Game 3 was by far the best game for me this weekend. Partly because I was warmed up and because I got Russia, which I tend to be stronger in. A big part, though, was that Austria was new to Carnage as well, and we were able to form a bond as outsiders.
My main goal was to quickly take out Turkey, for normal reasons, but all because how deadly he was as a player. Luckily Germany was the friendly France of Game 1, so I was pretty sure my north would be safe. With Austria we were able to quickly lock down the Balkans, but Italy was, understandably, upset with how closely we were working together, so refused to offer help against Turkey. He didn't attack Austria either, though, so we were able to slowly route him out.
I was very focused in the South so I'm not exactly sure what happened, but at some point Germany got real big real fast. I didn't leave myself nearly as open as I had in previous games, but I did find 2 units on an undefended WAR. Luckily, by this time, Turkey was gone and I was able to use his centers to fight off Germany and later England.
France quickly crumbled and it became clear that Italy and we had to put aside any differences we may have. We launched a 3 pronged attack against the EG in which Italy locked down the South West, although he unfortunately wasn't able to reliably hold MAR, Austria headed straight North, although he could never get into MUN, and I went for Scandinavia, although I ultimately lost it and some of my home SCs.
For a long time we battled around Northern Russia. I made some clever moves that got me back my centers and at one point put me at the top of the board. There was no way for me to hold them though and I quickly went back down. Austria and Italy were generous enough to loan me some centers to ensure all of our units were on the frontline, which is the only reason I didn't collapse to Germany.
Probably 2 hours of the game we spent with very little movement. I'd take SWE but lose NWY. I'd take MOS but lose WAR, etc. We tried to get England to stab Germany, but for whatever reason he just wasn't interested. For 4 years we tried to draw but someone always voted against it. Eventually the South was completely locked down and EG took enough of my north to get them in 1st and 2nd place on the board. That was good enough for someone because the draw finally went through. I had considered taking GRE from Austria the very last turn to tie for 2nd, but the risk of that giving England the solo was just too great to risk.
I'm very happy with how things turned out and was very glad that I could have a productive alliance with Austria where neither of us was subservient to the other. Going in to the game we said the two of us combined were probably as good as one average player here and it seems we were right. : )
)
tl;dr
)
)
)
)