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The Newbie Game - End of Game Statements.

Russia (Yuval) supplied the following:

Well, it was going just swell till the end. But I can't blame Italy for doing what he did, I should have simply been more alert. All the same, I'm glad it wasn't he who won - although I knew it wouldn't be, because I didn't will it to be. At any rate, a job well done, and an entertaining (although long) game.

Well, yeah, I'll agree that I certainly should have gone for Moscow and not Warsaw. That was a mental slip, and I don't know what I was thinking.

In Spain, as I said before, I was taking a risk. The moves I did would have had me keep both under some scenarios, and in all but one (the fatal one) keep at least one of them. England did have many other moves that you could have done realistically; such as:

F MAO WMe
A Mar Spa
A Gas S Mar Spa
A Por S Mar Spa
A Bur Mar

In fact, this was more or less what I was expecting you to do, in which case my moves would have been a large bounce. In hindsight, it's easy to say that I should have done the other moves, but at the time it's always hard to judge psychology.

At any rate, it was a good game... I managed to come back from 2 units to being a sole loser with 16 sc's. And I can at least console myself that if I hadn't been *stupid* I would have actually had a decent shot at winning. Not to detract from Ydris, who obviously played a very skillful endgame.

Well, I guess you could consider that an EOG statement, since I'm too lazy atm to write out a full detailed novel as some other more dedicated players have. Thanks to all for the game, especially murky for hosting, and congrats again to Ydris.

At the start of newbie I had the honor of advising Austria. Steve quickly proved not to need my help but was a little perturbed when I took over England... with the following message in October.

Question: This is the Newbie game, where we all were supposed to have advisors. Not only has my advisor not talked to me or helped me AT ALL for the past 10 years, it appears as if I am now playing AGAINST him... and no, I wouldn't appreciate suggestions now Ydris... =-) What happened, in short?

I get ahead of myself. Pretty early on it appeared that the game had stagnated, with all players supporting each other.

Murky emailed each advisor asking them to urge their players to take some liberties with their alignments to little avail. With the loss of the original english player (sorry, no record of who that was). I thought it might be fun to stir up a mess 'o trouble.

England was in the middle of a non-aggression pact with France and Russia so that was the first to go, taking the surprise advantage to take out france and (with limited success) Russia. Italy at this point was down to 2 SCs so a big well done to Kevin for his recovery!

Once the element of surprise was over the gloves were off. Yuval pointed that out with his somewhat aggressive message entitled Newbie GM;

'The gathered nations of Europe have agreed to drop all international conflicts in the interest of stopping the English juggernaut's reign.

Therefore, let it be known to all involved that the battle lines are drawn, and England sits squarely opposite the FRIA alliance. Thus it shall remain until England's armies lay strewn broken and destroyed before us, it's opposition.'

Which spawned a whole afp like thread of followup messages. From here the battle was on but I don't think anyone saw the rise of Italy coming (except perhaps Kevin and Piers - I would be interested to know how well that team worked together).

The turning point however was 1922. The RI pact had long since vanished, along with F and A, and Italy was spreading himself around. The only way Yuval was going to survive was to leave his middle european SCs free to defend further south. At this point Yuval and I started talking and a very good alliance was formed.

The only upsetting thing was that minutes after sending in my great stab orders to Murky, Yuval emailed me saying;

Here's my thoughtm: now that Italy finally dropped the second shoe, and moved his fleet into the Black Sea, I'm going to loose my units one by one, starting with Sevastapol, to him. I'm going to fight back try to slow him down, but I don't think I have much hope. So your job, is either to find a way to keep me alive, or to take my SCs before he can. Good luck.

What is it... will I never pull off a Mike style stab?

From then it was only a question of time. Italy was spread thin and there were really to many holes to fill.

These are the comments I sent to Murky along with my last orders.

So. This works IF War doesn't do anything stupid like try to move and supports me.

In the Med

Worst case in the med I should retain Mar or Spa. I risk losing control of MAO, but only if I get Spa. If so I will have spare builds and can protect myself better then. Best case scenario I outguess Kevin and get both which gives me 18 unless I lose Mos.

In Russia and thereabouts

Mun is safe. Sil is expendable, but can be used to try and bolster War (the Gal move is to cut support if Kevin goes that way). If I have to fall back to Stp we end up with a 'who get War wins battle which Kevin is better placed to win.

The last thing I want is another 2-way draw so lets hope for some outguessing... Ydris was forced to a stalemate in 'Carrot'.

Which says something about the way my mind was working. With Carrot to be honest I felt a little outplayed by Alex and always playing catchup. With Newbie I felt that it was really only time unless I was unlucky.

As a parting note I have to say I probably would only have taken out Yuval as a last resort. A man of grace even at the end.

Ydris wrote:
Which spawned a whole afp like thread of followup messages. From here the battle was on but I don't think anyone saw the rise of Italy coming (except perhaps Kevin and Piers - I would be interested to know how well that team worked together).

Certainly not to blame Piers, because I suspect I was a particularly un-receptive student, but I don't think I had any contact with him after the early teens, or earlier. I'm pretty sure all of the stabbing was more or less my own un-aided attempt to get myself killed, but amazingly it seemed to work out for me. As a matter of fact, I'm vaguely curious how I managed to work up from 2 sc's to my EOG 16; murky, do you have all the orders logged, and are you going to be so hard-working and generous as to put them on the net? 'Tis Done