Rupert Murdoch.
ETA: Sorry, that’s what I get for playing a game of Media Croissant in another window.
Oh well, if I can’t make an intelligent play, I’ll at least play an intelligent man.
King Abdullah of Jordan.
A half-step backwards with Queen Noor of Jordan.
Edward the Confessor
Forgive me; I’ve been away from the game for a couple of days. I’m stunned that Wargamer would have left such an opening, and more stunned that no one has taken advantage of it. There must be a subtle trap in here somewhere, but I’ve reviewed the play so far and can’t see it. I suppose I’ll be the one to spring it, by playing Edward the Confessor’s father, from his marriage to Emma of Normandy:
Æthelred the Unready
You may spring your trap now, Wargamer.
(And for the purists out there, I would be happy to play out FitzGibbon’s unblockable five-step progression from Æthelred to Marie of Romania, but I’m not sure how many others are interested in watching that. I’ll point to Murakama’s inevitability proof in the 1953 Annals of Marie of Romania.)
Last-ditch effort to salvage my position.
Robert the Bruce.
You’re right. <annoying pun redacted> I admit I’m a lot less experienced at this game than standard MC–I’m still floundering. There seems to be almost no reference material online about gameplay, though there is much about the genealogies themselves.
Much of the community shuns the web world - I guess the classical genealogists of the European Monarchies haven’t moved well into the 21st century, and there’s much overlap between that and the players of this game.
If you have a well-stocked local library, you could look for Murakama’s Essence of Æthelred which is a good start - especially for the traditional openings. He sued to keep it off of Google Books, so you probably won’t be able to find an electronic copy.
If you have an extremely well-stocked library, you might go for my favorite, Lewisham’s The Narrow Path to the King Lies Through Napoleon’s Stomach, which was published just after the codification of the Greenwich rules in the 1970s. Lewisham was completely insane, alternating between believing himself to be Marie Antoinette and sort of the Anglican Church’s version of Kanye West, but his descriptions of the philosophy of play are excellent.
That hasn’t helped me much in our game here, obviously, so take it with a grain of salt.
I myself have been combing through my libraries, and considered the same play as Tierce. The difficulty is: some moves are so obviously wrong, so completely amateurish, that seeing them in an actual tournament would either be evidence of extremely subtle genius or evidence of a completely foolish rube. Beating the bell curve is kind of like that. Wargamer’s play was one of these. Whereas he forwent all commentary to explicate the inexplicable, it left me gasping.
Tom has made the obvious choice if the latter is the case and will be the winner unless the former is true. It remains to be seen which is the case. All I can do is profit by completing the Romanov Rondo with Mikhail I Fyodorovich, Tsar of all Russia, collect one white token from each remaining player, and wait to see if Tom prevails. Granted, such a strategy assures that I won’t win, but I won’t lose, either. Sometimes you need to play for the middle.
I’m still a bit flabbergasted myself, honestly, but I’ll follow Murakama and play William the Conqueror. Marie in 4.
I don’t know what wargamer might have up his sleeve, but in the interim at least I can start to dig my way out of the hole I find myself in.
Boromaracha V of Ayutthaya
One more sticky wicket, and I can get a cromulence waiver - assuming Tom hasn’t won by then.
In a bit of a tight Scottish place myself, I’ll try Edward I “Longshanks”. There’s a chance I may be able to hop back to some safe Tudor country, but I fear it may be all over bar the yodeling.
Was I the only one who thought we were playing Æthelred ? :smack: The only reason I didn’t jump directly from Saint Edward to Ethelred was that it violated the rule about non-equal names sharing first and last letters, but I’m not used to these new-fangled ISO characters. (We used mostly Morse code when we played Ethelred at Bethlem Royal Hospital.)
I need to run computer simulations (is that ethical?) to develop a strategy for Marie of Romania so I’ll make a long-named move purely to gain time for the simulations to complete. Fortunately the best delaying move of all is legal right now:
Phra Bat Somdetch Phra Paramindra Maha Bhumibol Adulyadej Mahitala Dhibesra Rama Dhibodi Chakri Naribodindra Sayamindra Dhiraj Barommanath Bobitra Phra Maha Kashatriya Haeng Prades Thai
(I command seven spam-bot farms, so my simulations shouldn’t take too long, even with a supra-polynomial algorithm. You’ll all notice a sharp drop in spam e-mail over the coming hours, but I’ll make up for it after the Marie game.)
Tom’s inexorable progression towards Marie is indeed intimidating and insuppressible. But I should point out that it is theoretically possible for someone else to win first (even excluding some exotic trap by Wargamer that I haven’t figured out yet.) It would require two or more players to act in concert and an invocation of Rule 83c, one of those players giving up their own chance to win. I’m not sure if anyone has sufficient motivation to do this, but I’m curious to see if anyone can work out the necessary moves leading from within my last generation of Asian exile:
Emperor Jimmu of the Yamato Dynasty
Then again, septimus’ brute force approach might also yield unexpected results before Tom’s onrushing victory.
Continuing Murakama’s Progression:
Henry VII of England, a Tudor Shift, and Marie in 3.
Ha ha ha!
Emperor Norton !!
(When does a king become a king? Is mere adulation enough?)
I believe I have the perfect response to this (which I am sure you were expecting, but here it goes anyway): Elvis Presley. Before anyone tries to claim he is not related to the Romanovs, and therefore ineligible, he is (by marriage). Seriously, you can look it up.
It’s very tempting to follow the pop-culture subtree by playing Michael Jackson, but I will continue with my plodding reconstruction of the Master’s work by moving ahead to William III of England aka William of Orange. Marie in 2.
A desperate situation calls for desperate measures:
Isildur, High King of Arnor & Gondor
I have to pay out 3 purple tokens for this, but I now possess the One Ring of Power, which should forestall Marie for a while (at least using Bethlem Hospital’s rules).
While septimus’s foray into the fictional could be bothersome, I believe Thursday Next will cover me adequately on that flank. Still Marie in 2.
Fascinating.
Given the genealogical dead end that is Colonel Next, this should be something of a conundrum. I’ll have to make a lateral jibe and use up my recently-earned cromulence waiver to skip through to Granny Next and use her relations via Queen Mab to play:
Anung Un Rama, Lord of Earth just after us and just before the Ogdru Jahad
I’m sorry I haven’t set anyone up for success in following this move, but it’s all I can do to stay in the game at this point.