Cross-posting my EoG from the facebook page:
It’s been a few days since the game now, but I finally got around to writing an EoG :)
So, I turned up on Sunday knowing two of the players very, very well, but only having met one of them (Mikalis) once and never having met the other (Eamon). Such are the wonders of the internet! The other five I’d never met before, and it was a pleasure meeting you all - and a surprise to be recognised by voice due to my videos!
I drew Russia, and by complete coincidence Eamon drew Austria and Mikalis drew Turkey. This was not a good start for me, because, as I said, I met Mikalis once before this - that ‘once’ was another Face to Face game where I had lied to him over and over. I knew from the start that he would be unlikely to trust me, and indeed he immediately dismissed a Black Sea DMZ, saying that he didn’t trust me to keep to it. Eamon, on the other hand, had only played against me online, where I tend to lie much less, so he accepted a request to DMZ Galicia.
I liked my northern negotiations much more, because England (Lauris) and Germany (Dan) had never met me before so I didn’t have to keep metagame in mind. Both were immediately friendly and likeable, so I really didn’t want to move on either early on - so I told both I didn’t like opening north (which is true) - but with the Gal DMZ I had a unit free, and since I wanted to bounce Black Sea it could really only go north. Lauris agreed to open south if I didn’t open to St Petes, so I decided to send it to Livonia instead.
Dan was not happy at all about that, but we talked it out and he said he’d let me into Sweden, and that he would not build a fleet in Berlin if I did not convoy in. I figured that was a good agreement so I accepted.
Meanwhile, Mikalis decided to go to Armenia, which gave me a dilemma in the south. Going to Black Sea risked Sevastopol if he did not bounce it, but not doing so would let him get his fleet out. I ended up guessing wrong, and an enemy fleet entered the Black Sea - but thankfully, rather than taking the support to Rumania that Mikalis had offered him, Eamon supported me in, solidifying an Austria-Russia alliance that lasted much of the game.
I decided to commit to an alliance with Germany rather than with England by building a fleet on the north coast of St Petersburg. After that, I got frozen in the north - England went to Finland, and with Germany not intervening on either side up there it took several years for me to get into position around Norway. There’s more to the story than that - I tried to convince Lauris to let me into Nwy ‘to let him disband my fleet’ but he saw right through it - but given the amount I’ve just written on 1901 I figure I should speed this up a bit :)
In the south, the A/R held, but we ran into a big problem. Italy had opened west, which allowed Eamon to walk into Venice and take Rome and Naples the next year - but that meant that there were not enough friendly fleets in the Med to break the Turk, especially when France started moving in. We got completely stuck, and despite much shuffling of units, nothing really happened. Spoiler alert - Mikalis kept his three home centers for the rest of the game.
Skip forward to the end of ‘03, and I’d finally managed to take Norway. Dan asked me to go for Edinburgh, but with Lauris’ disband of the army in Finland and with me having a bunch of armies in mainland Russia with nowhere to go, I decided that a move on Germany would work out much better for me. Eamon agreed and we tried to cross the stalemate line in the Fall of ‘04.
This was where the game really went downhill for me. Despite the complete mess the west was in, with England in Paris, France in London, Germany in the Channel… They all immediately responded to the incoming threat with a solid Western Triple. Thinking I could talk Lauris out of it due to my anti-German moves, I pressed on and did not defend Norway. Lauris promptly walked into both that and Barents, which halted my advance completely and put me at risk of losing my entire north that year if I did not defend correctly.
Thankfully for me, some suboptimal enemy moves and a good guess saved Sweden and St Petersburg, but they wouldn’t hold for another year, and the Triple’s defence in Germany had stalemated the area. Faced with the prospect of ending the game on 4 supply centers (Rumania, Sevastopol, Moscow and Warsaw), I turned to Dan to try to break the Triple up, and he agreed to make a stab if I stabbed Austria first. So ended the A/R, with all Russian armies suddenly turning south and Turkey finally getting Russian help out of his homeland and into Bulgaria - but there was no stab from Germany. The WT held firm, and although some fancy moves put me in Norway, I was guaranteed to lose everything regardless of what I had done.
I approached Dan angrily, to which he told me to keep looking angry so as not to raise suspicions while he told me about his intention to take England out of the game. I was still unhappy - he still intended to put Marvin (France) into Sweden, and he was very clear that he had no intention of stopping Lauris taking the rest of my lands that year - but I’d already committed in the south so there was nothing I could do. I had to accept the offer just to make sure I didn’t see an attack on Warsaw.
I still had one chance to get back into the northern game - although he was in one of my HSCs, if I made up with Lauris, I could save Sweden and Norway and thus keep my fleets. Dan was about to walk into Edinburgh, the last center on the island that was still British, but Lauris could bounce it out if he committed Norwegian to the task, and he could retake London if he committed North Sea to that. I had explained this to him before the western powers went into their group huddle, but, being especially worried that Dan would talk him out of it, I went up to him just before phasing.
“Don’t let them talk you into giving up your Home Supply Centers.”
I think he had a very hard time deciding which way to go, because he was writing his orders well after the phase was due (not uncommon in this game, but he looked very unsure of himself too). It was an incredibly tense moment for me, until the huge disappointment as I heard the English orders being read, and saw my northern front disintegrate - at the same time as I lost Rumania to Eamon, bringing me from 7 down to 3 in one year.
Dan had not been lying, though. Lauris knocked me out of Norway and took St Petersburg, but at the same time lost every other holding. Marvin and Dan had managed to not only talk him out of protecting his home centers, but also out of defending Paris and Belgium - the English army in Burgundy issued a support hold to Munich, and the French and German forces walked straight into the two adjacent centers. It was a beautiful stab - not what I had wanted to happen, but I can’t deny that it was quite something to witness.
As we entered the final year, that was the state of the board. With my assistance, Mikalis had finally broken out of Turkey and taken Bulgaria and Greece, but that had not gotten me anywhere, and I was sitting on Sevastopol, Warsaw and Moscow. Marvin, Dan and Eamon were the clear board leaders, but with the Turk pushing out it was clear that the victory would go to one of the western powers. The real question was - which one?
Instead of removing both my northern fleets, I took the fleet in Sevastopol off the board, hoping to have some say in the final result. However, as I went to have a discussion with Mikalis, I realised that because I had removed that fleet, I could potentially stop both of the western powers from winning by throwing the other way. Since F/G had both been part of the Triple that destroyed my game, that was an option I was very much in favour of, and I invited the Turk into Sevastopol, saying that I’d be happy to let him into Moscow too.
He couldn’t get anywhere close to the center count he needed without Austrian agreement though, and Eamon was understandably not happy about the situation, since he’d otherwise finish in a solid third place and this way a number of the extra centers would have to come from him. He said he’d consider it, which I was pretty sure translated to a ‘No’.
Dan said that he would stay out of Warsaw, which I was fairly confident was true, so I decided that I’d move on the Austrian - keeping my agreement to Mikalis to give him some centers, but still putting myself in position to take some more so that I would (hopefully) break even on 3. The phase came and went, and Eamon did not let Mikalis out, leading to a situation where nobody could beat France for the win. As a final discussion, we agreed to try to maximise Mikalis’ center count anyway (to potentially put Germany into third), but although Eamon entered the agreed convoy to Naples, he also invaded the Turkish home centers, and since I also took Budapest the East ended up in the same situation that the West had been in 3 years prior, with everyone in one another's’ homeland.
I finished in perhaps the most indefensible position I could’ve been in - owning StP, War, Bud and Rum, with Turkish units behind my lines. I was still happy though, since I had grown by one center since the previous year :)
It was a great and memorable game, and it was fantastic to meet you all! I look forward to doing it again sometime (when I can next get down to London, tis quite a journey for me), and of course, I’ll see those of you who are going to WDC there!
Can chicago fleet build go south down the Mississippi?
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