Hi everyone,
After 10.5 long years of fighting, Europe finally finds itself at peace, but in a radically different world. The complex pre-war balance of power is over, and is replaced by a new much more simple one: Austria and England must maintain equality. The former great powers of the world lay slain at their feet, and the future will see two uncomfortable monarchs suspiciously eying each other.
Before we get into it, let me answer the question you've all been thinking about; just who were those ruffians that you played with?
Austria was Charles Welsh, aka ConradW
England was Shaun Goodwin, aka ShaunAnthony1
France was Garry Bledose, aka garry.bledose
Germany was Patrick Cloutier, aka BaronVonPWN
Italy was Simon Langley-Evans, aka Slangers
Russia was Alan Collingwood, aka RAlanc
Turkey was Fabio Izzo, aka fhizzo
Congratulations to Charles and Shaun! And thanks to everyone else for sticking it out to the end - great to have a game untouched by NMRs. Patrick of Germany deserves a special amount of praise as his homeland was invaded in 1901, but he came oh so close to scraping a survival, lasting all the way to 1909. I've never seen such a two-sided game before, and certainly never one which ended in a 17-17 draw. I also personally really enjoyed GMing a gunboat game. It is slightly more work than a regular game but not unmanageably so, and I found it to be an incredibly rewarding experience given in gunboat you actually know more than the players!
EOG time! I'll have my own personal EOG down the bottom, with my thoughts on the events which unfolded. But the rest of you are encouraged to submit your own! In fact, please do! I want to know how y'all approached this game and your thoughts at various different stages.
The future... plenty of interesting games up on DC right now. There's a standard game, a standard game but for veterans (I'm GMing that one!), a Fog of War, a Colonial game (thanks Shaun!) and Ancient World variant. Sign up quick! http://www.diplomaticcorp.com/recruiting.php. A lot of my games are also coming to a close at relatively similar times, so what should I run next? Could do another gunboat, but I'd prefer to play myself in the next one. My current plan is to GM a Sengoku variant once a few of the current games on the site have filled, but open to suggestions!
I think that's everything. Site will be updated as soon as I hit send and final map attached. Thank you all for such a wonderful game!
Best regards,
Dan
GM EOG: I think a large part of what happened in this game can be traced back to Russia. Diplomacy is ultimately a game where the butterfly effect reigns supreme, and Russia tried to do everything early game. Declaring war on both Austria and Turkey as well as failing to take advantage of an empty Norway led to all neighbours bar Germany disliking Russia which saw his demise. But Austria and England were greatly strengthened by Russia's overextension, which allowed them to get the headstart they needed. Turkey was confined to his home from 1902 onwards and was basically Austrian chow onwards, while France and Italy just weren't able to keep up with the rapid expansion of Austria and England. They both placed a bit too much faith in their initial alliance. That said, this game had some amazing twists which really changed the course of the game. It must have taken balls of steel from Garry to attack Munich in 1901 when he had an England in the Channel and Wales, but it paid off in the short term. Be curious to know what the reasoning was behind Shaun choosing to work with France over Germany. Austria and Italy's sudden truce after it felt like they were in forever war was also amazing, I was surprised to see that. But once England stabbed France and Russia didn't disband her southern fleets like Austria requested, the jig was up for everyone who wasn't Charles or Shaun. The pendulum definitely swang around a bit and there were times where I was convinced one or the other were going to solo, but all in all, the two-way feels fair as it would have been unbelievably harsh for either to not be a part of the victory.
Just my views. Please feel free to disagree with me! |
