Like the founder of our treasured Diplomacy, Allan Calhamer, the game I'm most fond of is not played on a map of Europe, but on a baseball diamond. Allan was a White Sox fan, and I'll be a lifelong Yankee. I think what makes the game of baseball and the game of Diplomacy so similar is that they are both nearly perfect. The rules haven’t needed much changing over the years. Baseball added a designated hitter in 1973 (only in the American League). Diplomacy has made its attempts to resolve the English Channel convoy paradox. By and large, though, the two games are perfect. In baseball and in Diplomacy, anybody can beat anybody else on any given day. The odds may be slim, and the game may start off badly, but, with some luck and some grit, anybody can win. When I was a little kid, the Yankees weren’t the team they are today. Now, anything less than a championship is a disappointment. Back then, they had gone through the shame of the late 80’s and early 90’s. They had not won a World Series since 1978. Every season was an embarrassment. In 1996, things changed. Finally, they strung together a winning season, and they had a shot to win. The team was full of fresh, unproven faces. A rookie shortstop started on Opening Day. His name was Derek Jeter. A young pitcher and catcher earned precious playtime. Their names were Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada. And the privilege of setting up for the most reliable closer a Yankee fan could imagine at the time, John Wetteland, was given to the surprisingly effective skinny Panamanian, Mariano Rivera. When they made it to the Division series, they lost their first game. Then, as any Yankee fan will tell you, they got on a hot tear to win the next three. In the Championship series, they lost the first two games to the Orioles. Facing elimination, they fueled another fire to win three games in a row. When they played Atlanta in the World Series, the Yanks, once again, dropped their first two games. Recovering from a bad start, they, yet again, got on a hot run to win their next four games in a row and take home what may be remembered as their proudest World Series trophy. In this article, I’m going to reveal the anatomy of one of my recent solos. To get to 18 centers, I had to recover from a horrible start. At one point, my entire home country was gone, and I was sitting helplessly on two dots in neutral territory. What I want to be clear about is that this is not an article on effective Austrian play. I am a lot of notches below par when it comes to playing a good game as Austria. Instead, this in an article on effective diplomacy. Skillful diplomacy can extract a player out of the stickiest of molasses jars. I started as a face to face player, but now I play most of my games online on webDiplomacy. You can follow along with the game by clicking here as I provide commentary. 1901: 5 Supply Centers. As I mentioned, I drew Austria. This is easily my most dreaded country. In my experience, a successful Austria is an Austria that survives past 1902. As you can see, it was not looking like I would last that long. It is true: I was lucky enough to get two builds in my first year by effectively defending against the Italian. But my defense could not last long. Russia was comfortably settling armies in Galicia and Rumania. Turkey’s DMZ over the Black Sea suggested a friction-free Juggernaut was well under way. And Italy could not be persuaded to help fight the Juggernaut by playing a lepanto. 1902: 4 SC. Italy still would not dignify my press with any response. He was bound and determined to have my head. Russia had too much momentum launching toward me to be otherwise persuaded. It was in Turkey that I found my first hint of an alliance. I painted terrible visions of a Wintergreen squeezing us both out of existence. Miraculously, he swallowed the bait. While England was invading Russia from the north, Turkey turned his troops towards the bear from the south. Italy was still able to fight me without inhibition, but one of my enemies was being invaded. 1903: 2 SC. This was my lowest point. My entire homeland was gone. Russia had Vienna and Budapest, while Italy had Trieste. I was camped out as an immigrant in Serbia and Greece. But there was a chance, though small, that I would survive. Italy, my western enemy, was being invaded by France. Russia, my eastern enemy, was being invaded by the British. The Turk was also poking at Russia’s belly. My enemies would have to turn around and cover their respective homelands. 1904: 3 SC. This was my turning point year. Turkey fully hopped on board with me as an ally. Russia had to disband two centers in the winter. Italy was facing a full force French invasion with a halfhearted military (one of his fleets had wandered into Wales, oddly). Other than Turkey, nobody was talking to me. Who can blame them? Russia was busy being dismantled by England and Turkey. The Italian was facing a French invasion with some badly positioned units. Germany planted himself in Burgundy and the North Sea, simultaneously enraging England and France. England was dealing with the nuisance of an Italian fleet in Wales. And France had to figure out how to finish his Italian invasion while defending against a German attack on his homeland. It is safe to say that nobody on the board was remotely interested in the political affairs of my humble Austria. 1905: 3 SC. The only country that I communicated with this year was Turkey. Any good Diplomacy player knows that it is best to talk with everybody every season no matter what, but I dropped the ball and counted myself out long ago. My communication with Turkey turned out to be very important. I let him take Greece, mostly because I did not have enough pieces to cover it myself, and I wanted to prevent Italy from nabbing it. In exchange for giving him Greece, I was able to secure support into Budapest, one of my long lost home supply centers, and an unwritten agreement that Turkey would not build fleets (which would have signaled a disaster for my long-term plans). With the loss of Greece and the gain of Budapest, I was still the proud owner of just three centers, but I was also very close to securing another ally. 1906: 4 SC. The board really started to get interesting at this point. Turkey and Germany were the obvious contenders to solo, should the opportunity arise for either of them. Italy’s nomadic fleet found a home in Brest, and France was otherwise being compromised by Germany. That situation led to an interesting development for me. Facing the inevitability of his own defeat, France offered to use his army in Tyrolia to support me into Venice. This left me with an open home supply center, so I finally built an army. That felt good. Turkey built another army for himself, being the good ally that he was. On the other side of the board, Germany kept building fleets, which boded poorly for any long-term progress to the northern waters. 1907: 5 SC. The board got awfully wacky this year. As unlikely as it was for me to still be alive, the positions of my fellow boardmates was even more bizarre. Russia was dead, finally. Turkey kept building. France and Italy were busy invading each other’s homelands, while doing little to protect their own. France landed a boat in Liverpool. The once mighty Germany was now disbanding after England regained Norway. England’s Norwegian conquest proved to be unrewarded, since his gain was negated by the loss of Liverpool. Oddly enough, I had no enemies, and I was too little for anybody to make a sincere effort to attack me. Life was steady and mediocre for Austria in 1907. It’s true, fifteen people were shot at the consecration of a church in Csernova on October 27, but the sadness wore off by Christmas. 1908: 6 SC. Things just kept getting messier in the west. Germany swallowed more of France while France swallowed more of England while France and England kept Germany at an even dot count. Meanwhile, I added another supply center to my holdings. France maintained a steady stream of friendly conversation, while Turkey seemed to lose interest in the game entirely, despite his top status on the board. He sent only two lazy lines of press, and he ordered almost all of his units to hold. If he kept ordering holds, perhaps I would have a chance to stab and make a run for the money. 1909: 8 SC. I took advantage of the kindness that had previously been lent to me by France by overtaking his Italian conquests. Turkey kept submitting lazy moves dominated by hold orders. Nevertheless, he managed to invade Berlin with a helpful bump by my Tyrolian army. The melee in the west continued unimpeded. A rational player would have expected the three western powers to get their act together and band as a united force against the westward marching Turkish/Austrian front. As is often the case, the Western Triple that would have prevailed never manifested itself. Instead, England, France, and Germany continued to squabble over countries like Belgium and Sweden. Meanwhile, I slid my supply center count up to eight and bolstered my fighting force up to four armies and four fleets. Forward march! 1910: 8 SC. This year, I neither built nor disbanded, and the same could be said by all of my boardmates. Italy remained the pirate-king of Iberia. France lost Edinburgh but regained his homeland. Germany lost Brest but took Edinburgh. And Turkey submitted what had now become a customary listless batch of holds. In my opinion, the biggest winner in 1910 was me. It’s true: like everybody else, I failed to find a way to build. But I was able to position my fighting force around the southwest corner of the map. Anybody who draws one of the central countries, Austria or Germany, knows that a primary challenge is just getting control of a corner. The corner nations have a solid place to start; they cannot be easily outflanked. Being a central power is more like driving a car on solid ice. There’s no traction; no surface to push against. For that reason, it is when a central power gets control of a corner that it can become unstoppable. 1911: 14 SC. In 1910, I used the movement phases to get into position. In 1911, I used my strong position to cash in. France was unable to defend Marseilles. The Italian pirates in Iberia only had one fleet to keep a hold of both Spain and Portugal. England was continuing to irritate his neighbors. And Germany had to amble around to try to protect Munich and regain Berlin (he managed only the first of the two goals). The real dessert for me was Turkey. After having gone through a few years of lethargic order writing, he finally dropped out of the game. I took advantage of his No Moves Received to step into an unguarded Warsaw, Greece, and Bulgaria. If he would have stuck with the game, I probably would have still made a run for solo by going after France and England’s dots. With Turkey’s early exit, I was able to pick up my needed centers from my own neighborhood. I opened a dialogue with Germany, which would prove to fall apart soon enough. Essentially, I asked him to try to get lots of centers as a survivor rather than try to stop my solo. To some extent, he did that. 1912: 14 SC. One of the benefits of playing in an online community where there are so many members is that vacated countries are often taken over. The abandoned Turkey was taken over by a replacement player who, oddly, failed to engage in any diplomacy. I offered to resurrect the Austrian/Turkish alliance with the replacement Turkey. He left my press unanswered, so I had no choice but to keep invading. 1913: 14 SC. For yet another year, Turkey and I managed to swap pieces. Interestingly, I got help from yet another unlikely ally this game. England, who had helped cripple the Russian by invading his northern shores, slid into Moscow at my suggestion to nab a supply center from Turkey. With the loss of a unit, Turkey would not be able to last much longer. 1914: 16 SC. England was easily the most indirectly helpful player on this board. He got Russia off of my back early on. Through 14 years of play, he managed to stay alive, torment Germany and France, and pit them against each other so that they kept their attention far away from me. And in 1914, he slid uncontested into Sevastopol to further weaken what was left of Turkey’s defenses. By the end of the game, he would be left with only two centers, but I would have much preferred seeing him be rewarded with a decent 8 or 10 center survival. Unfortunately, the biggest share of what remained went to Germany, who proved to be only an occasionally cooperative partner. 1915: 18 SC. With Turkey’s defenses almost nonexistent (which is nothing to feel sympathetic for, since he ignored all of my press), I easily picked up my final two supply centers. Playing this game and extracting a win out of awful circumstances taught me to never count myself out. I stuck with this game for two months before I could successfully eke out a win. Even if all of your neighbors have decided to pile on top of you, maybe there’s a friendly England sitting across the board who can attack your attacker. Unless you have zero centers, there is always something you can do. Early on, I kept looking around until I found a friend. I went up to Turkey and (somewhat dishonestly) said “Hey, look, Russia and Italy are about to squeeze us (the truth was they were just squeezing me), so we should work together so that we don’t go down without a fight.” As it turned out, Turkey went along with the idea and ended his participation in a Juggernaut. At the time, Turkey only had a few units himself, but we were able to hang on long enough to get some relief across the board from England and France. When Turkey dropped off in 1911, I had my chance to run away with the win. I would love to play a game of Diplomacy with you. If you do not already have one, open an account on webDiplomacy and join me, The Hamster, in a game. Robert Hammond (affixlabelhere@gmail.com) If you wish to e-mail feedback on this article to the author, and clicking on the envelope above does not work for you, feel free to use the "Dear DP..." mail interface.