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german army once ignored convoy to london
With all the analysis that goes into stalemates and highly contested centers, Holland is often overlooked in articles on standard play. Luckily, I rarely play standard, so Holland becomes more important. Or less- I've never seen the course of a Machiavelli game hinge on control of Holland. But back to my other favorite variant: Payola. In payola the old stalemate lines are irrelevant- the new critical areas are those blocks of centers which can produce a high income to defense cost ratio. The jewel of these blocks is the England home area, and the key to breaking in early is the hostile convoy. By the term hostile convoy I mean one where you bribe a fleet to be used against its owner for a convoy. A short hostile convoy to England is possible from Brest, Picardy, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, or Norway. The Brest/Picardy/Belgium-through-Channel convoys are often hard to pull off because if there is a fleet in the channel there's heavy bidding on it. Likewise, if someone besides England has an army in Norway or Denmark, it's pretty obvious the army is up to no good. An army in Holland however will often go unnoticed, and England may foolishly station a fleet in the North Sea out of habit from playing too much Standard. After all, it's generally considered an english sea zone, and Holland is generally considered a natural German center, if relations between England and Germany are not actively hostile. In Crystal Ball, Holland has a quite different use. In this variant, you must order units ahead of seeing results. This means that predictability is money in the pocket. Holland is one of those centers that lends itself well to careful predictable usage. It has certain clear uses, with a minimum of ways people can disrupt the uses, and thus having a unit there allows you to remove assurance from others (they don't know which direction you'll use the support in, when you'll move out, etc.) while leaving you in control of the unit from season to season, and more likely in control of the units around it.
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