PDL D2 Mar G1 (192006)

[Pete the Great]

ENGLAND bard parker (3way DRAW)
FRANCE Makleveh (3way DRAW)
ITALY Pops2112
GERMANY Pete the Great (3way DRAW)
AUSTRIA Verse9
TURKEY Steff
RUSSIA ublcomish12

I drew Germany Again! I had to look in the rules to see if this was possible, I was astounded to find it was. The downside of playing two tournaments concurrently.

1901 can be summed up as the powder keg getting primed. Other than a bounce at Sweden and Russia violating a DMZ at the Black Sea everyone played peacefully. Who was the enemy? The press was ripe with speculation, Jug, WT, CT? Early messages from both France and England were positive. Who to believe, which to attack? As our discussions progressed we found each of us had mentioned the WT as something they would be open to. A thread started and our WT was born.

1901 ended with a +2 for each and the messages of "is this a WT?" started flowing in. I began sending messages to dispel the rumors, "No France's moves were logical given...."; "Oh no, I made a grevious error moving Berlin to Munich and as a result was unable to deny Belgium to the English."; "Oh, England told you they were attacking France? That was his blitz France phase. Now it's Blitz Russia. He seems to change his mind a lot." One item of interest was the Swedish bounce, I had laid out several parameters to Russia and had left a caveat that short of a WT I would give him Sweden if he complied. Ironically at the time I sent the message a WT was not even a glimmer of hope. So technically I did not break my agreement.

1902 the eastward thrust began. Warsaw and Sweden fell to me while England captured StPete. I was on pins and needles up to the adjudication as my back was completely exposed. I began thinking of how best to reduce my exposure to the English. Two unexpected things occurred: The Russian fleet moved to Livonia and I found my fleet further from home than I wanted at Gulf of Bothnia. Then Russia kept the fleet and disbanded an army. I wanted my fleets back along the coast to protect my rear areas and now they were stuck dealing with the Russian fleet for another season.

1903 saw:
* The desturction of the Russian fleet,
* Movement of my fleets back to cover my rear areas in fall,
* The capture of Vienna,
* And an agreement of how to best neutralize my rear areas.
Italy wanted me to stab, but work had recently become brutal. Staying the course was my best course of action for my time availability and my sanity. In addition though France was relatively open I still had England hanging over my head. There would be no guarantees if I changed course, while the present course seemed well charted. Pops my hat is off to you for trying, your offer was tempting.

1904 saw a dramatic change. Pops (Italy) realized we were not breaking and offered up a new deal. Survival for he and Turkey in exchange for destruction of Russia and Austria along with the acceptance of an EFG 3-way draw. This was discussed and eventually agreed upon with my western partners. The only sticky point was the ending SC count for IT. this ranged from a low of 2 each to a high of 5 each and eventually settled out with 4 each. I chose the -1 from the WT to move things along. Given the nature of the SE corner this agreement likely shaved 2 or more years off the game length, which was fine with me as my next round of SuperPastis was about to start.

The final unexpected item in the game was when France messaged me he was offering to cede Venice to me for my work on making things happen relatively smoothly. For that he deserves and gets my vote for the Best Sportsmanship Trophy if such exists. Good game to all, I enjoyed my many conversations with both my alliance partners and my adversaries. Perhaps we will have an opportunity to join forces in a future round as I very much enjoyed our banter.

[Steff]

One has to choose his partners carefully. I can not claim that I got it done. I believed in Russia, but it was completely hopeless, not only strategically and game-wise, but also diplomatically and to have confidence. When Russia's world began to collapse, he attacked me. It must be according to the motto that if I can not win, then I can hurt my teammates. Italy, on the other hand, tried to do everything right and sporty, but Germany has named France.
Nice enough, it was a nice gesture from France.
Russia's attack on the BLA agreed to start an attack and a rapid war against Austria. However, it became too thin in the north, especially when Germany blocked SWE and WT was not to be dissolved.
Thank you for the game and good luck in the tournament.

Turkey

[Makleveh]

This may have been one of the shorter games I've been a part of. I wasn't exposed to a lot of double dealing and all that, so this will be brief.

I drew France, and during the initial discussions before S01, the idea of a western triple came up and was agreed upon. England was very eager, Germany was cautious, so I expected us to be able to make some early gains, then the opportunity or impetus would arrive. I assumed England would get bogged down in the north and G/F would turn and mop up, but Russia's defense crumpled and he began to push towards the Mediterranean to, I assume, stay in the game as long as possible.

I ended up, at the end of '02, being the weakest power in the WT and I figured the hammer would drop shortly. Italy, who was chatty and fun to talk with all game, was suddenly in my inbox in force with all sorts of proposals- was his back to the wall or was he an agent provocateur? Nevertheless, the WT held and I was solidly in the Med.

'03 was the last season of coordinated I/T defense in the Med, and I was in discussions with Austria to help him into the boot in exchange for surviving to the end of the game. Unfortunately, I/T made the better offer.

Bard, Pete: Good game. It was fun working with you. It was a textbook WT and it worked as we designed it to keep any of us from getting the upper hand. It would have been fun to go all the way and end with the 3 way split, but maybe it would be tempting fate.

Pops: Tough luck! I'm glad you salvaged from points, I enjoyed talking with you and if we played this game

[Pops2112]

From the start, I wanted to create a Team Turquoise (aka Team FIT), which meant getting alongside Turkey to take out Austria, preferably (for stability) with Russia joining in, but CRITICALLY (as always for Italy) finding a loyal enough friend in Paris to keep the Western Med empty and then work together from 1902 onwards. Sadly, despite the obviously hollow reassurances from Paris and Berlin that "of course there is no W.Triple, we're ever so worried about each other" (yeah, right!), there was indeed a clear, and tight, W.Triple. Add to that what (I agree with Steff) was a really poor game from Russia - IMHO - and Rome and Ankara were in real difficulty.

I did my best in separate bilateral exchanges to try to turn either Germany vs. France, or France vs. England - I did not see France being well placed to turn on the Kaiser - leading me on to offers (a) to Germany, to help him towards solo chances or being the biggest points scorer in an eventual 3- or 4-way draw that could have included me, and (b) to France and Germany, to turn their W.Triple to a Swiss Star (I looked up the jargon online: Swiss Star = F-I-G spreading out from neutral Swiss centre of gravity, apparently!). My game-long loyalty was to Turkey, and I was delighted it survived a blip (= micro-stab) when I decided to stay in possession of Serbia, genuinely out of defensive necessity to stay enough in the game to stick around and hopefully help Turkey too in the long run, not because I had any desire for Italian-Turkish conflict.

In the end, a Tsar who messed us around so much that it took an age to subdue him, and a certain one-dimensional relentlessness of the W.Triple, meant either a loss for I-T, or a negotiated endgame where at least we did not score zero tournament points. Turkey agreed to go with the latter, and a few rounds of enjoyable 5-way coordination to get the tactics right followed to finish off Austria and Russia. I pitched for a symmetrical 8-8-8, 5-5 finish, but the W.Triple would not be moved and, as noted in other posts, sorted out between themselves that France would take the 4 points fewer from the final 9-9-8, 4-4 pattern. Onwards to game 3 next month, and thank you all for this one.