Diplomacy

Hi Everyone. I organize face to face diplomacy games in London and am helping to organize a diplomacy weekend in Warrington later this year. I can see there hasn’t been much action on this post but hopefully there are people out there looking to play or try the game. We have a website, a news letter, a discord server and a facebook group that we use to communicate with other UK Diplomacy enthusiasts. Reach out if you’re interested to join a game. We have a teaching game coming up, and generally we play face to face every 4-6 weeks.

dip ramble

paul

Posted 6/27/11 9:07 AM

1. Played dip this Sunday and it was very enjoyable. Having never played it before I recently looked up some of the game rules. It has a very straightforward board setup and the explaining of the basic rules to new players was quite fast. Conducting movement and battles is very simply done. you can only have 1 unit per space and units can only move one space per turn. If it’s occupied you bump into them and move back. In order to overcome enemy forces you use surrounding pieces to support the attack. 1 or more attackers + support more than the defense + support and you win. A great mechanic though, is that if one of the supporting pieces gets attacked, it’s attention gets diverted and it no longer supports the original attack. Throughout the game pieces are manouvering and bumping each other and diverting attacks. Although this sounds straightforward, the tricky bit is 2-fold. Firstly working it all out and secondly managing the diplomatic relations with all the other nations. The first bit has a bewildering array of possibilities. You generally can’t cover every border and land you own. If you use your troops in one battle, you leave yourself open to attack elsewhere. If one troop is supporting, itself might get attacked. There are also fleet units that can move in the sea and on coasts. They can also convoy land units around. generally you can’t do everything just on your own, you will often need the help of others. these diplomatic relations are just as tricky. You are working off a mix of no-information, partial-information to full information. And any part of the information could be true, half-true or even false. You have to take all that into account when deciding what your troops will do. One of the nice features of dip, is that all troop movements are recorded secretly and resolved simultaneously. Until they are read out and the board is adjusted you have no idea what is going to happen. There are areas of the board that have there own tactical quirks that a seasoned player is aware of, so for newer players there is plenty to learn about while you play. But we played with 3 new players and 3 experienced players and it worked just fine. The experienced players helped out when they could with rule clarifications and a variety of strategic advice, especially when it didn’t hamper their own war efforts. Normally to win, you would need to control around half of the board or have a shared draw. Plus there are variations that can adjust it, such as in our game we set a finish time, and whoever had the most supply centres would win. I would definitely play it again, especially as it is fun, but it is hard work both mentally and socially. I would probably not want to play it at LOB though. It’s not a game that I would approach lightly. To get the best enjoyment out of it, 7 players is best for it. You also need a long time set aside for it. Ideally would be a whole day (or maybe even a weekend). You can play with less players, as well as play for a shorter amount of time, but a full game really deserves your full commitment and attention. At a LOB meetup, you wouldn’t want to play it in on a short Tuesday/Wednesday evening. And for a Sunday I personally would rather choose to play several games rather than 1 very long intense game. I also think that a crowded pub is not the ideal environment as there is a lot of breaking away from the board to discuss strategies. I can see why it is hard to get 7 players together who are dedicated enough for a full game of it. And for anyone who has heard about the backstabbing and lying. It does go on, but everything in the game is game-related and nothing is personal. It’s just the same when playing BSG or even The Resistance. If you don’t like those sort of games then you might not enjoy dip. cheers

Tom

Posted 1/26/12 12:08 PM

1. Is this a sheep game?

Will

Posted 5/18/12 1:13 PM

1. It sounds great!