Fun game. I drew Turkey which I don't feel I'm strong at. I opened standard, Russia opened standard, Italy opened Lepanto, and Austria opened Bud-Gal, Vie-Tri, Tri-Alb which let me bounce him in Greece and really get an edge.

In 1902, I guessed right, bouncing Italy in Eastern Med and moving black to Con. In the fall, I lost Bul but I was in the Aegean and had fleet Smyrna. Seeing that I successfully blocked the Lepanto, Italy gave up on it and signaled he wanted to head elsewhere. Russia, who was under pressure from England in the North, built fleet Sev. At this point, I thought Russia was going to try and pile on me. I thought my game was done, so I abandoned my Med position and moved in position to prevent Russia from getting anything from me. I still don't know what his intentions were, but he ended up moving to the black and then support holding Rum. In the meantime, Italy had turned towards France, but had not made any progress.

Soon enough, I was able to take Sev to get myself back up to four builds and new life. Immediately after, Italy stabbed Austria and I could breath a little easier. However, Austria immediately CDed after the stab (it looked like a rage quit, but it was the dude's first ever CD) and I threw up my draw. Within a year or so, only Italy and France didn't have their draw up.

I got two builds that year from Austria, and so did Italy. What followed was a pretty intense battle between myself and SD, and as I broke through him a bit, he put his draw up, so did France, and the game was done.

The west was a big clusterfuck, and they couldn't really get their shit together. Zmaj ended up CDing when he was down to like two centers, which was a bit odd, but didn't influence the game.

All in all, a fun game.