Through Saturday and Sunday, some 17 people were recruited and taught the game and another dozen or so were contacted who knew the game but had not played in a while or were looking for people.
The tournament featured the round ranking system in which each round was played under a different world class scoring system to expose people to the extremes out there.
Round one was played under C-Diplo rules to 1907 with the players who do not drop getting 1 point, everyone else gets 1 point per center and the first place person gets 38 points, the second place 14 and the third place 3 points. There were two boards played.
Robert Westfall, playing in his first tournament having just learned the game in the last few months turned in an impressive Austria with 15 centers to take the ‘Outstanding Round’ plaque. This would be one of the more power displays of Austria’s potential in the tournament. There was also a rather special Italian disease that seemed to start in this round and spread for the rest of the convention, it seems that there was some curse upon the Italian units and you rarely saw two Italian units next to each other for the convention. In one of the games there was an Italian set of 4 units as Munich, Tunis, Eastern medit and Mid Atlantic.
Round 2 was played under the Draw Based system wherein a win was 121 points and a draw was worth 120 points divided amongst the number of people in the draw regardless of centers. There were two boards played with both of them winding up in 4 ways draws. Oddly enough the draws were a lot closer in center count than the C-Diplo games. The drawing players had 6-7-6-7 and 8-8-6-6 which is more common in balance of power games under C-Diplo than the stopping the leader common in Draw based. Amongst the more interesting or simply odd move sequences was Lionel Levine’s Pirate Italian Fleet that wound up in the North Sea in 1904 only to die in Holland in 05.
Round 3 was played under B.A.D.Ass. rules: 1 point for surviving past 1905, 1 point per center with a minimum of 5, a bonus to the leader of 1 point per center greater than the next person, 6 points are divided up amongst those in the draw. A solo gets a flat 34 points and the most you can get for a non-win is 28 points.
There were 3 boards played, one was a rather rough game for the original players as there was a lot of substitutes in the game as time went one. Here there was an astounding performance by our own locally trained delinquent: Nat Holzgrafe who as Austria earned his first ever tournament solo by blitzing the East and breaking into Germany before the end of 1907 and the other players so demoralized that they agreed to his solo. As we teach in the Bay Area: “if you have to win by taking 18 centers then your diplomacy has failed.” Well done NAT.
The final ranking was taken by adding the ranking of each round and comparing who had the best over all ranking. In the second time this was done we had a Draw between Louis Abronson and Joshua Nave. By rule the championship was decided by a one on one challenge in Escalation. With both players never having played this less than 7 Variant solution it was a perfect tie-breaker. The result was that Louis took the tie breaker and became the champion.
All through the convention we had numerous games of Escalation and one on one country duels going as we sought to teach new players the basic tactics. During the games we employed our Prize-Sur’prize technique to give away Skull rings for those who destroyed units and had them traded in on the last day at the rate of 2 for a game of Nuclear War. We gave out comics from the 70’s of Cracked, Crazy, Sick and Mad for moves and plans that seemed to fit in that category. Buz Eddy was kind enough to come down and run his Division listing as an excuse to give out several Diplomacy sets and $15 gift certificates to Starbucks.
Overall, it was a success and, a good time was had by all.
| 1. | (Champion) Louis Abronson |
| 2. | Joshua Nave |
| 3. | Nat Holzgrafe (Best single result with a SOLO as Austria round 3) |
| Greg Tripp | |
| 5. | Buz Eddy |
| 6. | Lionel Levine |
| 7. | Joshua Shank |
| Shawn Bennett | |
| 8. | Siobhan Granvold |
| 9. | Daniel Byars |
| 10. | Daniel Blackmer |
| Tom Hilton | |
| 12. | David Leary |
| 13. | Robert Westall | >
| 14. | Ryan Lee |
| 15. | Cody Sickinger |
| Ceaser Alvarez | |
| Ron Braken | |
| 18. | Roderick Lee |
| David Bennet | |
| Thomas Lee | |
| Peter Bauer | |
| Daren Leviloff | |
| Brad Laser | |
| 24. | Bill Brewer |
| 25. | Arthur Willis |
| Cody Leviloff | |
| Sidone Starr | |
| Jodi Solares | |
| Amy Puzia | |
| Thomas Koch | |
| Dan Eppolito |
| Power | Average | Best |
|---|---|---|
| Austria | 5.33 | Solo Nat Holzgrafe |
| England | 6.56 | 12 Louis Abronson |
| France | 5.56 | 9 Robert Westfall |
| Germany | 3.78 | 8 Tom Hilton |
| Italy | 3.78 | 10 Louis Abronson |
| Russia | 4.11 | 9 Louis Abronson and Joshua Nave |
| Turkey | 5.78 | 11 Bruce Herke and Lionel Levine |
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Edi Birsan (edi@diplom.org) |
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