As soon as Spring 1901 began, an intensive diplomatic activity took off. Russia opened with a very aggressive ultimatum (chainsaw diplomacy?), however he soon realised his ultimatum was unenforceable, so we began to explore the possibility of working together, especially since France was not answering any message, and Germany and I were considering a quick invasion of the country.

At the very last minute France answered all the messages in a rather convincing way, and he even managed to persuade Germany and I about the possibility to work together in a classic western triple.

In 1901 my orders did not went through properly, yet until F03 everything went on smooth (the other players also took a couple of turns before fully realising what was going on between F/G/E.

In S04 France did the first of a number of mistakes (by various players including myself) that heavily conditioned the game: he had a NMR and an Italian fleet managed to pierce our front-line. This obliged me to build a fleet to stop the maverick unit: and this move conditioned the rest of my game (I was planning to build armies and go east, but indeed I did not advance in the East until Russia gave me a territory of his by choice and kept on building fleets for the rest of the game.

F05 was a crisis moment for our triple: Germany let a second maverick unit (a Turkish army) reach beyond the front, and France was more concerned about his own territories rather than about the common strategy. Luckily I managed to seal up the Atlantic and push back the Italian, but Turkey was becoming increasingly dangerous, especially since he was now so intertwined with his allies that he could have delivered a massive stab without practically any risk.

Luckily for us, this was exactly what he did, and his allies did not particularly appreciated that, turning west for support.

Italy offered me to take the place of the uncooperative France in the triple alliance, so – after discussion with Germany – we accepted the swap.

The diplomatic relationship between Russia and Turkish were probably very bad, as Russia offered Moscow to me in the same turn, launching a kamikaze attack in the Black sea region. The attack was a failure in terms of territorial gains, but did keep busy 4 units for a turn, which was not a bad thing at all.

Russia was – to use the expression used by the Italian – “on life support”. But Italy still was in a position to distract the bulk of Turkish forces while Germany and I got reorganised and tackled the maverick Turkish unit still pestering Paris.

With the Turkish French speaking army destroyed, the newly formed E/I/G alliance, with the external support from Russia smoothly advanced on the board until F10. Here Germany made a dramatic mistake: he supported Galicia instead of Venice, and we lost the Italian lagoon to the Ottoman empire. It was here that I began considering the possibility to go for a solo. (True, in S13 we got Venice back because of a Turkish mistake, but the presence of a fleet in the Adriatic sea made that territorial gain about negligible.)

To be honest, I made a strategical mistake myself in S11 when I used the Thyrrenian sea to support Gulf of Lyon - Tuscany rather than bouncing Turkey in Naples: had I done that, Turkey would have failed to build a stalemate line.

Anyhow: the rest of the game was quite plain. Since I chose to go for a stab, I at least wanted to give the honour of survival to my fellow allies, so I had to work an original way to keep Russia alive till the end (I wonder what Turkey has thought about our movements around Warsaw!).
In F14 everything was ready for a massive 5-SC stab to come together and the game was over.

The most beautiful aspect of the game was the responsiveness of all the player to diplomatic exchanges, and the intensive exchanges that followed.

Ivo (Turkey) was a nice adversary too in that he always responded messages and kept the game interesting. He tried to approach me a couple of times with friendly proposals, but – surprisingly – he was promoting the idea of co-operating WHILE attacking both Belgium and Moscow (both mines at the time)... so for some “incomprehensible” reasons his proposal never came through as very credible! ;)

I wish to thank all the fellow player who spent this 2 months playing together: I would gladly play again with you any time. Till then... all the best! :)