Their there.

13 people, sign up, sign up!

I promise to support whomever will be our 14th player to belgium upon request

^ careful for this guy. 6th at the World Dip Con. Please come to Groningen and we'll beat him together.

What's the best airport to come in to for this?

Groningen, if you can find a ticket to that small airport.
But if you come to Amsterdam, I will personally pick you up and drive you two hours to Groningen, and drop you off at the airport. That would be quite something.

For foreigners considering to come, please note that we have an Open Dutch Championship lined up on 6/7/8 November, so if you want to have fun in Amsterdam *and* have a chance at a genuine title, then is your chance.

Do go there. It will be awesome!

"a genuine title"

You mean I can have a shot at becoming Sir Tin Can??

Only 1.2k USD! Anyone know how to make a kickstarter?

Also, do I need to know any Dutch? As an American citizen I actively shun learning other cultures or languages.

Dutch people like to pride themselves on their (usually not so) flawless English skills, and what better time to demonstrate this then during a game of diplomacy. You might be forced to listen to the occasional alien jibberjabber when we resort to speaking dutch during breaks however

While incredibly fun-sounding, it doesn't look like I'll make it. I'll do my best to get you a 14th though.

Hi, where is the Open Dutch on 6-8 November ? Can I already sign up ?

Dutch open is in Amsterdam.
Yes, you can sign up on Facebook, either in the Netherlands Diomacy Association group, or in the Diplomacy in Europe group.

Best place to sign up is the mailinglist. This ensures you get all updates too. Facebook can be a bit opaque sometimes as to which updates it decides to show you.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/nederdip

Bump

I am the 14th! Vecna, you owe me a support to Belgium :)

mission accomplished, luring people in with promises of metagaming

2 boards. :)
But victory went to a non-webdipper... Let's get more of us to come next time!

Out of 14 people,
How many webDippers?
How many first time F2F?
How many first time Dip at all?
Why are all the webDippers over there so bad?

To answer your questions;
-5 webdippers I think? Thewizard, captainmeme, MoW, Grey Area (if im not mistaken by his account) and me
-3 players had their first ever game of diplomacy, but it was quite obvious someone spent -a lot- of time preparing them quite properly. Most of them seem to have caught a certain virus and are allready trying to plan the next event. I think another player was new to f2f but has been playing online before.

As to your last reply, randomness decided that all webdippers that played were on the same board (thewizard sat out to DM seeing how we actually had 15 players show up).

Also as a public service announcement, stabbing captainmeme is not a good idea since he will live to make you regret it

Excellent to hear!

One time I stabbed Capt for a couple of centres and he somehow built twice anyway. 10/10 would stab again.

After stabbing for brest he convinced me to vacate it again, only for me to restab at brest in the fall of the same year. What followed was probably the most friendly and polite conversation ive ever had about ways how we could and would stick it to eachother. After a few years of this discussion and a magical cat and mouse game where I had to chase a french fleet all through my english home centers and upto norway I had to settle for finally making true on my promise further up in this post to support him to belgium (being our 14th player and all).

Entertainment was had by all as they saw me crumble from board leader to medriocrity all because of that one fleet causing a chain reaction.

Actually there were 4 newbies, nicely split up over the two boards. And I was the one preparing them, so they did me proud! And the board without any webdippers was probably more interesting :-)

And of course the webdippers did their recruiting as well and so here I am.

Welcome!

Thank ye thank ye

I just got back from the Netherlands, stayed a few days more in Groningen after this game.

I had a fantastic time! I don't speak a word of Dutch, but everyone there spoke pretty much perfect English and made me feel very welcome. I was pretty tired throughout, shown by my mistaking the TD (TheWizard) for Germany in 01 leading to a confusing conversation for both of us, but I still enjoyed it immensely :)

I played France in the game, and together with Vecna (England) and a new player (Germany) set up a Western Triple which took Venice in 1901, thanks to the Italian moving Rom-Nap instead of Rom-Apu. We came up against a pretty strong ATI which put a Turkish army in Italy in S03 and we didn't make much progress in the south, at which point Vecna stabbed me for Brest and Germany told me he'd prefer to stay out of that fight.

At that point I turned around and managed to stay on >=4 centres for the rest of the game thanks to England letting me retreat to NAO and giving me a lone fleet which captured Liverpool, Edinburgh, Denmark and Holland by itself. Turkey and Austria in the meantime dismantled and eliminated Italy and Turkey started advancing into Iberia, but agreed to leave Portugal to me provided I kept annoying England with that fleet.

Germany eventually got frustrated that England wasn't giving him Belgium (as promised earlier) and stabbed for it, at which point he was suddenly alone against an angry England, an annoyed France, a greedy Austria and a Russia who was desperate to get his HSCs back. Vecna gave me the promised support to Belgium (in S08) and in two or three years Germany dropped from 9SCs to just his 3 home centres, at which point we drew. Turkey and Austria topped the SC count (10 and 9) with all three western powers trailing some way behind (England 6, France 5, Germany 3) and Russia hanging on with just StP.

I think it was a fairly boring game for A/T, since the prolonged E/G forced them to continue working together pretty much throughout, but on my side of the board it was very exciting and interesting.

I'll certainly be coming to the Dutch Open in November, and I strongly advise anyone else interested in FTF who can make the journey also does so. It doesn't matter if you don't know Dutch, you'll still have a great time and you won't be at a disadvantage!

"The Little Fleet That Could" is a decent summary of that game from my perspective :D

You deserve a points docking for arranging a WT.

Arranging a WT isn't a sin, not stabbing the shit out of a newbie Germany is!

Great summary Capt! Haven't gotten around to it yet, since I'm arranging the Dutch Open Championship as we speak. Should prove interesting, already a few Brits, Italians and French signed up.

My favorite moment of the day was when AT broke through. It was the very very first time in the game when the AT might have broken up. I took Frank (Turkey) to the side, and we looked deep into each others eyes. Then concluded neither of us was going to stab, and then we broke through at Mos/War as well as Iberia. It felt good after being cooped up behind the line for so long.

It was a shame I didnt get to see a lot of the other table (playing for once instead of TD-ing, yay!), but one take-away for me was that introducing newbies to the game properly really *really* helps. Many kudos to jwomlo who did a great job. That German newbie on our table was doing great. We'll see him around too, I'm sure....

Any questions on Dutch Open: PM me!