A Weekly Threat Assessment of the Diplomacy Community
A Weekly Threat Assessment of the Diplomacy Community
EDC XXIX - the Return of Face-to-Face Diplomacy!
Congratulations to Alex Lebedev who took first place at EuroDipCon! This is a double celebration as the event in San Marino is the first major face-to-face tournament since 2020! This will hopefully represent a light at the end of the tunnel for those players who are still patiently waiting for this whole thing to blow over so they can play some face-to-face Diplomacy!
Well done to all who took part, including the players who finished 2nd-7th place: Renè van Reijen, Vincent Reulet, Daniele Belardinelli, Cyrille Sevin, Philipp Weissert and Steve Personeni. Special thanks to tournament directorsLuca Pazzaglia, Alex Ledebev and Giancarlo Ceccoli. You can find more information and photos on the EDC 2021 channel of the FtFDiplomacy Discord server.
Virtual Tour of BritainThe penultimate round of the Tour of Britain 2021 will take place on the weekend of the 11th and 12th of September. Games 5 & 6 of the Tour will be played, but players can sign up for however many they prefer. Sign up for your chance to topple Morgante Pell from the current top spot!
Registration for Weasel Moot XV is still open. This year's two-round virtual tournament will be held on the vWDC server on 4th September, with the winner crowned the Alpha Weasel.
The Champions Corner is where recent tournament winners share a specific move or strategy that they believe helped them to emerge victorious.
For this issue, we welcome Ewok (a.k.a. Village Idiot), the winner of the Nexus Season 6 Main Event Finals.
Outsmarted by an Ewok
Nexus has become the pinnacle of online Diplomacy tournaments, a meeting point for over 100 of the best players each season from all the corners of different online Diplomacy communities as well as attracting top talent from the FTF and vFTF community. This was a Diplomacy bucket list item for me to be able to champion one of these seasons.
It’s hard to really appreciate the intensity of a Nexus Finals game until you’ve actually experienced it. It’s very fast paced at 24 hour rounds with unprecedented access to other players via Discord being used for communications and a hard 1910 deadline. For approximately 6 weeks you need to make yourself extremely accessible as you have 24 hours to pull together deals while juggling real life activities across a wide stretch of time zones with a bunch of elite players clutching their cards close to their chest to the very last minute to combat the heightened gossip commerce and shopping around of agreements that occur in these matches.
This season used the Paris Method for country selection and I would select Russia and a 4th spot seeding in case of tie-breaker. Finals games are very often won by inches with two previous seasons decided in a tie so this was a good compromise in my view.
My early game faced immediate obstacles as a known earlier round ally would select Turkey, immediately triggering board reactions to an assumed Juggernaut and impeding my diplomatic access to others. Given Russia’s vulnerabilities in the early game and a spotlight on me as a veteran player I decided it best to seek to distance myself from my former ally. England/France were emerging early in the west as a dominant alliance and the initial RT vs AI conflict was progressing slowly so in 1902 Austria and I would agree to a double stab on Italy and Turkey. Unfortunately Austria would afterwards prove unreliable following an exposed message forwarding scandal so after hefty reconciliation and leveraging my value in countering the EF I’d end up heading into the midgame with an ITR alliance and Austria would be eliminated soon after.
In the mid-game alliances would become increasingly more volatile and player attitudes more transactional. Alliance structures would change annually on both sides of the board as players would sprint towards opportunities or react to board leaders. I tend to do well in these sorts of environments as two of my strengths are adaptability and crafting creative mutually beneficial deals.
In 1906 I would overreach in an attempt to aid the west in a stop-the-leader campaign against England and take a stab at Italy who I felt was acting against my best interest. Italy would have a very public reaction to this stab and my gamble would turn out to be a near critical mistake as Turkey would take advantage of this the following turn in what was at high risk of being a game winning stab.
Fortunately, 1908 would turn out to be my finest year.
England, France, and Turkey were now in a tight race but Turkey had stronger potential so I was able to negotiate with England relief in the north so I could help in keeping Turkey better contained. This would afford me to put up enough of a defence against Turkey to make progress against me challenging, allowing me to convince him that Italy would be a better growth path which I offer support with. Unknown to Turkey, despite lingering hard feelings and strained trust from Italy, the ticking clock and existing long shot potential for both of us to get back into chase for the win led to discussions of renewed cooperation. Russia would stay true to de-escalation and a shift towards Italy which opened up an opportunity for Italy and I to use our inconceivable reconciliation into a surprise attack on Turkey that would ultimately knock him down three centers and neutralize his board top bid. By 1909 I would be on par with England for board leader with the seeding advantage in my favour, Italy would be close behind.
There was little opportunity left for additional growth for me in the time left so 1910 I would have to rely on diplomacy to thread the needle of keeping my lead intact. I would fan the flames of hope alive for Italy to keep him focussed on competing over revenge for earlier strife and I would talk with the countries out-of-contention to ensure no windows were left open for my competition to pull out ahead. I would also spend this year intensively engaging with these players to help in shaping their minds over who is deserving to win, making pleas against succumbing to trivial consolation goals, and reinforcement as to just how much this means to me. I wanted to share my story and invite them to be a part of it. There were many ways things could have gone wrong in 1910, but in the end my diplomatic efforts would pay off and the board top would hold.
