F2F in NYC Feb 19th (AAR POSTED!)

[Niakan]

See Below

[Niakan]

I will be hosting a F2F game at the usual place, my apartment in Manhattan, next Sunday Feb 19th. If anyone is interested in playing this game, or if you would like to be included in my email list for future games, feel free to let me know by posting here or PMing me. The game will start at noon, and with players typically coming from all parts of the Tri-State area for this, carpooling may be possible depending on who attends.



Previous games:

December's game

January's game


Results tally of previous games:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... n_US#gid=0



Seats

1- Seth Victor
2- Joe Siesto
3- Paul Camina
4- Anthony Laufgraben -- Changed to Sam Capasso
5- Mitchell McConeghey
6- Darren Tang
7- Jason Mastbaum

Reserves
1- Robert Premus
2-

[Niakan]

We have a full table, but a couple of players are somewhere on the "maybe" or "I'll get back to you" spectrum, so if you're interested in playing let me know. Might still be room for you!

[Niakan]

All players are confirmed. Looking forward to this weekend!

[Niakan]

Thanks to everybody for coming out, it was a great game as always. I'll post the AAR tonight after I'm home from school.

Rob

[Niakan]

So thanks again everybody for coming out. This time we had a couple of new faces and a few veterans to our face-to-face games. Roster and random country selection came out as follows:

England -- Sam Capasso
France -- Joe Siesto
Germany -- Mitchell McConeghy
Italy -- Seth Victor
Austria -- Paul Camina
Russia -- Darren Tang
Turkey -- Jason Mastbaum

The culinary experiment of the game was chili which actually came out pretty good, if I do say so myself. I made about 2 gallons of the stuff which ended up getting destroyed by the end of the night so I figure that was a good sign.

Board Start

Board Start.JPG (76.46 KiB) Viewed 2373 times

Immediately in S1901 the west agreed to a WT, and it seemed that a tenuous R/T would form as well. I drank scotch and ate some chips. Here's what happened after the S1901 orders were read out:

After Spring 1901

S1901.JPG (80.61 KiB) Viewed 2373 times

Yikes! WT isn't obvious just yet, but the R/T looks like a sure thing, and Italy has just moved into Trieste! I drank scotch and ate some chips.

After Build 1902

B1902.JPG (79.71 KiB) Viewed 2373 times

...And then our famous friend, the Key Lepanto, rears its ugly head against the Juggernaut, effectively countering it. I'd be interested to know whether this was the plan between A and I in S1901, or if Italy's stab of Austria turned into this after the Juggernaut became apparent. I drank scotch and ate some chips.


Part II coming up...

[Niakan]

Then I switched to beer, and some other stuff happened on the board:

After Spring 1902

S1902.JPG (92 KiB) Viewed 2373 times

Russia was in early trouble in this game. With English armies landing in Scandinavia and a solid A/I cracking the less-trusting R/T, Russia didn't stand to hold on much longer.

After Build 1903

B1903.JPG (89.71 KiB) Viewed 2373 times

Things slowly degrade for R/T as a measured WT marches on...

After Spring 1903

S1903.JPG (80.79 KiB) Viewed 2373 times

Then Germany decides to stroll into Picardy as Russia loses Warsaw as I savor the creamy spinach dip.


Part III coming up...

[Niakan]

Austria decides to impose an income tax on Italy by taking Trieste...

B1904.JPG (79.58 KiB) Viewed 2372 times

England lets Germany into StP SC to keep him occupied while he prepares to stab..

S1904.JPG (94.17 KiB) Viewed 2372 times

2-center stab while France and Italy get stuck in the Med and the R/T gasps for air.

S1905.JPG (78.03 KiB) Viewed 2372 times

[Niakan]

B1906.JPG (83.64 KiB) Viewed 2372 times

And I missed the photo for Spring 1906...

Hopefully some of the players will post their AARs here to talk about what was happening on the board for them..

B1907.JPG (92.81 KiB) Viewed 2372 times

With France and Turkey knocked out in the same year, it looked like Germany might be next. Sure enough, he was...

S1907.JPG (94.07 KiB) Viewed 2372 times

[Niakan]

B1908.JPG (77.48 KiB) Viewed 2372 times

Final board above. The game resulted in a draw between England, Italy, and Austria with 11, 11, and 12 centers respectively. It had been a strong A/I throughout the game, but there was still some potential on the board for stabbery. Instead of having the game go on for another 3 hours, though, the players decided to call it there. A very good ending to a game I would say, and a good example of a few players that played expertly, as they all entered the end-game with roughly the same amount of centers and a relative balance of power.


I think that England could have pulled back to try to induce Italy to come towards him while focusing on stalemating Austria in the north, in order to also try to force Austria to stab Italy before he would take too many English centers with his naval power. This should have, in turn, sent some of Italy's fleets back and, while England would have ended up losing a few centers for it, I think that it would have salvaged his game in the long-run since the A/I was set to continue unless something did drastically change the game for them, which it would have past that point. I think no one wanted to risk seeing another player solo. Still a good end to a good game.

This was Mitchell's first Face-to-Face game although he is a seasoned online player at another website, and Paul is an all-around Diplomacy veteran. Was great meeting the both of them and I look forward to future games together.



Rob