I'll have to get their names tomorrow; there were just too many people to keep track of.
I think the first game went well overall. I played a very aggressive game against Germany, who was good enough to fend off an attack against me and France for several years. For a while, things looked very good as Russia was consumed by war in the south. Despite that, he built in the north, saying he wanted a piece of Germany. That should have been a tip-off, but I was more concerned with how slowly things were going with Germany so I naively accepted the help.
Well, as you would expect, that quickly resulted in Russia taking Scandinavia, but due to some poor orders, it left me in SWE. We spent several years fighting in Scandinavia while France got bigger and bigger. He used some units to help Italy defend against Turkey, who had taken most of Austria. He used the rest of his units to fill in from behind as I moved forward against Germany. At one point, I was extremely vulnerable to France, with all my units around Scandinavia and him in NTH, if you can believe it. Ultimately, he didn't stab me because probably because Russia was sill very large.
I then had a great turn, taking NWY, DEN, KIE, and BER, bringing me up to 8 centers, at which point France could no longer easily take me out and Russia was crushed. Unfortunately, I had a painful misorder that resulted in France getting the upper hand again, but by that point everyone was ready to draw.
Live from Carnage!
. Chris Martin was stopped at 17, so he has 7,013. Your board-topper is in third with 7,010. You're probably in sixth or seventh, heading into round 2. 
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