[MN-dip] mn_std01 EOG

[Ry4an Brase]

Hi, all.

I think I'm just a face to face dip player.  I've heard speculation that
however you first play is your favorite way to play, and maybe that
doesn't hold for everyone, but it certainly does for me.  Email is too
slow and everyone has too much time to think -- games need time pressure
to force people out of the tactical and make them think about their
strategy in broad strokes.

That said, this particular game went pretty well for me.  I started off
wanting a game-long alliance with (old) Russia and he moved to the Black
Sea on me.  New Russia stepped in (thanks!), and he and I maintained
cordial if terse communications throughout.

I'm a firm believer that Turkey and Austria can never get along, so I
did what I could to poison Germany, Italy, and Russia against him with
whatever meager lies I could muster.  Once I started attacking Austria I
exchanged sent no press to him, which is probably poor form.  At this
point I was hoping for a FRT three-way, though Germany was off to an
early lead and France seemed to be shooting himself in the foot.

With Austria gone and Russia getting less communicative I decided that
GIT might be the alliance for me.  Germany and Italy seemed to have
France and England on the way down, and I could help Germany with Russia.

Things drug on, I needed room to grow, and I decided Italy just had to
be next.  By now France was almost done and England was on the rebound.
I started talking to both Germany and England about a GET and finally (I
think) bullied them into making peace.  I leapt against Russia and got a
thrilling four centers in a turn.

I never strongly considered making a solo shot, though perhaps I should
have.  I figured neither Germany nor England had made any major
mistakes, and I couldn't count on them doing so in defense of my solo.

Early on I made some silly attempts to hide my identity -- even going so
far as to remove the two spaces after each sentence ending punctuation
(which always flags you as someone who learned to type
pre-wordprocessors) and to avoid sending press after 2am.  As mentioned
I didn't guess who anyone was, though is suppose I should have known
that Germany was Zach given the lack of errors.

As mentioned, I'm happy to GM the next one if there are seven folks who
can agree on a rule set.

That said, let's get another FTF game planned -- Diplomacy as St.
Calhammer intended!