Stop The Presses

Announcements from The Diplomatic Corps

The Diplomatic Corps is pleased to announce that Alan Calhamer will be our guest at the World DipCon 2000 in Baltimore this August 4-6. The designer of Diplomacy will give a talk on Diplomacy and his current book project relating to Diplomatic history.

The last time Mr. Calhamer attended a DipCon was in 1990 so this may be your only chance to meet the inventor of our hobby.

The Diplomatic Corps is also making special arrangements to assist in free housing for overseas travelers participating in the World DipCon on a first come first served basis. Please make sure you contact us to register for this.

Local sponsors are also encouraged to send donations to the DC housing fund to encourage trans-ocean travel and international hobby participation.

This promises to be the most contested of all the World DipCons with several World Champions as well as North American DipCon Champions already committed to attending.

The World DipCon is being held at: World Boardgaming Championships Hunt Valley Inn Marriot Hotel Hunt Valley, Maryland

web site: www.boardgamers.org

The Diplomatic Corps website is: www.DiplomaticCorps.org

Hope to see you all there.

Hasbro Diplomacy Released

The board version of Diplomacy is now at the stores. The rule book is well done with many illustrations which they hope will assist in teaching the game. Several interesting rule issues that may be familiar to the hard core players but serves as a good reminder for all of us of the development of the rules over the last 40 years:

1. Unwanted convoy is now Dead as well it should be.

The rules address the issue by saying that if you are to move from coastal to adjacent coastal you will never assume that this is meant to be a convoy unless you write the convoy order or you specify it to be made by someone else. What is interesting is that in the rules it refers to the fact that in the Hasbro 99 Computer version of the game, the unwanted convoy is allowed. Actually what they wanted to say but did not was that Calhamer changed his mind on the issue and the Computer people were too far into their code writing to restructure the entire order system to specify a convoy route for each order.

2. Alternate Convoy survives

The alternate convoy survives which is somewhat livable. This at least avoids the problem of someone adding a convoy order to an enemy's move with the hope that your fleet is dislodged and thus disrupting the convoy of the enemy. For example England convoying Army Wales to Belgium by English Channel while Fleet London and Fleet Edinburgh dislodge the German Fleet in the North Sea. Unders non Alternate Convoy routes the Germans could have written to also convoy the English Army Wales to Belgium (since North is continuous with the Channel and Belgium) and then claim that the convoy does not work as one of the fleets was dislodged.

3. Convoyed cut of supports The rule has be modified as it should be so that a convoy does not cut supports on an attack on one of the convoying fleets necessary for that convoy. This avoids the silliness of convoys from say the Black Sea failing to cut the support for an attack on the Aegean by Fleet Constantinople.

The conference map is made up with all the abbreviations but for some reason they felt compelled to spell out Denmark in one of the smallest spaces on the map, and they left the 'R' out of Warsaw so it is printed as 'Wa' though they have it corrected abbreviated in their summary of official abbreviations.

Finally they have included as 22 point simple list of key rules to help teach the game. However I think that players will find a more tried and proven list sheet on the Diplomatic Corps web site, Teaching Diplomacy in Five Minutes.

Edi Birsan (edi@mgames.com)

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