Abge did an excellent job hosting the tournament and I hope this is only a preview of the big event next year. A quick overview of how everything was set up today:
- We had enough for two boards with one person playing on both boards simultaneously. I'm pretty sure he was eliminated in both games, or at least on my board pretty quickly, so this was obviously not an ideal solution but the best we could do in lieu of playing with no Italy. Both boards were drawn randomly. We had eighteen (or sixteen, I can't remember) phases for spring and two minutes less for fall with builds/retreats done immediately after each phase. I'm not experienced enough with FTF to know if that is an official rule or just TD's preference, but I did find myself wanting to discuss builds at a few points but overall it didn't effect the game much, if at all.
I drew Turkey in the first game while Valis drew Russia, abge drew Italy, and abge's friend drew Austria. The first game took a few turns to really get comfortable after not playing FTF for almost a decade but we were off and running pretty quickly, although my start was not the best. After a promising opening where I took the Black, Russia moved the fleet to Rum and Mos-Ukr, and Austria took Gal, Austria ended up support holding Rum, which really set the tone for the whole game. Austria somehow maintained good relations with both Italy, Russia, and myself and even managed to get up to six centers before abge's frustration with his inability to break into Smyrna got the better of him and I got him to turn on Austria.
I could never quite get on the same page as Russia and we never had more than an uneasy, temporary truce, and I couldn't get much momentum going in my favor because of poor fleet positioning, rotating fleets between various Bulgaria coasts, the Aegean, and Greece and never quite being able to break out of my corner until the very end of the game. The time limit was a big influence in play this game, when we had a firm and preannounced deadline that definitely effected play. Abge somehow survived this game after France got big but never big enough to be a solo threat, but I carved out a nice little six center Turkey. This game was very intriguing and I wish it could have been played to completion without the influence of the time limit.
The second game I drew Russia while abge drew Turkey. This game, abge had the misfortune of playing both games, so we decided to Juggernaut to make his orders and diplomacy routine. Austria was very weak in this game, and Italy, England, and Germany ganged up on France almost immediately, leaving Austria for dead. I briefly considered stabbing abge, even had orders written to do so while working with what was left of Austria, but I had an unstable position in the north and was hesitant to open up another front. I should have, because abge stabbed me two turns later with the help of Austria's corpse.
At that point, a very successful Wintergreen has sprouted between myself and Italy that effectively neutralized the Turkish stab, so my success while working with Germany in the north let me slowly regain ground on Turkey to the point where Italy and I were both at 9 centers, Turkey was at 7 or 8, and Austria was somehow bouncing between Rum and Ser and refusing to die. Germany and I had a pretty solid working relationship the whole game and the end was spent trying to get rid of England, who had a fairly decent defensive setup. Italy and I slowly gained ground on abge one center at a time, until abge got frustrated enough to throw the game to me, then just as quickly changed his mind, then we drew after deciding it wasn't worth the extra 45 minutes to kill off England.
Overall it was a blast. If you've never played FTF, I highly recommend looking into local gaming groups, or better yet getting involved with the official WebDip FTF next summer in Boston.
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What's been up with the timers lately?
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