Dear me

The crew: https://twitter.com/jmspool/status/613906005118820352

It was as only 3 hours waiting for Ssoren to get his moves in the box.

Who is who?

I'm old. I get brain fry. But I was lead dog on board with leverage. This was a lot of fun. I'm the one who suggested draw. 2WL and I could have probably 2'wayed this if we played it out.

I publicly apologize to JECE, I lied to his face all game :))

Ah, so you took the "Captainmeme" role. Good, good.

Good times all around, I can imagine how stressful a competitive F2F game would be though.

Sorry I messed it up y2k

I forgot to ask - how pretentious was the wine?

Windycityweasels show up big in beantown--- :))

That picture confirmed all my predictions!

What predictions are those?

That only the finest gents drink wine and play Diplomacy!

why, yes, I believe we did confirm everyone's suspicion that I am the most handsome

I voted down two consecutive draws before the game pushed past my usual bedtime, but I was tempted to stay for another round of drinks and Resistance.

The 7 way draw was ultimately merciful for abge and JECE - both were down to a single center. The picture is a bit misleading as well, since abge had just lost Rome (his last home center) and Con, both of which were unoccupied. For some unknown reason, he was screwing around with his units in Budapest and the Black Sea instead of staying near his home centers. I have no idea how that happened.

If this game continued, the likely outcome was either a three or four way draw, depending on whether Valis and I wanted to eliminate y2k. I voted down two draws because I was really starting to gather some momentum after England stabbed France and I really didn't want the game to end so soon.

A very fun game despite my piss-poor performance. I'm really kicking myself for not going after France right away. He's such a strong player and I believe ss would have helped me. Germany had a serious order-writing problem, though, so maybe it wouldn't have worked out anyway.

Went for the Lepanto and started off fine, despite the slingshot. Where things went bad was when Austria insisted on taking Bul instead of helping me get my fleets in position. This made it impossible for me to get a build in 1902 while Austria got 1 (maybe 2?) and set me up for the eventual attack from France. I should have demanded more help or abandoned my Eastern campaign right then.

Continued getting stonewalled by Turkey and left myself much too open to France. What I wasn't counting on, though, was a stab from Austria, which completely devastated me.

Fucked around for a while with no real plan and the drew one turn before I was sure to be eliminates (thank you weeknight Diplomacy!)

Really wish I had worked closer with England and Russia, too, in retrospect. Still a fun time. The venue was great, imo, would like to go there again.

Thx to all. Will write something soon about game

WindyCityWeasels come to Beantown

I draw England which might be my least favorite country. The only non webdipper Randy draws France and everyone publicly stated he's the best at the table.
So what's the best place to start, I try to get Italy (abge) and Germany (JECE) to triple move on France. They want no part. So next best thing is try to get EF going. So I'm talking to France and the German comes over and we have a three way chat. I offer the WT and France smiles and the German not too interested. Them FG start talking and they can't agree on burgundy(bingo) no sea lion here. And I'm the back and forth, I think I'm getting Belgium. I think I have something decent as 5sc England after 01. Then the French build fleet Brest not Marseilles And has fleet in Spain sc. Got so talking to do. But France poached on Munich and got it and germNy was in burgundy. France promises nothing wrong and we discuss killing Germany and I discuss killing France with Germany. All along I have relative peace in Scandinavia with the Russian(valis) my fleet just sitting in Norway.
The French and I seem to have a handle on things and then Spain moves to MAO with a fleet in Brest and I now have choices to make. I try to get the German to move against France (which wasn't hard) but I'm worried about a northern rush on the island. So knowing the German is moving west I decide to take holland with North Sea and the Russian offers support to my army still on island to Denmark. I also support the French into Kiel at some point and EF at end of 03 is 13 or 14 sc.
The east is a stalemated mess at best and I got valis to move away from Scandinavia because I promised demilitarization. The French are in full southern swing about to kill abge. I keep getting everyone to ask me to attack France, or he will solo. Knowing it's a bar game most likely with hard stop I'm not to worried about solo and I'm at 7 sc with room to grow. EF keep toying with the German from 1-2 sc with promises every turn but we did not kill him. With the prospect that France could get 3 sc in fall of 03 I decide to stab Russia and take Sweden and st Pete. Now at 9 sc, it's time to move on France. I got the French units in Germany and the last German unit to move on Warsaw and I had him. I move to channel and get Brest the next turn. @10 sc and three armies in mainland France I knew I had a great shot of game kept going. I also knew that the stab of Russia changed the stalemate in the east and Austria was the direct beneficiary of my stab. But I think the 7 way draw was the best for this game as it was just all for fun.

Chi-Town comes to Beantown and kills it.

That was my first 7-player FTF Diplomacy game.

I let France into Mun in 1901, which I wasn't too concerned about, then England stabbed for Hol in Spring 1902. But I totally collapsed in Fall 1902 with a bad misorder and a Russian stab on England's behalf that saw me drop from 4 SC's and units to just 1. The results of the Fall 1902 carnage were posted on the Twitter feed here, complete with my bad orders in the top-right corner of the image:
https://twitter.com/webdiplomacy/status/613860773429936128

I had written down:
F Den-Swe
A Kie-Hol
A Ber-Mun
A Ruh-Bur
I wanted to change my order for A Kie, but instead of crossing out 'Hol', I had crossed out 'Mun' and made "A Ber support move Ber-Mun". I already had Italian support from Tyl for Ber-Mun. I wasn't used to the fast pace of the game, ha ha. Maybe I should have taken ssorenn's strategy and furiously worked on my orders a couple minutes past each deadline. ;-) To be fair, I wasn't expecting Mun-Kie with support from Hol.

I certainly wasn't expecting Russia to support an English convoy into Den. That was a strategic blunder for Russia, which not only wore down my power as a buffer, but cost Russia both Swe and StP within a year.

But anyway, it was fun to finally play an in-person game of Diplomacy! I don't mind playing as minor "Great Powers" and survived another 3 years to the draw. It would have been interesting to see if I could have gotten myself out of the trap I fell into by then. The game ended with my last army surrounded by the open sea, 2 fleets and 2 armies belonging to four different Great Powers.

JECE was right. A couple of times I went past deadline with orders. One, as you can imagine the more sc you have the longer it takes to write, but in my experience with the weasels, diplomacy is relegated to a certain amount of time and then there's a two minute write order phase(no diplomacy during order writing) Here in Boston the entire turn contains everything you have to do inclusive of order writing. Being the largest power people wanted to keep talking to me and that ate up a lot of time.

It's fun to find out who some of you guys are in real life. Looks like jmspool's got his own Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Spool
#respect

I have a small sample size of meeting people from webdip in real life, but so far, I've found them to be friendly people in real life and their personalities aren't too different than their "online" personalities. I suspect people who are two-faced about who they are in real life and who they are online are people who hide behind anonymity of the internet and would not meet up with others and you may or may not want to meet with them anyway. The next time we have a mod retreat, I'll invite members to come along. :)

He's totes legit. Also incredibly sportsmanlike and good-natured.

Yeah, all of you guys seem sportsmanlike considering you had a 7-way draw with 2 powers down to 1 SC.
I will not be sportsmanlike and good-natured. I would have totally kept going until it was at least a 3-way draw or a solo considering that I don't drink that much and these guys would be wasted.

Speaking of which. Thanks to everyone for being so great about the bill. I'm sure the waitress was very happy.

Us springly youngin's sometimes like to indulge the old fogey's with their bedtimes and "real jobs tomorrow morning" :P

lol today sucked

When there's no points on the line and people are playing explicitly towards the fact that we only have 4 or so hours, bothering to eliminate people becomes a much lower priority.