He would also have to really work with Austria.

Russia usually opens
Sevas -> Black Sea
Moscow -> Ukraine
Warsaw -> Galacia

If Austria can secure Gal early on then he can hit Ukraine and set up Germany to take Warsaw.

Pretty sure these moves could be successful if France and England fight.

True, it would require an Austria in Galicia, but that usually isn't too hard to accomplish.

But I think an eastern German open is something that would be very unexpected and given the right circumstances (certainly not impossible ones) Germany could thrive.

I've seen this and I would have loved it had I not been Russia. I was so perturbed by it that I found out the culprit, tracked him down and slaughtered his family pets..... and the kids. The moral of the story is, don't do this if the person playing Russia is a paranoid schizophrenic psychopath.

goldfinger0303: You think you came up with something new? ;-) This is Diplomacy. According to the The Library of Diplomacy Openings, a certain Richard Sharp named that opening ages ago, calling it a Prussian Opening, specifically the Barbarossa Opening, Danish Variant. http://devel.diplom.org/DipPouch/Online/Openings/

This is also a successful German opening in a committed WT (if England doesn't stab).

The problem is that England almost surely will unless he's content to stretch himself east, take St.P, Mos, and have a 2 unit frontage on the turk in Sev.

IMO this is, as previously mentioned best done with a strong French ally and an opportunistic Germany who can steal Norway as he marches to russia.

@ava2790

"Pretty sure these moves could be successful if France and England fight."

If I'm in France or England and see Germany open this way, I do everything possible to patch things up and swallow Germany.

According to vaft's webdip stats this is the 12th most common german opening, with 144 attempts resulting in 13 solos (excluding gunboats, and i suspect excluding live games too) unfortunately vaft has neglected to mention how common this opening is, but i can estimate it at less than 2%

Also it's win ratio is about 9% while the top two german openings have around 10 and 8 % respectively...

So i conclude that this is a good opening WHEN the conditions for doing it arise - ie confidence in france's intentions... However this is rather rare.

That's the unfortunate thing about popular games. For every foolhardy move, there's inevitably a fool who thought of it before you did.

Having thought about a moment, let me take a better shot at explaining why this is a poor idea.

Q: What is your goal in the early stages of a Diplomacy game?

A: To pick an unfair fight, where you're on the winning side, and ideally where you get most of the spoils.


Q: How do I get most of the spoils?

A: The easiest way is to be the second power into a 2 on 1, and to jump in right at the moment your target has sent all of his forces to the other border.


So, there are two problems. The first is that just as you are answering these questions, so is everybody else on the board. You are committing first, and committing so hard that it's the answer for both England and France to the question of "how do I find a 2 on 1 against a vulnerable enemy" has an easy answer. And you don't like that answer.

The second is that you are committing first, which means that you don't get the biggest share of the spoils. A fair fight between G and R means both lose. In an unfair fight, well, who's your ally? If Austria, you're not going to end up with both War and Mos, right? Either way, you don't get Sev. And if England has chosen to work with you instead of attacking you, you don't get StP. So your best-case scenario here is that you have given away Holland and any claim on Belgium (let's say you've give up 1.3 centers, but it's probably a little more on average) in return for Warsaw and Sweden.

Basically, the opening stages of a game are always a scary time, where you're trying hard to find an ally instead of being on the wrong end of the 2-on-1. I strongly suspect that openings which allow you to look at the board before being forced to pick an ally fare better than openings which immediately commit to an enemy, simply because having two possibly allies to pick from gives you more leverage than a committed war where the third player gets to pick his favorite side. After all, if A, B, and C are going to pick some 2 on 1, you start out having a 2/3 chance of not being the loser. If A and B immediately and irrevocably go to war with each other (and this is pretty irrevocable), that becomes 1/2 if you're A or B, although it's pretty good for C...

I would poiny out the the stats i mentioned were incomplete; this opening has worse in draws, bad survives and more eliminations... Thus it is only in performance of a solo which it compares well to other german openings (at least in non live full press)

Risky, definitely, you have a smaller chance of surviving, but the same chance of winning! (if the stats are accurate and reliable)

This is a dumb & suicidal opening. Too many risks and too few rewards, especially since Germany is so well positioned early on in the game. Invading Russia through Warsaw is usually a fool's errand.

A tricky German opening, bold, assertive, powerful.
A Berlin - Kiel
F Kiel - Hold
A Munich - Kiel

Lets call it the Kiel Pudding, much like everyone's favorite Yorkshire Pudding!d

The German Goo Girls attack

haha @JECE I'm aware every possibility had been tried. This one just seemed rarer than other ones and I was wondering if anyone tried it

And thanks ora for the stats.

Cstein - I see your point with those questions. Germany moving east so radically would be an incentive for an E/F to form. This is to everybody now - if Germany was able to get France to DMZ Burgundy in the spring, how likely would it be that France stabs you if you get two builds from 1901? A two build Germany is still hard to attack, and the only centers that are German that France could attack is Munich. An army build there would surely be able to hold back the French. I see the clear incentive for England to attack Germany, but I'm just not seeing the incentive for France to attack Germany since France would already have Belgium (in most cases)

It's just begging for an English convoy to Holland.