PDL 1. Round 2 Game 1. AAR

[mjparrett]

Round 2 is complete. The audience sit with baited breath. The excitement as 7 weary travellers stand up to tell their tale....

ENGLAND (Pootleflump) 3 WAY DRAW
FRANCE (BlunderCity)
ITALY (FloridaMan)
GERMANY (greggybear) 3 WAY DRAW
AUSTRIA (Charleroi) 3 WAY DRAW
TURKEY (StarkAdder)
RUSSIA (DirtyHarry)

[mjparrett]

League table updated as well. Sorry for the delay folks, been a busy man of late. Sadly very few applicants to the role of "League Monkey" so I'm still flying solo

[Fatmo]

The audience sit with baited breath

If Greggybear is involved, I am indeed waiting with baited breath to hear what he has to say.

Also...league monkey?

[DirtyHarry]

This was quite a frustrating game for Mother Russia. I'll chime in with my thoughts after the winners say their piece.

[Pootleflump]

'Weary travellers' is right. I think we are all a little exhausted and weary after that game. Beware the Flump-Tongue-Lash for anyone who dares suggest this was a Carebear 3WD-ending!

Anyway, it was Pootleflump's alter-ego, Eddie who played most of this game. It is only right that he writes the AAR. He wanted to do it in the form of a letter to Russia.

Here's what he says:



Dear Russia/Dirty Harry aka 'Dad'

The biggest revelation in the voyage of discovery that was PDL 1, Round 2, Game 1, was my very own parentage. When I wrote to the mighty Tsar disclosing that my beloved mother, Queen Victoria had a great fondness for Russia after what she described as 'the biggest adventure of her life' - a night, fuelled by potato vodka shots and unbridled passion with a mighty Tsar - I never imagined the disclosure that conversation would lead to......

Father, it was an honour to find out the truth, to tell you what you meant to my mother and to meet you.

Unfortunately I also killed you..... but we'll come on to that.

In 1901, I had my pick of allies. France wanted me to attack Germany, but his plans involved not getting me on to the mainland and parking an army in Norway (which was the one thing you told me you didn't want). You (Russia) also wanted a German attack with a simultaneous take of the English Channel. I knew France would never buy that. Both your plans involved attacking Germany and simultaneously upsetting my other neighbour.

Then there were the pseudo-lovely German and Italian boys. They were quick off the mark and wrote such lovely, endearing letters. We quickly formed a warm, cosy, happy trio and agreed to collaborate to take France down. We talked over dinner, whisky, they stayed over at Balmoral. Grandiose plans of tackling France quickly, an even split of centres and heading East together. I felt like this was our game.

Dad. I swear I didn't know.

Dad....... They were bad men.

They were like the two charming, pin-striped-suited, nice-smelling, bad men-gang that steal Pinocchio away from his good, loving father.

By the time I discovered the gang-leader, and ultimate bad boy was capo di tutti capi Godfather Austria. 'The Pink Terror', it was too late. You and France were already done for. You and France warned me about the secret central triple alliance. I thought I knew better. Sigh..... the arrogance of youth.

I made bad choices at the beginning of the game and spent the rest of the game fighting for survival. I watched DQ's video on 'Negotiating from a Position of Weakness' so often, his voice got all wobbly and distorted. If I had a time machine, I'd go back and choose you, always you. Father and Son. My heart weeps for the missed opportunity and regret at your ultimate demise, largely at my hands.

As an agent of 'The Pink Terror', Germany stabbed me. Italy too, by entering English waters, and making a bid for Liverpool.

Then Old-Pinky stabbed Germany himself. Cooked a plan up with Agent-Italy to go an ambitious two-way and cut Germany out the deal. Problem was Old-Pink was looking large and scary by this point, so Italy tried to curb him. Old Pink's intention was to solo.

Dad, I managed to claw my way back. It was hard. Germany and I managed to fight Italy back, get fleets down to the med, take Spain and eventually Portugal, whilst holding Austria to a stalemate. Germany, Italy and I tried to crack Austria's defenses in the med. I managed to get into the Ionian and the Eastern Med. We tried an end game lepanto, a convoy to Albania, boredom, holding his beloved teddy bear hostage.... but we couldn't crack Old Pink. He was wiley and well defended.

Old Pink talked about an English/Austrian 2WD, all I had to do was stab Germany. He is a master at appealing to ambition. But the centre difference between us was too great and rightly or wrongly, my gut feeling was that if I stabbed him, Germany would throw to Austria. I'd seen other players fall victim to Austrian-inspired ambition. I'd have done it, if I thought I could make it work. Like father, like son. We don't lack ambition. I'd have done it for mum. For you.

In the end, Italy was down to just three centres. We couldn't crack Austria. I wouldn't stab Germany because I thought it would facilitate Austria's solo. So we took Italy out and settled for the 3WD. Taking Italy out didn't feel good. In essence all Old Pink did was swap Italy out and me in.

That said, things were looking bad for Eddie-Bear back in about 1904-1906. I looked done for. Tiny, barely breathing and fighting hard against Italy and Germany.

Despite the Oedipus Complex and killing you off, maybe there's a little bit of chip off the old block. I hope I've made you proud.

Apologies to the Lovely Frenchman too. I know my choices at the beginning of the game did for you both.

I hope you'll forgive me. I was blinkered by the professionals. I am a sucker for a nice-smelling, pin-stripe suit. But I'm learning.

Your son

Eddie



EDWARD VII
King of the United Kingdom, British Dominions and Emperor of India

[mhsmith0]

3wd, carebear power ACTIVATE



jk sounds like it was a pretty interesting one

[DirtyHarry]

Fabulous writing Poot! Can't wait to hear what the others have to say. I started off by pitching an aggressive plan to you. R/E is a tremendously powerful alliance, but it's not easy to find an England willing to go along with the initial plan. It defies the conventional strategies. So I wasn't that surprised when you declined, but what I didn't count on was you using my plan against me to poison the waters with Germany. I'm pretty sure that's what happened, isn't it? That made the game extra tough. I was already very wary of E/G alliances from a previous game I was in, and I thought I was more prepared this time. But then Germany denied me Sweden, and Austria cleverly and indirectly denied me Rumania, so between, you, Germany and Austria, I wound up having a really rough start.

[mhsmith0]

Is there a particularly good example you can think of where E/R has worked well? That seems like it'd be one of the hardest alliances to make work given the inherent overlapping interests in scandinavia.

[DirtyHarry]

mhsmith0 - Read page 5:

http://uk.diplom.org/pouch/Zine/F2015R/ ... ngland.htm

I've done this before as Russia - great fun!

[Charleroi]

I will have a fair amount to say about this game a bit later but the highlights are:
1. This game showed that, if the players actually commit to it, a central alliance can be very effective in overcoming the positional weakness of A/I/G and can really allow them to dominate the board.
2. This game continued the surprisingly tentative nature of PDL so far. It seems that the tournament series of prior years had a lot more solo victories and a lot more players aiming for solo victories than PDL.
3. We all have internal metrics of what sort of messages and persuasive techniques are in-bounds and out-of-bounds in diplomacy. This game was a reminder, for me, of the importance of those boundaries - I was surprised by how deeply offended I was when it became apparent that another player had transgressed my sense of appropriate diplomatic conduct.