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GATES OF EDEN END-GAME STATEMENTS
GM:
Brian Frew
Started: October 2004
Finished: June 2005
Result: Draw A/E/F/G/R
| Country | Player | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | Result | | Austria | Jan Willem Omlo | 5 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 8 | Drew 1909 | | England | Rob Lange | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | Drew 1909 | | France | Simon Berry | 5 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 11 | 13 | 13 | Drew 1909 | | Germany | Wayne Read | 5 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 5 | Drew 1909 | | Italy | Andy Scott | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Lost 1907 | | Russia | Lars Topholm | 6 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 5 | Drew 1909 | | Turkey | Jonathan Langman | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Lost 1906 |
FRANCE (Simon Berry) Apologies for any inaccuracies in my revisionist history of the game. This was written from memory after the game concluded and while drinking a very nice bottle of red wine.
Hmmmm…..I thought as I looked at the line up for the game. A lot of "interesting" characters, most of whom came with reputations for being strong players with stronger personalities. Was I going to be out of my depth here? If so, no different from usual.
I started with an open (if paranoid) mind as to strategy and a simple objective of not ending up on the receiving end of an EG alliance. All of the initial correspondence (and there was a lot of it) gave me hope that this game would be good game - and so it proved to be.
Early in 1901 I seemed to be fortunate enough to have it all. Germany (Wayne) wanted to ally with me against England (Rob). England wanted to ally against Germany. Wayne and I came up with the idea of selling Rob on a western triple - the objective being to send the English forces in the direction of StP with a consequential ER conflict and an opportunity to strike northwards while England's attention was focused in the wrong direction. At least it started out that way, but after a couple of seasons of correspondence, there were so many alliances (real, fake and imagined) that I had absolutely no idea who I was allied with and against. At one point, I think there was an alliance involving France, Germany, England and the GM against Switzerland.
In 1901 and 1902 at various stages, I had the luxury of what looked like a working relationship with both England and Germany. However, this couldn't last forever. At some stage if I wanted to get beyond 5-6 SCs I would have to make a move on one of them. After extensive indecision and procrastination, I threw my lot in with Germany in 1901A. I'm sure Rob would have been an equally good ally, but I had to come down off that fence at some point and preferred to do it sooner.
Rob's response to the attack on him clearly showed why he is one of the best players on the site. Instead of pouting, threatening to throw his SCs to another player or refusing to speak with me (all of which seem to be common reactions), he remained friendly, came up with some good proposals and eventually we agreed a Janissary strategy. While I was wary, I also had an eye to developments on the other side of the board where a very well organised alliance between Russia (Lars) and Austria (JW) was gaining a clear and decisive advantage over Italy (Andy) and Turkey (Jonathan). The accommodation reached with Rob gave me the flexibility to get units into the Med earlier than would otherwise be the case. Whether I was going to the Med to help Italy or to help myself to a few green dots would not be decided until later.
And Lars? Well, the goats did not make an appearance in the game until later (1903 or 1904?), but appear they did. I understand that it is impossible to have a game of diplomacy which involves Lars which does not feature goats. Pending the arrival of the goats, I had a consistently good stream of correspondence with Lars that continued right through the game. Given my commitment to working with Wayne, nothing meaningful came of the FR correspondence but it did add a lot of colour to the game.
The middle stage of the game was relatively straight forward from the French perspective. Continue to work with Wayne and Rob to push back the AR advance. Make a decision to move against Andy and grab as much of Italy as I could (er…ummm…sorry about that mate). Critically, the possibility of getting a French fleet into ION and across a key stalemate line proved too much temptation resist. The working relationship with Wayne was one of the best I have experienced - a lot of ideas being bounced around before we reached agreement. As the junior partner, Rob also had a lot of input into e/G/F strategy and tactics.
The final act of the game was my very very stupid decision to try and get a solo. While I had fully expected a GEAR alliance to form against me pretty quickly, I simply didn't spend enough time studying the board before moving. With Rob, Lars and JW all encouraging me to go for the solo, I can of course blame peer pressure for what must be one of the most inept attacks I have ever bungled. In the last few seasons I was also overwhelmed on the work front and was voting for any draw that included me.
A big thank you to all the players who made this one of the most enjoyable games I have played and, of course, to Brian for his faultless and user friendly GMing.Return to Top
GERMANY (Wayne Read) First off, I would like to thank Brian for advertising this game on the Message Board. It was during the period last year when the Waiting Lists were down, it’s very much appreciated how hard the GMs here work to keep things going, and proves that where there’s a will, there’s a way.
I can’t remember if this was meant to be a ‘Regulars only’ game or not, but an impressive line-up quickly formed, which I believe puts this game into the top 10 of most valuable draws for Eagle points.
It’s such a pleasure playing with dedicated, and flexible, players and it makes a huge difference to any game. There wasn’t a massive amount of press, or torrents of messages like I’ve seen in other games, but there was steady communication and no doubt that every player would fight to his last unit. Andy & Jonathan didn’t disappoint both battling to the end, and I expected a full set of orders every season, even after the sole NMR. It shows just how animated this game was from the fact that in the final few years I spent some time either fighting or strongly allied with each and every one of the remaining countries. An E/F/G became a F/E, became an E/G/R/A, before the 5-way was finally agreed.
There was a fluidity to the alliances, and within the alliances, which I believe shows how the game ‘should’ be played, for example:
A1907
F/E stab Germany, who is busy fighting R/A
S1908
Austria forcibly takes War. France is bidding for the Solo.
A1908
Austria, realising that Germany needs to be kept strong, voluntarily moves out of War to keep it German, but Austria needs a SC if he’s going to build the much needed F(Tri) so he moves to Mos, (with Russian consent) meaning that Russia doesn’t get a build from taking Stp. England joins the stop-the-leader alliance.
S1909
Austria voluntarily moves out of Mos, to give it back to Russia, in preparation for a Russian build in Stp. Germany & Austria plan to disband Pru & Lvn in the Autumn.
The game ended at this point, as the extra Austrian Fleet in the Med had already turned the tables in the South, and the possibility of an additional Russian Fleet in the North was about to make life very difficult for France there too.
At this point Rob and I were already talking about how we would have to again turn on R/A once the threat from France had been reduced – maybe it’s a shame the game ended when it did! :o)
Some notes on the players:
Simon (France): I really hit it off with Simon, we seemed to have very similar ideas and ways of working. We had a strong alliance from early on and I’m convinced that we’d have achieved a 2-way draw if he hadn’t made his attempt for the solo. Not that I’m complaining, it was a well timed stab, he was past the stalemate line and had 19SC in his sphere of influence at the time, all he needed to do was hold back the opposition and eliminate the last 3 English units. He didn’t even need to keep hold of Stp. I’m sure that in many other games he’s have sailed to a solo, but the opposition in this game was just too experienced. Differences were patched up in an instant and a committed stop-the-leader alliance was formed with a very high level of trust and co-operation. Well played Simon, too bad it didn’t come off for you.
Rob (England): I had a real roller coaster of a ride with Rob, he went from initial target, to loose ally, to target again and back to firm ally. I always knew though that when the chips were down I could rely on him to do the right thing and not let past conflict cloud his judgement.
Lars (Russia): I nearly fell of my chair laughing when I saw the line-up. Lars had just published an article on why Germany shouldn’t let Russia into Swe in 1901! I remember making a comment at the time, that I’d love to be a fly-on-the-wall for the Russo/German negotiations the next time he played Russia. :o) But you have to hand it to him, even after I’d read the article I still let him take Swe – how did he do that!? And then he stabbed me – my own fault really, we’d just had a very profitable alliance in ‘El Nath’ and I trusted him too much as a result. But again, even though we’d been fighting most of the game he still joined me whole-heartedly in the stop-the-leader alliance at the end.
JW (Austria): This was a very strange game with JW, I know he is a great communicator, but early on in this game I hardly heard from him at all. But again when some positive action was called for he did exactly what was required. Well done on the Tri build in 1908, that was the move of the game.
Andy (Italy) & Jonathan (Turkey): I’ll lump these two together because for a lot of the game I saw them as one country – sorry guys. Unfortunately everything went wrong in the South right from the start, Andy opened with a Lepanto and got as far as EMS before they both realised they were facing a R/A alliance. I got involved with 3-way communications pretty quickly as I soon started to feel the pressure from R/A too. The three of us bounced ideas around and tried to come up with workable plans to halt the R/A advance but R/A were relentless and first Jonathan and then Andy were swallowed up. It was only when the French Fleets arrived in the Med (at Andy’s invite) that a line was formed. Both guys fought hard right to the end and put their initial conflict aside. Jonathan I’m afraid there was little hope for you. Andy, too bad you missed out on the draw.
To anyone reading this I’d highly recommend any of these guys for a game, all of them have the very best qualities I look for in Diplomacy. In fact I wish more players could operate like this, all too often the ‘what’s in it for me’ syndrome means that players can’t see the plain truth of the need to stop someone else from winning – very frustrating at times!
Thanks to all involved for a very enjoyable game, and a special thanks to Brian again for running it.
I hope to meet you all again soon.Return to Top
TURKEY (Jonathan Langman) "Not a lot to say about this game: I opened in a fairly non-commital way and with JW unusually uncommunicative, decided to ally with Russia and go for the juggernaut. Unfortunately Lars (Russia) decided that he would work with Austria instead (I'm sure that JW proxied the Austrian units to him for several turns) and with Italy looking vaguely threatening the prospects were pretty bleak.
I hung on for a while by using Turkey's strong defensive position and tried to get an alliance of EFGIT together to counter AR. This was successful, despite misgivings amongst the Western Triangle and was probably my only achievement in the game (though obviously it was not just down to me). Sadly, EFGI decided that I was expendable and I didn't receive the direct help I needed to survive; Lars' suggestion that one of the allies was feeding him information may also have damaged me - certainly communication with the Western powers came to an end fairly quickly after that - and for the record, I hadn't passed any plans on.
My elimination had a touch of farce about it: I thought I'd persuaded Russia to let me survive on a single unit, efectively controlled by him. He agreed, then eliminated me anyway. This seemed pretty self-defeating, not least because he failed to use the build it gave him!!!
I didn't really have time to follow the last few turns of the game closely, but I was a bit surprised that noone really pushed for the solo.
Nevertheless it was a good game and thanks to everyone who participated. particular thanks, as ever, to Brian for doing an exemplary job as GM".Return to Top
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