Diplomacy Games

This episode sees the boys tackle 1 vs 1 games while hitting many a technology glitch. From a bad Skype connection for Kaner during our interview with Devonian, to multiple times the recording dropping out during the episode. So apologies in advance. But otherwise please enjoy!

Around the Board - game updates

• The guys give an update on how they're going in the Known World 901 tournament in games three and four (2 mins)

1 vs 1 variants (& Amby's update on the webDip 2016 championship)

• webDiplomacy has now released two new 1 vs 1 variants - France vs Austria and Germany vs Italy (17 mins 40 secs)

Interview with Devonian 

• First up an advance apology on Kaner's audio. He had a crappy Skype or internet connection so sometimes its hard to know what he's saying. So Amby and Devonian try to do their best interpreting what they think the question may be (28 mins 30 secs)

In closing...

• The guys then discuss their key takeaways from Devonian's interview before Amby challenges Kaner to a 1 vs 1 Cold War and Duo game (58 mins 40 secs)

Venue: Sixteen Antlers, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - White Rabbit ale from Victoria, Australia

Don't forget if you're enjoying the podcast please hop onto iTunes and give us a rating and a review so we can get the Diplomacy message out.

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

Time to open the Diplomacy Christmas crackers! The guys discuss game etiquette and look at the variants "Atlantic Colonies" and the Australian "Mate Against Mate". Enjoy!

• Kaner starts by discussing his drinking Christmas tradition (1 min 30 secs)

Diplomacy game etiquette 

• Being away for his holidays Amby discusses how being on holidays with no internet on the ship (well there was but it was expensive and from talking to others onboard it was pretty crappy), Amby put in place various measures for his games. So the guys start discussing etiquette relating to when you're away on holidays and can't play Dip (7 mins 20 secs)

General chit chat

• The guys flag that the Known World Tournament has its games 3 and 4 now commenced (25 mins)

Atlantic Colonies variant

• After refilling their drinks Kaner and Amby discuss the Atlantic Colonies variant, a 4 player game (England, France, Spain and Portugal) set during the time of colonisation (28 mins 45 secs)

What the Doctor Recommended

• Continuing our series, the guys go through the vDip hall of fame from the 45th ranked player to the 80th (44 mins 30 secs)

The guys celebrate Christmas 

• Spontaneously the guys exchange Diplomacy themed Christmas gifts to each other (47 mins 40 secs)

Mate Against Mate variant

• This Australian based 8 player variant has 6 Australian players, New Zealand and Indonesia. This variant is based on an alternate history where each of the British colonies never federated and become their own independent countries (57 mins)

Don't forget if you're enjoying the podcast please hop onto iTunes and give us a rating a

Venue: The Stock Exchange Hotel, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Stone and Wood Pacific Ale from Byron Bay, Australia

Food of choice:

• Kaner - Braised squid with Aioli

Don't forget if you're enjoying the podcast please hop onto iTunes and give us a rating and a review so we can get the Diplomacy message out.

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

The guys lament their recent game eliminations, Amby's poor Bourse game play and discuss the variant USA, a Classic wrap around map including the United States as an 8th player. Enjoy!

Exploration variant update

• Amby and Kaner discuss this game that has just finished. Organised by Decima Legio, it uses the Fog of War classic map but with a special rule around communication. You can only communicate with a player that you have direct line of sight contact with: supply centre to supply centre; unit to supply centre or unit to unit (2 mins 30 secs)

Known World 901 tournament update

• The first game in this 15 player tournament has just wrapped up with again Amby and Kaner being eliminated. The premise of this gunboat tournament is for every player to play every one of the 15 countries on the map. For this game Kaner was Wagadu and Amyb was Egypt (19 mins 30 secs)

Bourse update

• After discussing two eliminations, Kaner turns the blow torch on Amby about why he missed out in the most recent big Bourse buy (31 mins 40 secs)

"What the Dr Recommended"

• The guys continue their new segment of poor pronunciations of player names, territory names and country names, as recommended by Dr Recommended  (48 mins 20 secs)

General chat

• The guys talk about the number of newer younger players coming into the game, and what they should be mindful of (52 mins)

USA variant - because its not a war without the USA

• The guys start talking about the little played now - but much loved in the past - variant "USA". It's essentially the Classic map but wrapped around with oceans and including the United States as an 8th player. Created by T. Moscal, Kaner adapted it to vDiplomacy a few years back (1 hr 22 mins)

Two new podcast segment ideas: "How does Bozo do it?" and "Diplomacy Dilemmas"

• Kaner discusses his new suggested segment called "How does Bozo do it?". Every game Kaner plays against him, Bozo either wins, draws or survives. His stats are incredible, only losing 13% of the time, meaning 87% of the time he's won, drawn or survived (1 hr 32 mins)

Venue: Plough Inn, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Fat Yak original pale ale from Matilda Bay Brewing, Australia and Bulmer's cider from Hereford, United Kingdom

Don't forget if you're enjoying the podcast please hop onto iTunes and give us a rating and a review so we can get the Diplomacy message out.

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

The guys go down many Diplomacy rabbit holes and tangents. Our main focus was the 1066 variant but we also discuss current games for Bourse, the Known World tournament, Kaner's WWIV game, new webDip variants, an update on the vDip development server and ideas for a new variant based on the American presidential election. Enjoy!

Venue: Super Whatnot, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Mysterio IPA from Sydney, Australia

Bourse update

• Amby and Kaner give an update on how the Bourse game is going and the strategies being adopted by various players (2 mins)

Known World 901 tournament update

• Amby is in both of the games, while Kaner has been eliminated in one (11 mins 20 secs)

Massive webDip news!

• Zultar has announced on the webDip forum that the site will be getting some "new" variants: Known World 901 and two 1 vs 1 variants - France vs Austria and Germany vs Italy (13 mins)

New segment - "What the Doctor Recommended"

• The guys have received a lot of feedback from listeners about our poor pronunciations of player names, territory names and country names. webDip and vDip player Dr. Recommended suggested that we introduce a segment where we play to this, reading out names in a short segment  (18 mins 30 secs)

Kaner's WWIV game update

• The guys discuss Kaner's public press unrated WWIV game "Can we do this 2" (24 mins 50 secs)

Variant talk: 1066

• We get onto the 1066 variant, a game that exists in 3 iterations: 1066 v1, 1066 v2 and 1066 v3 (45 mins)

Update on new development server talk

• Amby gives an update from Captainmeme on the new development server discussed back in episode 2 (1 hour 13 mins 40 secs)

Amby's idea for a American Presidential election variant

• As we get towards the end of the podcast Amby starts throwing around his initial ideas about creating an American Presidential election variant (1 hour 15 mins 20 secs)

Coming up

• Next we talk about upcoming plans for the podcast with Devonian - as the number one 1 vs 1 vDip tournament player - keen to be interviewed about how to play 1 vs 1 Diplomacy games (1 hour 28 mins)

Don't forget if you're enjoying the podcast please hop onto iTunes and give us a rating and a review so we can get the Diplomacy message out.

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

In this episode the guys kick off a pub crawl and dive deep into the variants Modern Diplomacy and Sopwith, while also talking other Diplomacy stuff.

• • Kaner talks about a recent Fog of War game he's finished (Blind War + Less Draw) that he's animated - and won!  Kaner rambles off a few players' names much to Amby's amusement.  (0 mins 57 seconds)

• Kaner acknowledges he had a bit of a hollow victory with many disbands much to his advantage. He discusses while under the "fog of war" he got many surprises along the way as he explored the map (3 mins 0 seconds)

Modern Diplomacy 2 variant

• This is one of the few variants on both webDiplomacy and vDiplomacy (5 mins 40 seconds)

"As I've played more Diplomacy over the years (including dabbling in the original board game 20 years ago when I was in high school ), I've come to enjoy gunboat games the most out of any set of rules. I'm not sure if I share others opinions that it's the "purest" form of the game, although I certainly understand that point of view. For me, it's the idea that there are more possible diverse outcomes in a gunboat game than in a normal messaging game.

When I discovered the webDip site 3 years ago, I began playing mostly normal classic games, but I discovered that most of my games resulted in similar outcomes, with either France or Germany almost always becoming the early behemoth, and the other players having to chase him down and force him into a draw. Those 2 nations seem to have been too powerfully unbalanced in their designs; just as Egypt and Rome were too weakly unbalanced in their Ancient designs; and similarly to many nations being unbalanced both ways in the World & America variants. So although I still very much enjoy the ancient variant due to the benefit of the ultra aggressive gameplay strategy (which is my preferred style), those factors led me to the Modern variant becoming my favorite.

In my opinion, the benefits of the Modern variant are that it has harnessed the happy median between certain aspects of the different variants - namely game size. 10 players (compared to the 5/7 or 17) allows for a fair amount of aggressive early gameplay, but also usually punishes players who refuse to choose any early allies. The factor of being able to build anywhere also adds a unique & fun aspect to Modern games.

In the recently completed game 'Real debate for all 2', I was Britain (a much more enjoyable nation than the Classic English counterpart). This contest was a Public Messaging Only game. I've found that the gameplay using these unique messaging rules equates much more to a gunboat game than a normal messaging game, especially among more experienced players - simply because most allied agreements & moves that can be safely conveyed publicly can also (eventually) be conveyed in a gunboat.

This specific game was enjoyable all the way through except for the fact that the (many) German players only had the decency to enter orders half the time. Indeed, there were 2 different CDs and over a dozen NMRs in that nation alone. Among the early alliances, the immediate French/German partnership was the main one that jumped out to me (due to the personal regional significance). As Britain, I did not feel the need to seek out any early allies, so I chose to remain a lone wolf. I was slowly conquering Spain and had a foothold in Scandinavia as well (hat tip to you for having crippled Russia). It was a nice gesture for you to originally offer me Murmansk, and I quickly accepted, since I felt it was high time to have an ally. I was very much enjoying my battle against a strong French/German wall, and that extra build was just what I felt I needed to gain an advantage against them. As the game progressed, I felt comfortable in leaving Murmansk unoccupied & moving 2 full spaces away from it.

Then, just as I was about to finally break through into Germany, I was dismayed to see you retake Murmansk without alerting me. Since I was already sailing through Scandinavia en route to Germany, I decided to turn a portion of my naval strength east to mount an attack against Poland in the Baltics. We quickly formed a stalemate on that front; but by that stage in the game, there were only 4 1/2 legitimate players left: Turkey (along with his protectorate nation - Ukraine), France, and the 2 of us. Turkey was quickly passing 20 SCs, and even as I was finally breaking into France, I realized that my previous chance of beating Turkey to the solo was impossible. France pointed out that the only thing I would accomplish by continuing to wipe him out would be to give Turkey (who had taken all of Italy, and was attacking France from the southeast) an easier solo. He was in desperate straits, but also quite right, so I immediately ceased my hostility against him and you, and the 3 of us made peace to turn our combined efforts against Turkey/Ukraine. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I've always personally had the habit of trying to master a certain strategy game/puzzle (and often even one specific aspect of said game) before moving onto the next game or activity. So I think that's the only reason that I haven't gotten around to exploring the vDip variants yet; but I certainly plan to in the near future."

Sopwith

Kaner and Amby kick off their pub crawl by moving from Brew to John Mills Himself. JMH pride themselves on their locavore menu with all drinks produced within 250 kilometers, except for their Tasmanian whiskeys (40 mins 25 seconds)

After a discussion on drinks Kaner moves the conversation onto the Sopwith variant:

• Sopwith is a game of six players with each of the players taking on the persona of a World War 1 fighter pilot. The game is played on a hexagonal board. Grey cells represent clouds that randomly move. You can fly into them, but as you lose 1 of your 16 health points each time you fly into a cloud it's generally not recommended unless you're about to get shot. You also start the game with a full amount of ammunition (43 mins)

• Being fighter pilots you can fire to attack other player's planes. You can fire straight, fire left and fire right. Depending on the distance between players the amount of damage varies - the closer you are the greater the damage eg if immediately adjacent one hex you do 3 damage, two hexes its only 2 damage and if three hexes away it is only 1 damage. (47 mins 45 seconds)

Venue: Pub crawl - Brew then John Mills Himself, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Irish Black Lager by Black Hops Brewery from the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

Don't forget if you're enjoying the podcast please hop onto iTunes and give us a rating and a review so we can get the Diplomacy message out.

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

The guys after quibbling about what episode this is, start talking about how Kaner’s new hipster beard is a clever ploy based on Diplomacy principles to get his wife to allow him to keep his moustache.

For any new listeners, Kaner and Amby get together and record these in a bar for a bit of atmosphere. So power on past our usual chit-chat as it doesn’t take long to get into Diplomacy talk:

• Kaner gives an update on the Bourse game that has now started (see podcast episode 3 about the Bourse variant) and how he’s finding his GM role really interesting. Amby explains how he’s making the same mistakes again. (3 mins 20 seconds)

2012 WebDiplomacy World Cup Championship interview

• Kaner brings up how Amby’s technology failed in recording the 2012 webDip World Cup championship, but Amby came up with an alternative anyway (18 mins 10 seconds)

Useful info:

Kaner's Youtube video of the game animated season after season:

And don't forget to also check out (as mentioned in the interview) captainmeme's incredible analysis of the highs and lows of each player's game.

Note: due to the various technical constraints (and user error by Amby) the interview was recorded in Mono rather than Stereo. And because we’re such cheap bastards and edit this on freeware, the whole track had to be stepped down to Mono. So apologies if it doesn’t sound as good as our other episodes.

Venue: Brew, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Four Pines Pale Ale from Sydney, Australia

Don't forget if you're enjoying the podcast please hop onto iTunes and give us a rating and a review so we can get the Diplomacy message out.

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

This episode was recorded back-to-back with episode 3's discussion of Rinascimento and Bourse. As a result we'd already had a number of drinks. And then we drank some more. So in this episode apologies in advance as the guys get a bit pissy while discussing the wonderful world of Diplomacy. This probably explains why Amby gets rather excited when he discovers from Kaner the "Finished" button within each variant's page. Kaner reciprocates saying he learnt about the archived maps from within any game from Amby.

Kaner and Amby get into this amazing map that makes this variant one with both the most players (35 or 36 depending on the version you play), and due to the number of territories and SC's its also often one of the longest maps to play:

• Hats off to Tom Mulledy for creating the variant for the original 35 player variant and Tom Reinecker for the 36 player World War IV (version 6.2) variant.

Google Translate Diplomacy - when you feel like an entertaining game of Diplomacy

Next after yet some more drinks the guys move onto Google Translate Diplomacy.

• Amby mentions how with his recent efforts to learn Spanish on Duolingo, he created a forum post looking for people wanting to play a game only played in Spanish with four other players putting up their hand.

Venue: Regatta Hotel, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Yenda Hell from New South Wales, Australia

Don't forget if you're enjoying the podcast please hop onto iTunes and give us a rating and a review so we can get the Diplomacy message out.

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

In episode 3 we look at the Italian Renaissance variant Rinascimento. What's great about it, what's bad about it, and how based on recent Forum talk it can be improved. Then its onto a game inside a game (how very enigmatic), with the variant Bourse.

Venue: Regatta Hotel, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Dogbolter Dark Ale Reserve, Matilda Bay Brewing, Australia

The guys discuss their history with the Regatta Hotel, with Amby once working in the drive-through bottleshop that no longer exists and Kaner regularly playing Backgammon there (who knew he played something other than Diplomacy!)

The Italian Renaissance variant - Rinascimento

Kaner and Amby both love this variant created by Emmanuele Ravaioli (Tadar es Darden). Here's what they have to say about this fun filled jaunt through the Italian countryside:

• Kaner talks about how Emmanuele got him into variant creation in the early days of vDiplomacy. Kaner discusses how he talked to Shep and Butterhead when they were playing games of Chaos and Octopus about the idea of combining the two together. After posting their thoughts in the forum Tadar offered to give him a hand, creating Kaner's first variant Chaoctopi. Kaner briefly talks about how this variant played on the Classic map works and the rule changes it spawned for many other variants.

A variant inside a variant - Bourse Diplomacy

Next after topping up drinks, we jump into Bourse - a game that can be played just by the players on the map, or them and anyone wanting to play via the forum, or even people just in the forum:

• Invented by Don Miller in the seventies, it essentially has two simultaneous games running: one on the map, the other offboard .

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

In this episode we check out the Fog of War variant of Classic, talk about the role of Mods and what to bring to their attention and conclude with new development server talk that may get variants up and running again for the Dip community! 

Apologies up front on how the ambiance gets louder and louder as more people arrive in the pub! If this pisses you off too much a) go have a drink or two yourself or b) let us know to go somewhere quieter!

How do Moderators (Mods) work?

Both Kaner and Amby have been Mods in the past for vDip, they discuss their prior experience and how it varies between vDip and webDip:

• vDiplomacy - link is in the top right. You can only see posts you have raised with the Mods

Variant focus - Fog of War

We then turn our attention to the Fog of War variant on vDiplomacy:

• In this variant you can only see the territories immediately adjacent to your supply centres and your units. The show notes include an animated GIF showing how things would look as a game evolves as Turkey

New development server talk

Finally we talk about variant development and news from CaptainMeme (vDip mod and regular on webDip) that while the vDip Lab is pretty much dead, a new test server for development is being slowly created in the background. This is some really cool news that could see new variants created again that won't crash vDip. The guys talk about how this could impact on new variants, including suggestions on webDip on air support, Classic with neutral armies, Kaner's Mongolian variant and Amby's ideas on making a massive Cold War variant.

In conclusion we tempt you again about having some of the main players from the webDiplomacy 2012 championship game being in episode 3.

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Venue: The Gresham Hotel, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Four Pines Stout from Four Pines Brewing, Australia (although Kaner did call it "Ten Pints" in the podcast)

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

Welcome to Diplomacy Games! In episode 1 we introduce the podcast and hosts Kaner and Amby and why we play Diplomacy online. Then we jump into discussing in detail the Diplomacy variant Known World 901.

But for starters, a little about ourselves - Kaner and Amby. We discuss our background and experience with playing Diplomacy. We get into the early days of playing, from face-to-face to rather embarrassing first ever opening moves when playing online. We also explain why the podcast is recorded over a few drinks in a bar.

Next up we give a bit of a high level overview of the type of things each of our episodes may cover, including:

• A "deep dive" into a variant

We go deep into the variant Known World 901 by David E. Cohen, and on-boarded to vDiplomacy by Kaner. We cover:

• How at a 15 player variant it fills the gap between large 10 player games and massive 34+ player games

Finally we discuss the WebDiplomacy 2012 World Cup championship, a game that took three and a half years to complete. We're lining up a number of the key players to discuss this mammoth Diplomacy gaming effort in an upcoming interview.

Visit our website for the show notes for this episode.

Venue: Grand Central Hotel, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Fat Yak original pale ale from Matilda Bay Brewing, Australia

And a big thanks to Dan Philip for our rockin' intro music!

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us.