The Briefing - Carnage in the Green Mountains

A Weekly Threat Assessment of the Diplomacy Community

Carnage Results!

Carnage 2020 has finished and was a great success! The usually Vermont based tournament was held virtually this year. Congratulations to the tournament champion, Bill Hackenbracht.

A hearty thank you to Dave Maletsky for organizing the tournament, which had 49 participants in all (with a link to the final standings here). Watch the coverage of the game, including interviews with the finalists here, brought to you by the Diplomacy Broadcast Network.

Diplomacy Games

The newest episode of Diplomacy Games is here! Kaner and Amby interview Legendary Tactics, and also have an in depth discussion with Brother Bored (as well as returning to their juggernaut game!) Listen here, and check out Legendary Tactics' youtube channel here.

2021 WebDip World Cup

WebDip is hosting a team-based tournament. Teams will gather 4-5 players from a city/state/region to battle it out for bragging rights of whose area has the best Diplomacy players around!

Teams will play 2 full press games, 1 public press game, 2 gunboat games, as well as 1v1 games. This is considered one of the marquee internet tournaments, with sign ups open until the end of November. Sign up here.

Edi Birsan needs no introduction to anyone familiar with the hobby, but suffice to say that he's been playing the game since 1965 and famously invented the Lepanto. He was also the first non-South African to win the South African tournament, first non-Canadian to win the Canadian Championship, first non-Russian to win the Russian Championship and first non-European to win the European Championship. He writes here in response to Jorge Zhang's 'Waterloo' article.

The Birsan Waterloo Rebuttal

Jorge Zhang’s exploration of the use of French Fleet English Channel to convoy Wales to Belgium has some interesting aspects as well as some unmentioned problems though he does hit it on the head when he says that this would need to be originated by England rather than France in the negotiations. That is astute and should be noted that often people discuss opening with other players without giving proper consideration as to who should be initiating what. Now when dealing with new players the experienced player may feel that they have to go over all the combinations, I certainly do but this is not something that I would toss in the mix with a new player, however, in a more intense player experience mix you need to consider what the suggestions are and the impact of those suggestions. For this example if France were to make the suggestion then it would be most likely result in raising the suspicion of France by an veteran English player.

Let us look at some of the down side here which was over looked:

1. France is looking to get only ONE build as it depends on being able to take Munich which is not guaranteed.

2. The benefit goes to England having the chance of two builds which is more than what can be expected normally.

So what is the situation with England getting two builds and France one? Well the English will be tempted to build Fleets in EDI and London while the French would most likely be looking at Army Paris to bolster Burgundy and make the possible shift to Ruhr and a follow up from Paris. However that also means that France is looking at facing TWO English fleets on the Channel with the very real temptation for the English to take advantage of the limited French fleet position.

3. The French player and the English player should agree that in the event that England gets two builds that one of them should be ARMY London and not Fleet London. Remember that in most Face to Face games and especially Tournament FtF events you cannot negotiate after Fall Adjudication and BEFORE adjustments. This is not something that should be left unspoken of in the Fall planning.

4. What is happening on the rest of the board also plays into this. The move of the Army to Wales means that things can get a little strange if Russia drops an Army Moscow to St.Petersburg since England would have to use both its fleets to take Norway or take a risk. Then would England want to start a war with Germany when they have to face an obvious hostile Russia?

5. What is Italy doing? If Italy is sitting in Tyrolia are they also in Venice and may have an attack on Austria or is Italy looking to jump into Munich themselves and maybe follow up from Venice? Will Italy ask for support into Munich which now places France with

one build and between England and Italy with two builds. Not a good feeling for most French players but a common enough mistake so that maybe the English player may want to use this on a less then sharp France. There is an old saying that echo's in my past: “An Alliance is a means to destroy an enemy and weaken a friend.”

However, that is why the game is called Diplomacy and the reliance of the bond built between the players of England and France come in and has to be developed.

Also, as someone who has named more than a few openings and moves I have to say calling this a Waterloo Opening is HORRIBLE. Waterloo was a battle where England and Germany cooperated against FRANCE not the other way around.