The live blogged game actually shows a great opportunity to have eliminated England in 1906. NAO went to NWG, where it should have stayed back while ENG went to Wales. Liverpool falls in the fall, while instead of England taking Den, his fleet occupies Edi in the spring, putting him up +2 with Germany losing Norway.

At this point, Russia is at 3, but France builds another fleet while Germany disbands the retreat to Skag. France takes the North Sea followed by Holland in the fall followed by me taking Warsaw, leaving Germany down 2 with Russia still stuck at 3. The English fleet that was in Liverpool is now in NWG, meaning Russia then loses either Nor or StPete, potentially both.

Meanwhile, Austria and Turkey finish off Italy without French interference.

3 way draw in 1909, 1910 at the latest.

Valis is eliminated and 2WL wins the tournament.

Too bad you weren't better, huh?

Thanks everyone! It was a great time and I'm very happy I got to see some of my usual dip friends as well as some new faces I hope to see again soon. Got to hang out a lot with Bo which was awesome.

Fun facts about this tournament:
-I finally understand the term "hogwash"
-I finally know how to pronounce "egregious"
-I went home in a car with 3 other people, of which every single person got more trophies than I did.
-The RNG gods were not kind to me and didn't lend me a chance to play with Bas or Uclabb =/
-I have at least 50 IRL webDip points. I'll exchange them as soon as I get some free time next week and can get to the post office.
-Lifetime haul: imgur.com/fqnfyhm

The tournament ran smoothly for the most part (any non-smooth parts were other boards fucking up adjudications) and abge was a great TD and 2WL as ATD, I really appreciate all the work that went into this to make it a such a good experience.

I'll write some post-mortems of the games later from memory hopefully. As normal, I'll make sure to give myself much too much credit. Going into the last round of the tournament in the lead, but only in the lead by the difference between a 3WD and 4WD was nervewracking. On one hand you wanna come up from behind and not have a target on your back, but it's not like I could or would do purposely worse just to hope to do very well on the last round.

jmspool gets MVP for me, we had a rock solid EF and a rock solid FR. I feel pretty stupid about 1-dotting my (non-jmspool) ally(ies) on the last turn before the time limit, twice, for the tie-breaker points now though. Sorry about that :/

P.S. After prizes were handed out there were some calls for a speech. I didn't know if they were joking and either way I was paralyzed with fear so I kinda just stood there until something else happened and people stopped looking at me. If someone who is proficient at social interactions could let me know if people were being sarcastic or not I'd appreciate it? I didn't mean to deny the tournament something that was supposed to happen. It basically would have just been me thanking everyone, especially Abge, which I guess is what this is, and what I did casually at the end of the tournament anyways, and what I would and did say no matter what, so I was confused and I apologize either way.

@ghug ... I won two trophies man, don't be whipping it out in front of me for that. It's just that a 5-way draw and a 7-way draw both forced by the time limit don't exactly help your cause. Blame uclabb for not dying.

Valis, I was totally serious. You had been making speeches to Germany so inspirational that he literally backed out of your uncontested, undefended home center in the fall simply because you asked. I was hoping for similar inspiration.

"I was paralyzed with fear so I kinda just stood there until something else happened and people stopped looking at me."

Can confirm.

Yes, bo was not particularly happy he could talk Germany into walking straight into Paris unobstructed in the Spring, but I could talk him into walking straight back out in the Fall.

Although, to be fair, it didn't help that you were holding so many points you couldn't move without spilling everywhere.

I saw him at South Station and waved and said hi. We could have talked for hours, but he looked at me like he had never seen me in his life and walked away shaking his head. That basically sums up his willingness to interact with me during the game.

Abge, your trophies cost me $25. I asked the ticketer at Delta and she said TSA would probably not be happy about me carrying on two fake shortswords.

ROFL

Also, 2WL, I owe you $10...

Abge deserves some +1s for controlling seven accounts at a time to bring the interwebs some live updates all while dealing with people who didn't know basic game mechanics and thought that a unit could still lend support even if it is forcibly disbanded. Those infantrymen are POWs now, not your support against an offensive that will inevitably beat you.

Yeah it was a great tournament- great to finally meet a bunch of people I've been interacting with for years now and the games were pretty fun as well. Congrats to valis- I'm sad we didn't get a game together (especially today when I knew what result I wanted you to have) and I hope that the talk of playing a game with people from the f2f materializes. Special shout out to Emily (I forget her webdip name) who was a blast to work with (and maybe occasionally stab) in my last two games. I also would be happy to do some eog stuff if there is interest

Oh and I want to play a game with basvan (van what?) soon- you were a blast to play with and just talk to even though we never quite worked together over our 3 games until the sheer exasperation of the last game

Thank you to all for the f2f trial by fire. -Dom

Thanks for coming out Dom! It was great playing with you. PM me and I can hook you up with the F2F fb group / mailing list if you're not on them already.

There's a facebook conversation about the scoring system happening right now and it made me curious so I (lightly) dug into it and
Draws (and thus 8-X eliminations as well):
A 5
E 7
F 7
G 2
I 4
R 6
T 4

Here are my thoughts on the scoring system:

If we played all games without a time-limit, I think the scoring system would be excellent.

With a time-limit, though, it's quite rough having a draw-based scoring system.

I'm quite surprised how many Russia players made it to the draw IMO. Especially compared to Turkey. Russia also had the worst Best Power showing, which I did expect however.

I always find the F2F crowd's obsession with PPSC fascinating.

+1

Some thoughts:

We should definitely set up an online game with Valis, uclabb, abge, jmspool, thecaptain1234, 2ndWhite and whoever I'm forgetting now.

@Jack (uclabb): After some intense soul-searching on the bus, I have come to the conclusion that I probably would've given you the tournament win if I could've done it in the last game. I mean, I did effectively promise to hand you the tournament in both our other games too ;) Turns out Valis would've still won, but that's a different story.

@Emily (thecaptain1234): I really enjoyed the first few turns of our last game. I'm curious who would've gained the upper hand if there weren't a Western Triple.

@Spencer (Bo_sox): What on earth were you trying to do in that last game? I was really frustrated and I still am, because you and Carl essentially cost me the tournament win. If this game had ended in a EGT draw as it should've, I'd have even beaten Valis! :p Carl and I talked afterwards and I understand his rationale (I do disagree with it in the strongest possible terms), but I still cannot conceive what you were trying to achieve in that game? What's the point of veto-ing our 7-way draw offer, but making no attempt to eliminate any more players? What's the point of playing diplomacy even if you don't take a solo that's been handed to you on a silver platter?

"I was really frustrated and I still am, because you and Carl essentially cost me the tournament win."

How dare they cost you the win! ; p

wheres the pictures?

One final thought. I do like the scoring system. I look at the top 10 or so players, and I see an accurate representation of how well each of us performed in this tournament. Isn't that what a scoring system is supposed to do?

Yeah, at that point I thought I had it, and I was considering whether me or Jack deserved the tournament win more (hint: it's Jack).

I don't mind getting stabbed every once in a while. But I do mind if there's no gain to the perpetrator. Why would they prefer a 7-way over a 3-way? Just to spite me? I would understand if bo_sox were playing for a solo, but when he got his chance he didn't even bother to try.

@bas ... I didn't veto the draw. I don't know who did.

I also find it funny that I had the second most centers of the tournament and finished near the bottom among players who didn't leave early

@bas ... there was a ridiculously easy solo there but I never expected you to leave Tunis. I only got there (and from 10 to 14) with a year to go. I figured I could fuck Germany up and get to 16 or 17 but I never dreamed I would get Tunis off of you until you literally just backed up out of it. If I had through 1912, it would have happened, but with that cap and not knowing until 1910 that Tunis would ever be available, it was stupid to try. My hope was that you would take out the one centers rather than screwing with Russia (who I wouldn't have stopped you from taking out, you never really asked any time after we broke for lunch).