Makes me think of that great legal classic, Constitutional Law With Relish: The Complete Decisions of Justices Burger and Frankfurter. 
The Dip 1040 map has been revised to include Austria’s retreat from Moscow. (Don’t feel bad, Abe - that tends to be the fate of armies that invade Russia. ;))
The murder was done by Colonel Mustard in Munich. . . with the candlestick.
Things seem to have been somewhat slow over the weekend and last few days, so I’ll pose a question.
Can anyone think of a good reason for France to open with A Mar S A Par-Bur? To complete the picture, he bounced with England in the Channel, and German A Mun was ordered to stand.
Still looks to me like there’s a lot of play left.
JC, I’ve been looking at the scoring rules for the WorldMasters tourney, and I can’t make head or tail of them.
Just the scoring for the first round will suffice:
Forget about tie-breakers except as they demonstrate the confusion.
Rule 5 strongly implies that points are racked up at the end of each year within a round, but nowhere is this directly stated.
Rule 6 talks about crediting players on the top 10 teams with points towards advancement to the second round. But WTF do they need them for - if they’re on the top 10 teams, don’t they automatically get into the second round, that is, isn’t it teams that advance, or fail to do so?
It doesn’t explicitly say they’re ignoring the rule about each player in a DIAS being equal in the draw, but that’s certainly the idea of Rules 1 and 2.
In a game with a win or a less-than-6-way DIAS, can eliminated players get points? Is it survivors first, then the others in reverse order of elimination? (E.g. in a 3-way draw, would the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th players to be eliminated get the positional bonuses for 6th, 5th, and 4th places, respectively?)
In Round 1, are there 97 points in a game, or are there 369 points in a game, or are there 369 points, or is there some other number, or does it vary?
Fall 1906 results are up in Dip 1040. We need retreats from Austria and Turkey. Builds and disbands are due tomorrow at 5am EST.
The Fall 1906 map has been updated with the retreats.
It’s a very patriotic map - just about all red, white, and blue.
Just so everyone knows, I’m back around and have fairly reliable internet access again. And I’m back to not eating Mexican food for every meal brap!
Just so everyone knows, I’m back around and have fairly reliable internet access again. And I’m back to not eating Mexican food for every meal brap!
And the hamsters are as reliable as usual, too. 
The Winter 1906 results in Dip 1040 are posted. Enjoy.
Re: The WM point system.
You’re asking the wrong guy, Kim. I’m not silly enough to try to run the damn thing.
Look at the trouble you, Greg, Tom and I had just coming up with MY points system.
Does anyone feel that we can’t speed up the pace of 1040? I can’t imagine that we need until Monday for the Spring deadline. I’d be more than comfortable with a Saturday/Tuesday (or even Friday/Monday) schedule.
Just a suggestion since we’re down to 5 players.
Well, I already know what my move (note the lack of a plural for that noun) will be for this Spring.
Also, FWIW, Yahoo! mail seems to be down right now, so if you’re sitting in the cold and dark waiting for a message from me that’s why I’ve not written.
Yeah, but the trouble there was in reconciling differences of opinion about how much different endings should be worth to the different players, and that isn’t the problem here.
None of us came up with a scoring system that the others couldn’t decipher. But I couldn’t possibly take a game and apply the WM first-round scoring rules to it, because I can’t make head or tail of them.
I don’t want to run their tournament for them, but I’d at least like a sense of what their scoring system rewards and penalizes.
Shibb, after reading your post, I opened up my Yahoo! mail with no problem.
Omni, I can do whatever everybody’s comfortable with. I can adjudicate whenever. I’ve avoided weekend deadlines because it’s hard to predict ahead of time who’s going to be away for the weekend. But the fewer players we have, the easier it is to find weekends where everyone can continue playing.
I should point out here that the game’s shifting back from tactics to diplomacy. The tactical question of whether Austria could win on his own (and with the help of his self-sacificing former ally), or whether he could be stopped, has been resolved. Now it comes down to goals and diplomacy. If a player is to win, he’s going to need help from another player in some fashion. But if nobody’s amenable to helping another player to a victory, then it’s time to start thinking about draws, and who will be included in one.
That’s for you guys to fight out, of course. But hopefully that helps the thinking process along.
True enough, but a Saturday AM deadline gives everyone 2 full days of Dipping time, and the following Tuesday does the same (counting Sunday as a day when everyone usually has been available). That seems adequate, the real queit day has been from Friday evening through Saturday. Its just one mans opinion, an inexpereinced one at that, but I’d like to keep things moving, and if things become more cmplex as you mention we can always back it off later.
Could someone explain the general concept of DIAS? I looked at a few of the old games on Nate’s page and I don;t get why they’d agree to a draw when there’s players left with like 2 units on the board. Am I missing some general concepts or strategy?
The diplomacy rules state that ALL players left on the board share equally in a draw regardless of how many centers or units they have remaining.
Therefore…
Draw
Includes
All
Survivors
DIAS tend to be agreed upon when it becomes clear that a winner will not emerge from the game. And in fact most games end in a draw on Cat23 at this point.
I still think we should have cut 983 down to a 3-way DIAS instead of 4.
Also, I got bored waiting for F05 adjudication in 1046 and put together a budget little page for the game. I haven’t put up all the backlogged results yet but the last couple turns are there.
Speaking for myself at least, the usual heckling/analysis would be welcome for this game too.
OK, if all players share equally, what logic would possess powers with 10-15 SCs to split their result with a player with just 2? Short of boredom, how does this make sense, especially in tournament play where scoring plays a role?