Live games, Colonial Diplomacy & metagaming a******s

Kaner and Amby get talking about playing metagaming arseholes, live Diplomacy games online, the variant Colonial Diplomacy, possible variant ideas and get more entertaining after many more drinks

• This episode is a back-to-back recording again at the Breakfast Creek Hotel. Amby pays homage to Aussie rock band "Midnight Oil" and their lyric about the pub in the song Dreamworld, and their disappoint in the political career of its lead singer (Peter Garrett)  (20 secs)

Metagaming arseholes 

• Kaner gets hot under the collar about his recent experience with metagamers: people who come into a game with a preconceived alliance and will not vary from it (2 mins 30 secs)
• The game was the very last to be played Known World 901 game at WebDiplomacy (2 mins 45 secs)
• Kaner explains the difference between metagaming and multi-accounting. He talks about a useful thread on webDip that discusses this (4 mins 45 secs)
• Kaner blows off some more steam, and then explains what happened to the game after the metagaming was discovered (7 mins 45 secs)

Variant and Lab talk

• Kaner goes a little off topic and discusses a new variant being put together by David E. Cohen, the creator of Known World 901 (8 mins 45 secs)
• Amby discusses his recent holiday and a surprising spotting of a book written by a David Elliot Cohen - is it the same guy? (9 mins 45 secs)
• Kaner talks about other great combined maps done by David E. Cohen, combining the Maharajah and Spice Islands maps (11 mins 30 secs)
• Amby discusses how Flame is setting up Pirates on the Lab so he can correct some of the issues players have raised about the variant (12 mins 45 secs)
• Kaner talks about how he'd like to see the minor power element of the Versailles variant brought into Pirates (14 mins 15 secs)
• Mrs Kaner is going soon to France. Kaner discusses his wife's French pronunciation skills (14 mins 30 secs)
• Amby discusses his other variant creation plans and ideas after reading a Theodore Roosevelt biography that touches on possible conflicts that never occured and how it'd make a fun variant. Basically it would encompass the Venezuelan crisis of 1902-03 where America and Germany could have come to war. Similar potential conflict almost happened over Morocco (15 mins 45 secs)
• Amby keeps the ball rolling talking about another variant idea after listening to two podcasts (12 Byzantine Rulers and The History of Rome) about the tetrarchy of the Roman Empire when it was governed by four separate emperors. A system that eventually brought them into conflict (19 mins 15 secs)
• Kaner discusses his interest in the Byzantium Empire and the Black Death (21 mins 50 secs)

Back to Metagaming

• The guys talk about whether an aspect of metagaming is acceptable based on your prior experience against a player (23 mins 50 secs)
• Kaner talks about players that rub him the wrong way (27 mins)
• Amby explores a situation whether metagaming could be done in a potentially positive way  (29 mins)
• Kaner flows off the discussion with a story about his first Diplomacy game against his father and brother (31 mins 40 secs)

What the Dr Recommended update - part 2 of the Top 100 at WebDiplomacy

• The guys follow on from episode 14 and attempt to pronounce player names from #20 to #50 (33 mins 45 secs)
• Amby discusses how he's been thinking about playing an Ancient Mediterranean game on WebDip (38 mins 30 secs)

Live games

• Amby does another holiday flashback and how with a bit of spare time on his hands, played a live Classic game at webDip (38 mins 55 secs)
• Amby discusses this was his first ever live game, although he'd tried to get this happening once before on the basis of having a Drunk Diplomacy game (where all players have been drinking) (40 mins)
• With so many players at webDip its a lot easier to get a live game going, the same with PlayDip (40 mins 50 secs)
• Amby drew Russia and explains why he likes playing Russia in Classic (and hates Austria and Italy). Kaner also gives his views on which countries he likes playing in Classic (41 mins 20 secs)
• Amby expected a 45 minute game, but found out that was not the case! (42 mins)
• He talks about the challenge in a live game of competing real life demands that get in the way of preparing and submitting orders (43 mins)
• Amby explains he had a lot of fun playing a live game. cspieker as Turkey won with Amby coming second (43 mins 45 secs)
• The game used the draw size scoring system. Amby explains he has no idea how that works, or sum of squares. The guys talk about how they need to get someone from webDip on to explain it without too much highbrow maths. Amby asks Kaner to organise zulta or another informed webDip person on (45 mins)
• Back to the live game. Amby explains how he was doing alright as Russia but Turkey was starting to make moves his way. One of the big problems was the amount of CDing in the game, although generally replacements popped up really quickly (46 mins 45 secs)
• Amby explains his gameplay to avoid attacking Austria and blitzed Scandanavia and started taking SCs off England. Only for Austria to start attacking Amby, quickly followed by Germany doing the same. Amby explains his attempt to send gunboat messages of peace out to England failed. Kaner asks about Germany's rapid rise followed by rapid decline (48 mins 55 secs)
• Once it became very clear to Amby he wasn't going to win, he set himself some personal goals, including Russia making its way to the Iberian peninsula. The guys then talk about their future plans on playing more live Dip games (51 mins 45 secs)
• Kaner talks about the importance of hitting the refresh button in live games (55 mins 45 secs)

The guys discuss their games

• Kaner briefly touches on his Sengoku tournament situation (57 mins)
• Amby similarly discusses briefly his games: Bourse, WW2 and Indians of the Great Lakes (57 mins 30 secs)

The Colonial Diplomacy variant

• Amby quickly segues into a game of Colonial Diplomacy he recently finished (58 mins 40 secs)
• He describes how he hasn't played it for a couple of years. Kaner says the Trans-Siberian railway and Suez canal rules have been coded into the game (59 mins)
• The guys give a shout out to those who brought the Colonial variant to life: Peter Hawes for designing the game,  Oliver Auth for the php coding and Tobias Florin for the Trans-Siberian railway and Suez canal coding functionality (1 hour 00 mins 00 secs)
• They talk about how the special rules work for the Suez canal and the Trans-Siberian railway. That said in the podcast the guys totally forgot to mention the special rule for Hong Kong: it counts as an SC if occupied by any country except China, in which case its considered a non-SC territory (1 hr 1 mins)
• The guys get increasingly pissy as they move onto drink number six... and it starts showing on Amby's memory of the game (1 hr 03 mins)
• Amby does however remember his overall strategy playing as Japan and what he was trying to achieve and how he managed relationships with other players (1 hr 4 mins 40 secs)
• Congrats to Matticus13 who won as China with Amby coming second (1 hr 6 mins)
• Amby discusses his mid-game plans and how we tried sending gunboat messages of peace to Holland and France (1 hr 7 mins 45 secs)
• Amby describes how it was a really fun variant and would be interested in playing again as another player (1 hr 9 mins 30 secs)
• Kaner asks Amby's thoughts on naval vs land based warfare in the variant (1 hr 11 mins)
• After some initial pissy rambling, Amby reads some of the End of Game statements to explain the players' thoughts on this game and old-man flash backs from Amby about the fall of the Berlin Wall (1 hr 13 mins 15 secs)
• We then get onto the EoG statement from England, the winner of the game (1 hr 18 mins 15 secs)
• Amby discusses the fortress nature of Singapore as an SC (1 hr 20 mins)
• After Kaner's dismal attempt at a joke, Amby slips in a drunken joke or two (1 hr 22 mins 40 secs)
• After being at the pub for over 4 hours, the guys acknowledge this is a good time to wrap things up before it gets messy, before suggesting listeners send their best jokes by PMing or sending a comment (1 hr 26 mins)

Venue: Breakfast Creek Hotel, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Carlton Draft and XXXX "off the wood"
• Amby - Riddoch cabernet sauvignon from the Coonawarra, South Australia

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Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.