The Briefing - No Ducks Allowed

A Weekly Threat Assessment of the Diplomacy Community

New Diplomacy Newscast

T he Diplomacy Broadcast Network just issued the fifth episode of their monthly newscast: Deadline. David Hood does a round up of hobby news, but the focus of the episode is on scoring systems, and providing insight on how best to navigate them. The episodes includes a discussion with Doug Moore, Karthik Konath, and David Miller. Watch here.

PlayDip SuperPastis

The SuperPastis 2020 Tournament over at PlayDiplomacy has been completed, and a user named Badger1991 is this tournament's champion, with an 11 center board top as Italy in the final game.

Lelemund finished won the Round Gold Topper (most board tops), and Phlegmatic won the Tin medal. There were 28 tournament participants in all. Check out all of the exciting results here.

Bill Hackenbracht was this year's CarnageCon Champion. He also runs the Liberty Cup, which was held in Philadelphia each year until Covid pushed it online. What follows are his thoughts about the final game.

Wreaking Carnage

I’ll talk about Carnage shortly, but I’d really like to take this opportunity to highlight all the fantastic work being done across the hobby during these trying times. Organizers have been tireless in providing opportunities for socially distanced interaction and game play, and I can’t applaud them loudly enough. I think folks have really made lemonade out of lemons, and I’m super impressed at the willingness of primarily online players to not only “dip their toes” into the virtual Face-to-Face pool, but to dominate those waters like the sharks they are. Face-to-Face players are not the raging nutcases that Diplomacy memes make them out to be, and I’m so glad that our online brothers and sisters have accepted our invitations to join us! The next online vFTF event is the Virtual WDC, which I’ll be hosting with Chris Brand, Markus Zijlstra, Garry Sturley, Peter McNamara, and hobby legend David Hood. You’re all invited and encouraged to attend!!!

Carnage is easily my favorite tournament to attend and I was looking forward to playing in it this year – it’s going to be a great WDC in 2021 … or 2022. If you’re only going to attend one Diplomacy tournament each year, go to Liberty Cup in Philadelphia. But if you’re going go to two – Carnage needs to be on the list!

This year, I strongly considered supporting the Diplomacy Broadcast Network’s coverage of vCarnage instead of playing in the event. I’ve got a child on the way and I’m not sure if I’ll even be able to fully participate in the “DBN Invitational” … so I wasn’t sure how hard I should try to qualify. But, since I’ve given Brandon Fogel such a hard time about not including the last Face-to-Face event to take place in North America (Jorge Zhang’s pre-COVID “GUDCon” at Georgetown University), I figured … I better give it a shot. And man am I glad I did. The strategy I used to achieve success at vCarnage was simple. “Don’t be a duck.” (*editor's substitution*).

Look at the scoring systems and figure out what scores you need to win a tournament. I won Carnage back in 2014, off of a Friday night solo and a board top later in the weekend.

But I knew that this year’s version wouldn’t require that kind of a performance. I just needed to make it to the top board and take my chances. So I took gentlemen’s agreements with Zach Moore and Nicolas Sahuguet in Rounds One and Three, got gutted by an Adam Sigal orchestrated dismemberment of Turkey in Round Two, and leveraged all the Diplomatic posturing I could to emerge from Round 4 with a decent result. And the Top Board was one of the best implementations of “Don’t be a duck” that I’ve ever managed. I did this by allowing other people to be the 'duck'. I gladly stood by while Adam Sigal (Turkey) and Ed Sullivan (Austria) de-pantsed Chris Brand (Italy) live, on the internet, and then lied/”mis-communicated” with Nicolas (Russia) year after year. And I made sure to be gracious to Farren (France) as we partnered up to take down Ben Kellman (Germany), making sure that she gained as we worked together to achieve a mutually beneficial solution. And I was also gracious to Ben, a player I’ve known for years, as we took dots after dots, and made sure to be respectful to Farren, a true rising star in the face-to-face hobby, after I stabbed her. But as much as I love talking about myself, the DBN crew really did a great job on their top-board broadcast and I strongly suggest everyone checks them out.