Wow, wat a great event! We had a full three boards, with tons of great players, about half new and half veteran, which was a great mix. For some reason, all the newbies seemed to be great at the game - and loving it. Frankly, the best atmosphere game/day I've played yet.

My table was fun. I was R, with I and A being other veterans, T being new and the west being new-ish. The first thing that happened was a western triple (oh no, not again!), which got countered by an Eastern quadruple. Booooring. I scored Rum but had to defend StP - which I did. The Eastern Quadruple slowly turned into Jugg plus, as A and I were losing terrain but T and R were not. T and me really hit it off too - she was a young girl, really using the naive damsel strategy. She was a noob, and I'm a teacher at heart, so guide her to 7 while I remain on 5. it was a fun relationship, both trying to charm the other into the alliance - we ended up simply really liking each other. At a certain point, E stabs G and the triple falters. Austria slips in Mun with help from my Sil (gotta love revenge). However, I make amends with G quickly, in exchange for a common front on E. By doing this I suddenly make gains in the north, ending up with F Nwy, while G is holding Hel/Den. In the east I work with T to finish off A. I get Bud and want to reciprocate by giving Tri, but instead she attacks me in Rum! Ha! I think part of it was to underline that she wasnt my puppet. Well, game on! She diverts her forces north, but doesnt pack a punch for my solid defence - I just had builds andthe line Mos/Ukr/Sev is solid. Instead, she loses two SCs in Italy to F. The GM calls for last turn, and she comes up to me to make amends. She want us both to share top of the table, so we hatch a plan to get to same SCs. I want to make it work, but the plan doesnt do it. We still decide to try. When I write my orders, I go in full-stab, grab Rum from her, Ber and Swe from G. I top the board at 8, shared with F. Good game!

Best of all fir me was the turnout. It wasnt too long ago that I decided I wanted to kickstart the Dutch scene again. Now, only eight months later, we have a three board day with the solid promise of more to come. This was a good day.

Also, Vecna won on his table, which included the reigning Dutch champion and also the reigning World Champion. One to watch.

All I got from that story was that Tmow used his manly charm to trick a naive young girl into giving up her centers.

Great stuff! Three boards is very impressive.

@zultar: that was the awesome thing: the jury's hung on who charmed who.

*Whom.*
Who charmed whom.

I guess that's why you are a minister of war and not education. :)

PS: I fully admit to being an ass as well as a wise guy.

https://xkcd.com/1576/

I thank xkcd for helping me to reply to comments on my lazy-ass typing. ;-)

xkcd has some great stuff.
Glad to hear that you had fun, tmow. Now to the important question: did you record any of the game??? Did you get any commentary from the winners?

Record? Well the above EOG is one. Vecna can give another one.

In other words: at this juncture I'm happy these days *exist*, and I want more. I hope next year I'm comfortable to really build on it.

Now tired. Zzzz.

Well after yesterday I have come to the conclusion that Dutch players might have an unnaturral love for western tripples - yes my board also featured one, but luckily it broke down very very quickly.

Our board featured me as Italy, the reigning world champion Toby Harris as england, a top20 ranked player from playdiplomacy lukan/tjalling as france, the reigning dutch champion (rene) as russia, two more f2f regulars/oldschool players (bernard & ronald) as germany and turkey, and the slightly newer player in austria. It definately was a very tough board and noone got eliminated untill the very last turn, which came with 2 eliminations at once.

Openings were reasonably straight forward, with the exception of france opening paris - gascony and mar - spain. This is when it shouldve been obvious to me what was about to happen but somehow it did not strike me untill a fleet appeared in the medi and in the barrents sea in autumn 1901. Me and austria went for the key lepanto but turkey bounced serbia in autumn. Thus I was left to fight off a newly built fleet in brest and mar, and the fleet allready in the medi with a widely grinning turkey right behind me that was also out for blood. Luckily I still had trieste and had 2 builds.

Germany and england pushed really really hard into russia who lost warsaw, stp and moscow in no time. France did not make so many gains with me bouncing most of his convoys. At the same time me and austria kept trying to keep turkey from advancing by doing clumsy moves like tripple bouncing his fleets back into the aegean. After predicting a few of france his moves and continuous mental battles I finally convinced him that if he was not going to attempt to stab his allies (and particularly world champ england), they would surely do it to him since he was leaving his ass-end open and basicly sending out invites. What sealed the deal was that I promised him to get him into the ionian if he would retreat the rest of his fleets so that he could have a nice surprise attack on turkey.

The end result was a french fleet in _greece_ at the end of 1903. Poor turkish guy never saw it coming. if only I had taken a photo of that glorious boardstate. France also went on to try and backstab england from that point onward, causing the western tripple to dissolve, and both england and germany were left to fight a war on two fronts. Me and austria pushed some armies into tyrolia and bohemia and galicia to contain the remnants of the tripple, while at the same time we continued to fail at killing off turkey, even with the help of the extra valiant french fleet.

Next year the french fleet advanced and captured bulgaria. After this it went onward into the aegean, where it went mutinous because we refused to disband it after france requested it so. That fleet was way too usefull, we just had to show france the error of his ways...Next year it ended up in smyrna, oh what a wonderfull journey it had been. There it remained untill the very end of the game, where it supported hold the remaining two turkish centers and turkey supported it back in return. such a nice love triangle it was.

The last year of the game was very close. I had finally stabbed austria in the year before, and england, france, germany and me were all on 7 or 8 centers so it was still anyones game to win. Foolishly I also had left open the medi again in my persuit of a turkish defeat and france had once again slipped in and this time managed to capture tunis. He went on to capture rome as well, since I had basicly no defense left there. At the same time germany went for sevastopol, but with help of the last russian army i managed to get all the remaining austrian centers. In autumn of the last turn I had to take a gamble for the win where I left open 2 centers bordering germany to take the last center of russia, and I convinced turkey to finally liberate smyrna to put france out of the winning range.

endscore; italy 9, germany 8, france/england 7, turkey 3, russia/austria 0.