SATLOF and Drunken Diplomacy

Saturday was the Society of Neffs annual Saturday After Thanksgiving LeftOver Feast (SATLOF). Orginally meant to a be a gathering of everyone's leftovers, its focus in later years has turned to drinking and some gaming, in addition to the gorging.

This year I had my copy of Zombies! returned to me from October's Game Day, as well as bring a copy of Diplomacy. The hard-core gamers (re: history and poli sci nerds) gravitated towards Dip, the average gamers played a spirited game of Zombie bashing. The opening board

The Players:

Russia: Adam Mosher - Pope Blippy showed some early game jitters, writing incohernet orders and single unit orders for the first two years of turns.

Germany: Steve O'Hara - Archi showed aggressive moves into the low countries and Scandinavia and frightened the other players.

Austria-Hungary: Hoyce - Hoyce made the traditional moves to control centers for A-H, but Italy's status change threw off his strategy.

Italy: Roy - Roy asked to play in the middle of Spring 1901 discussions, so we gave him Italy for Fall 1901. He had two problems (1) He was a turn behind everyone else (Italy was to be a static nation in 6-player) and (2) Everyone else had rushed to grab Italian control centers.

Turkey: Some dude who always shows up but we don't necessarily like. He played very aloof yet aggressive but his orders seemed incredibly ineffective.

France: Brian Woolever - Outside of BattleTech, he's a wild card, a mixture of rules incompetence mixed with the moves of a genius. I claimed France was a puppet of Germany for the first few turns, but in hindsight, that was just a simple non-aggression treaty. He did successfully stymie my fleet movements through the English Channel.

England: Oh yeah, I "umpired" and played England. With France blocking my tactics, I could only pick up Norway, and in a swift move of treachery, seized the Low Countries when they were open.

The Fit hitting the Shan

At this point, four events have occurred:

1. Turkey has confirmed their desire to destroy Italy.
2. Austria-Hungary uses it's pre-emptive invasion of Northern Italy to move in Marsailles (my suggestion) and into Burgandy, making a third front against Munich.
3. Confusion by A-H and Russia have allowed Germany to survive.
4. The English Army in Norway skirts the Arctic Circle to seize St. Petersburg, throwing Russia into chaos.
   

In the final turns of the full game, a joint Anglo-Prussian alliance allowed Germany to seize Sweden, the British took Moscow, and A-H took Munich.

At that point England and France were forced to succumb to political unrest (Both Wooly and myself had long rides ahead of us with tired wives, and a baby in my car). Both countries were placed in static positions, just as Italy was before Roy took over in Fall 1901. It's disapointing, since I had been planning a sweet Anglo-Prussian-Italian Alliance within the next 2 years to claim an Alliance victory of 18 Control Centers.

We certainly need to schedule a full day of Dip, instead of halfway through SATLOF, alcohol still required...