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BORODINO END-GAME STATEMENTS
GM:
Stuart Bennett [EGS]
Started: 21 April 2004
Finished: 13 December 2004 - by player agreement after Spring 1908
Result: 3 way draw between Austria, England and Italy
| Country | Player | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | Result | | Austria | Pieter Nijhoff | 5 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 12 | 0 | drew | | England | Dave Middleton | 5 | 6 | 7 | 9 | 11 | 13 | 13 | 0 | drew | | France | Neil Bennitt | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | eliminated A05 | | Germany | Joseph James | 5 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 0 | survived | | Italy | Trevor Barnes | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 0 | drew | | Russia | Justin King | 5 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | eliminated A04 | | Turkey | Kenneth Gordon | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | survived |
ENGLAND (Dave Middleton) This was my first game in 20 years and I enjoyed it greatly. Started playing to teach my son George, but his powers of concentration didn't quite last the 8 months or so!
My first thought as England was that I did not want an F/G alliance against me. As F is the greater naval power I set about trying to build an alliance with G by playing on his, not unreasonable, fears of a Russian attack. This worked and we set about our own agendas.
For my part, I was friendly with France whilst planning his downfall. This was achieved with help from Italy in Marseilles. Germany set off East and played a big part in causing Russia's early exit.
At this stage of the game Germany was the chip leader and was turning his guns on Austria. I had an agreement with Austria that I would attack Germany if he attacked Austria and vice versa. I was wondering whether to honour this agreement when Germany started being awkward over free passage for my armies through France. This tipped the balance and I duly attacked Germany as agreed. With both myself and Austria now attacking G, his forces diminished quite quickly. Joseph (Germany) never forgave me for my stab and in fact refused to reply to my mails. I found this strange as he had bargaining power if he had wanted to use it.
The game now became effectively 3 player, Turkey never having broken out of his corner and being slowly ground down by Austria. The longest lasting alliance in the game was A/I and they united to ensure that I could not get to the magic majority.
A draw seems fair - I don't think I moved decisively enough in the Med to win.
Congratulations to Pieter and Trevor. Pieter played very well from the difficult hand of Austria and Trevor made an art of being everyone's favourite minnow.
Dave and George
ENGLAND
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ITALY (Trevor Barnes) Well done to Pieter, Dave and George. It is a shame that your efforts arrived at a stalemate instead of a solo victory.
From the very beginning, I formed a close working relationship with Austria. This quickly became a strong alliance that I knew was never going to fail. Perhaps some of the other players were slow to recognise this and as such wasted time trying to sway me their way of thinking. Italy's other close ally was England. Although Italy and England hardly worked in any direct cooperation, we did share information and built and trusting partnership that lasted till late in the game.
France, I believe that your lack of communication early in the game set you apart from the other Western nations. For this reason, France was a popular target.
Russia was never an ally or an enemy of Italy. Confident sounding statements early in the game gave me the impression that Russia was destined for glory. I was often disappointed with the scarce information received from Russia.
I should apologise to Turkey for twice winning your trust only to betray you. Turkey seemed a worthy ally early in the game but it was not a viable option since Italy had already cemented an alliance with Austria by 1902.
To Germany, I am sorry that I could not offer you better information with which to help counter English attacks. England was not forthcoming with that kind of information. I was hoping to help prolong Germany's presence in central Europe as method of slowing England's rapid growth.
England was a pleasure to work with. However, I wonder how things might have been had I broken our DMZ agreement.
Austria, I placed much faith in you and it was totally worthwhile. You proved to be as good an ally as I could have hoped for. I hope that you are pleased with Italian efforts to help Austria.
By 1902 I had decided to spare a fleet with which to assist the Austrian attack on Turkey. At the other end of the Mediterranean, I had a unit attacking France to complement English attacks in the North. I quickly found that Italian units were too few and too spread out. Without focusing most units at one target, I lost the chance for early territorial gains.
I regret not demanding more favors from Austria when we jointly attacked Turkey. In 1903 (I think) Austria and Italy had our first opportunity to capture a Turkish territory. Regrettably, I accepted Austria's wish to be supported into Smyrna. I believed that a similar opportunity for Italy would come later - it didn't.
In the second half of the game Italy found itself to be an ally of both of the two most powerful nations, namely Austria and England. The downside was that Italy was wedged between them. As such it was near impossible to find a weak target close by. By 1905 I was hoping to somehow end the game by drawing with Austria (a more rewarding end than a three-way draw). I took action in autumn 1906 against England once our two year long DMZ of the Western Mediterranean had ended. At this point, all available units were sent towards France and the Western Mediterranean. Alas, it was too late to tackle the vast numerical superiority of England. I was planning to formally declare war against England in return for his proven goodwill towards Italy. But that idea was dropped when he unexpectedly pushed my army out of Marseilles.
I believe that Italy owes its final predicament to a continuous effort to be a friend of as many as possible. This guaranteed Italy's survival but limited the scope for territorial expansion. By about 1903 I knew that Italy could not win and that the best case scenario was a draw with an ally. I figured that to help build a strong Austria would be best method for Italy to use in order to partake in a draw. To bring this about, every single piece of credible information received was promptly passed on to Austria.
Regards
Trevor Barnes
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RUSSIA (Justin King) Poor Russia.
Spoilt for choice.
With miles and miles of borders, and ingress routes from both the southern and northern spheres of influence, it's inevitable that the squeeze is going to come, unless the right partners have been chosen with which to squeeze back.
Needless to say, I made the wrong choices. That isn't to say that my steadfast ally Turkey was a bad choice per se (unless there are things that weren't revealed to me, definitely a possibility), but at a couple of critical junctures I should have seen that the Austrian and German (buttressed by England) juggernaut rolling towards the steppes required more desperate measures. Having my time again, I would have probably offered my services as a client state, hoping for an opening or friction between allies to maybe exploit and hang on for an end of game presence. Not to be.
Regardless, my brief time on the board was fun, and congratulations to the drawers and survivors, and thanks to Stuart for the GMing!
Looking to dive in and present my back for stabbing again soon!
Justin
(Russia)
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TURKEY (Kenneth Gordon) Hello Everyone,
Regarding Borodino.
Borodino, was my first game I played of Diplomacy via the e-mail or letters, and as a result probably turned most people against me to start of with. Due to how I approached the act of writing, ie... writing as I would speak to someone in face to face play.
Congratulations to our winners; Trevor, Justin (presumably you mean Pieter - GM) and Dave.
I'm happy with having survived.
Cheers for the experiance.
Ken
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GM (Stuart Bennett) Borodino was a marvellous game to watch from a GM's viewpoint. Not only did all seven players display great commitment throughout (there were only 2 NMRs in the entire game) but fortunes fluctuated to the extent that several outcomes looked possible at different times before an honourable A E I draw was agreed.
I shall not comment greatly on the tactics and diplomacy used by everyone since those who submitted statements can and have described these so much better than I could. A few observations from the sidelines though: -
Austria (Pieter) did well to fight off an initial Russia (Justin) and Turkey (Ken) alliance to gradually emerge as the strongest eastern country but the real powerhouse in the early game was Germany (Joseph) who launched quick and decisive attacks in Scandinavia and, significantly, Russia and northern Austria. By 1904 Germany had reached nine SCs, Russia was on its knees and there seemed a very real chance that the solo could be achieved just by maintaining the eastward thrust. How wrong that view turned out to be.
England (Dave) had also been growing steadily in alliance with Germany and as a result made gains in France (Neil), who also fell victim to the expansive efforts of Italy (Trevor) and when in1905 England stabbed Germany - probably at exactly the right moment for everyone (bar Germany!) - the latter's fall was swift with the loss of three SCs that year.
Now it was England who held the upper hand in the west and appeared a likely winner but the German demise allowed Austria to become the dominant power in the east. Italy however appeared to hold the balance of power for the latter half of the game and it seemed as though his policies were going to be crucial in determining the eventual outcome. So it proved - a solid fleet presence in the western end of the Mediterranean proved impenetrable to England.
Meanwhile Austria was gradually wearing away at stubborn Turkish resistance and with Germany appearing more willing to assist Austrian expansion than English, by 1907 it looked as if the Archduke only had to stab Italy to all but win the game. In that year an undefended Venice and Rome could both have fallen to Austrian forces but the game-long AI alliance held, perhaps because the solo would probably at that stage still just have been preventable by concerted defensive alliance play from E I and T. Indeed that year saw the game's only proxy, Turkey passing control of his two remaining units to England for the duration.
However after then a draw was pretty well inevitable and was agreed by five player vote following the Spring 1908 turn to include the majority powers Austria and England along with a five unit Italy, who rightly earned his share of the spoils through holding the decisive area of the map that the larger powers would need to conquer to win outright.
Congratulations then to Pieter, Dave and Trevor in earning a well played draw and thanks to Neil, Joseph, Justin and Ken for sticking in there until the end or your role in the game finished. No anarchies in a standard game is always good to see. It was a pleasure to GM you all and I would be pleased to meet any of you across the Diplomacy map in the future.
Gentlemen, until we meet again on some foreign field…
Stuart Bennett
GM
(No End Game Statements were received from Austria, Germany and France)
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