding onto Rumunia. Eventually Greg had to concentrate on Italy and could not afford the extra unit to come back and take it off me. This allowed me to stab Austria when i wanted too...

In the last stages, it was my own paranoia that eventually brought me the win. Sam and I had split the english and french SC very fairly but I just kept thinking that Sam was going to stab me, so I moved my fleet to Denmark to prevent him looping around behind me. Honestly at this point, I was willing to keep working with Sam but Sam took the move to denmark very personally and stopped all contact with me. It made it easier to then just attack him. Sorry Sam - you were an excellent ally. I then could see that with a few moves I could set up a 3 SC stab of Austria as long as I kept the Ionion sea. I immediately contacted Italy and Austria and negiotated moves with both them, so that I hoped they would not work together to steal the ION. They didn't. Sam had re-taken Munich (which was lossed) but allowed me to position my units so I could steal Berlin. This effectively had the game for me - and i just needed to submit the moves. Even though Austria NMR'd on the last turn, there were no moves he could have made to stop me taking those 3 SC. Germany - could have retaking Berlin if he ordered moves to SlL with support but that would have still left me with 18.

Thanks for the game, everyone.

Steve

Stephen Lytton
Knight of the Rose
www.diplomaticcorp.com


Sell your car for just $40 at CarPoint.com.au It's simple!