I have the old metal piece set as well. By far the best set although I always thought having England dark blue and France light blue was a mistake. Too similar.

What country would get what metal? I vote iron for Germany.

Gold for Turkey. XD

How about Uranium, Plutonium, Lead, Mercury...

Mercury would have to be Austria because it would get lost in the sea.
I've also got a set with metal pieces. Glad I picked it up before they swapped to cardboard.

Cardboard :(

Does anyone have pictures of excellent custom sets? I've always had a dream to build a Diplomacy table, ~6ft by ~6 with large model ship and cannon pieces painted appropriately.

Germany is obviously bismuth, given its resemblance to Bismark.

“We were fortunate to win the first set,” coach Gayer said. “Those kids (from Hutchinson) have a lot of fight in them. They did some nice things, like sliding over on Mark’s slower kick serve and putting some pressure on our volleys.”
MHS’ Tyler Singleton and Cory Horton were 2-2 for seventh in doubles. “Tyler and Cory are right there with the best,” Gayer said. “It’s just some of the little stuff that they have to take care of.”
In singles, MHS’ Max Pyle went 3-1 for seventh and Ben Davidson was 3-1 for ninth.


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If one had ready access to a laser cutter, it would be very nice to print the Dip map on a big piece of sheet aluminum or some other (ferrous) metal. Stick rare earth magnets on the bottom of the pieces and play.

In fact, if I could do this, would anyone care to buy a board?

@sekar555
WTH?
@Ghost
Ban the spammer?

I've played with both the very original set, or something very very close to, with wooden pieces that my dad got over ebay, and the awful, new, cardboard set. Ummm, obviously my vote goes to the old set. The big chunky wooden pieces are easy to tell apart, and so charmingly low tech, (Light blue France and Dark blue England are unmistakable, although if you look very very quickly you might mix up England and Germany.) They do tend to slide about if the table is jostled. This is a problem with the cardboard set as well however. It should go without saying that the cardboard set sucks.

Are even the pieces made of cardboard?

I have the old set my dad used, where the colors are those we use in the board here (the colors I originally used); a very old set but it has a nice leathery old-timey feel to it.

Really I think they're going to have to make board games a sort of premium high-end luxury, because I don't think using cardboard is better than just using a software display. If you're going to use cardboard why not just print it off?

After all are they really trying to market to people who want to play Diplomacy on a budget? Why wouldn't those people just come here or one of the many forks?

"If one had ready access to a laser cutter, it would be very nice to print the Dip map on a big piece of sheet aluminum or some other (ferrous) metal. Stick rare earth magnets on the bottom of the pieces and play."

I have access to laser cutter and I know how to use it, but one hour work of laser cutter is about 100 Euro, add cost of material, and taxes of 24% on top. :))) Want to buy one? :)))

kestas, can you please ban sekar555? It's clearly just a fake account designed to post links to a site selling kitchen equipment. Not a geniune player. Ban it.

You wouldn't want me to ban your account without evidence or skepticism jamiet, so please don't expect me to ban someone else. Give links to evidence etc and me and any mod will of course ban any fake account

I thought you were making a joke at first JamietUK99, bit you are right. It really is a spam account. Weird.

userID=29280
I feel like I have just seen a rat. Lol. You expect to this sort of spam here.

Typo... You *don't expect see this sort of spam here.

@ kestasjk: "You wouldn't want me to ban your account without evidence or skepticism jamiet, so please don't expect me to ban someone else. Give links to evidence etc and me and any mod will of course ban any fake account "

Please see the post made by sekar555 in this thread as evidence, kestas. I would also point to the fact that this 'user' has not joined any games.

If I advertise that I am selling wooden pieces (like the old set I have) that you can replace the cardboard with....will I be banned? lol

The wood ones are indeed "charmingly low tech", though keeping the original board in good shape only happens when you haven't played a F2F game in 25 years.

I was surprised to find out that most of the tournament-goers I've met dislike the metal pieces. They were what I first played with, way back when. (Just realised I've been playing for more-or-less 6 years, now).

I have the cardboard board. Only ever played on it a handful of times. I don't think it's too bad. I still prefer the metal (Feels nice) and wood (better utility).

I think metal versus wood is just a personal preference issue. I think wood is really nice since it's simple and classic, but metal is also good since it has some heft to it. Either way, both are certainly better than the cardboard tokens that AH just recently put out. I can't believe they had the nerve to do such a thing, for the 50th anniversary edition no less!

It's fairly easy to make your own wooden pieces. You can get square rods at any hobby shop, then cut and paint them.

Now, making a custom map, that's a bit of challenge. Finding the right artwork could be tricky and then there is the issue of printing/constructing it. I've always wanted to make a custom map from a historic map, like this one
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_1914_Shepherd.jpg
Any suggestions on how I should do it?

My only problem with metal is that it's sometimes harder to distinguish the colors. Especially if they use that "metallic ally" paint.

I intend to make my own set as well, incorporating some aspects of the shitty cardboard copy i have, but I am a ways yet from making it, I am thinking a wodden board, with the countries and names cut into it by a machine (I dont' know what its called, and then some paint or something of that sort for color, and then I remember once seeing a site that will make custom game pieces from medal, I'll have to see if I can find it. The board would be about 3' by 4' or thereabouts

I think that one could use a projector to project on a white table from above... This would rock.

Or maybe even better, and LCD TV map. :)

Abgemacht, are you being punny? Or did you just mistype metallic alloy?

unfortunately no. That was an artifact of my touch Screen

I like the projector idea, adding in the factor that you can change territory colours, etc.

Damn creative typo, then. I LOL'd when I read it cause I thought you were trying to crack wise.

Weird I must be going blind jamiet :-|

No worries kestas, thanks for banning him.

Hey, what about stone? Ooh ooh or glass, definitely glass

Better yet gem stones. A set of emeralds for Italy, rubies for England, amber for Turkey, saphire for France, amethyst for Russia, obsidian for Germany, Austria tiger's eye. The board than would be made in the old topographic style from different colors of gold.

Electronic board with tri-color led backlighting and sensors that make the entire province glow the color of the unit sitting on top of it (except water of course) and colored cut glass pieces with RFID chips that are activated on contact (to indicate to the province what color it should glow).

Make the board be the size of a war room board in the old WWII movies and push the pieces around with long black sticks with T-ends like in the movies too.

The pieces would have to be fashioned to resemble WWI battleships and cannon though.

It would be a cool mix of modern, classic WWII and WWI.

Warsprite's concept, precious stones as pieces. Then, as you capture an SC and the person is forced to disband a piece, you receive that piece.

Buy-in could be pricey :)

How about cheap metal units but shaped according to country for the armies?

ie The English saucer-style helmets for England's armies, the spiked German ones, Ottomans with maybe turbans...?

Just a thought...

@Draugnar Why not just a series of flat screens?

@Indybroughton Winner keeps the gold board.

@ Draugnar: "Electronic board with tri-color led backlighting and sensors that make the entire province glow the color of the unit sitting on top of it (except water of course) and colored cut glass pieces with RFID chips that are activated on contact (to indicate to the province what color it should glow).

Make the board be the size of a war room board in the old WWII movies and push the pieces around with long black sticks with T-ends like in the movies too. "


I love that. I want one.

Don't let him see the big board!