Ghost Rating Challenge - 2025?

[KingRishard]

Here is the copy paste of my post mortem as England from Game 1 (Venkman).

Sorry for the delay in getting this written, I wanted to see the perspective from a few others (both in the peanut gallery and here) as I don’t think I’ve written a post mortem before. Below are my thoughts:

Pregame:
“Awesome, this should be fun! I really enjoyed my last competitive Diplomacy event. It can’t beat the face-to-face experience, but it will still be good to play against others at a high level.”

Country selections:
“Crap…”
In my previous competitive Diplomacy event (2024 National Diplomacy Masters in Las Vegas, held in conjunction with the World Series of Board Gaming), I made the top board but ended in 7th with England as my country, so the placement opened recent wounds. In that game, I was specifically trying to make Russia lose, as it was my first face-to-face tournament, and I was on track to win best Russia assuming all the Russias of the final day did worse than me (which ended up true). Keeping that in mind, I refocused and set my goal to not die in my least favorite corner.

Pre-1901:
After my initial reaction but before any press, my game plan was to work with Germany, as my last English game had me fall to the French sword and I didn’t want history to repeat itself. After the press, I had the following thoughts:

France: Wants a DMZ of EC and is pushing for me to move north against Russia; Will agree, but don’t want to follow through; Make Germany a scapegoat of why I move there
Germany: Says he originally reached out to France to work together against me but didn’t get any nibbles. I ask for BEL to overlook his attempt to kill me and to form an EG. He easily accepts.
Russia: I feel confident I don’t have to worry about him opening North
Turkey: BIG talker; we’re far away, but initial thoughts on dog piling Russia come up. I feign interest, as I already have my target in mind.
Austria: Small talk; not much gained
Italy: Looks like a classic wait and see approach; little chance of him moving on France

Post Spring 1901:
Overall, I was happy with the spring season. Russia didn’t open north and while France didn’t follow our DMZ, he did cost himself a build. I’m less concerned with him taking EC in the fall, as I’m just going to take NWY and build F LON to block any further attack on me. Germany agrees to bounce France out of BEL and keep him at 4. I wasn’t expecting the German fleet build, but we make an agreement that he will build no more fleets if we are allied, and I won’t attack him if he builds no more fleets. France agrees to go our separate ways, but move to EC anyways, claiming Germany was going to help attack me.

1902:
Russia keeps me honest about not back dooring STP by keeping NWY tapped, which I didn’t have a use for anyways, as I wasn’t concerned about losing NTH to an FG at this point. I manage to convince both France and Germany to support my convoy to BEL, causing both to question who I wanted to work with. I was on Team Germany from the jump, but I make an offer of a Western Triple to Germany, who quickly declines. We begin to plan the conquest of France. I assist Germany into BUR, and don’t hear from France for a year.

1903:
Oh, the year of the “stab”. Germany and I talked a lot this game, about the game and elsewise. We went back and forth a lot on what moves to make this year and settled on me willingly giving up BEL to Germany with me taking STP to not lose a build. The move to NTH wasn’t part of the arrangement, but the idea was to shock the board and get people talking, which it did. Italy started a board wide fear mongering campaign that an AG was going to rule the board, and France seemed to buy in that. I was able to get him back to the table and talk again. Russia was very upset about losing STP but kept up the press.

1904:
France moved to support Italy, which gave me my chance to put a knife to his throat. I was set up to take POR with nothing he could do to stop me. I also “pushed” Germany to SKA so he would be setup to take SWE from Russia, but he kept up the ruse of us fighting, to my annoyance.

1905:
Germany and I began to dissect France, and he took SWE. After this year, the game became just mopping up smaller powers. With the game being Draw-Size Scoring, I wanted it to get as small as possible, and that looked to be a three-way AGE. I did not ever truly consider a four-way.

1906-Spring 1908:
More cleaning up and consolidation, nothing too interesting to discuss

Fall 1908:
In a different world, this turn would’ve been a lot different. In a real tournament setting or under different scoring rules (SoS), I would’ve stabbed Germany here. I had the opportunity, based on my knowledge of his moves, to take both MAR and BEL. I had also grown tired of the game and thought it might result in Germany throwing to Austria, so I didn’t follow through and stuck to the plan.

1909-end:
Germany and I continue to rearrange the deck chairs on the off chance Austria went for the solo.

All in all, I was quite please with my English performance and felt I had avenged my defeat in my previous game. Thanks everyone for playing, and I hope to see you all this September in Vegas for some F2F play!

[DougJoe]

I find it interesting that each of the three way draws ended with two western powers and one big eastern power. E/G/T, E/G/A, E/F/I. Russia didn't come out well in these games and England was in the draw in all three.

[UnknownHero]

Are there any new ghost ratings games?

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking.

The intent of having a GR challenge is to match players of similar skill levels using GR. We had enough people sign up for three games and those three games are finished. I organized and played in one of those games... but I need a break from press games, so I won't be organizing another set of press games anytime soon (my plan was to arrange another set this autumn with games starting after the new year). If you want to arrange something similar, be my guest.

That being said, I was actually thinking about asking the community here if there was any interest in a gunboat GR challenge, maybe to start around June?

I'd play in a Gunboat GR challenge, but I'm not up to organizing it this year.

[VirtualBob]

Returning after a long absence, but I would be interested in an anonymous gunboat GR challenge series.

[hellalt]

I m in for a new gr game or tournament

[Hughganought]

A gunboat tournament would be great, not sure if I could help organise, but I'm curious to know just how much work is involved....

I'm also back from holiday and in contact with my keyboard, so my Melnitz EOG will follow soon.

[DougJoe]

A gunboat tournament would be great, not sure if I could help organise, but I'm curious to know just how much work is involved....

I'm also back from holiday and in contact with my keyboard, so my Melnitz EOG will follow soon.

It's work but it's not a ton of work. Looking forward to the EOG.