“If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.” -- <PERSON> (attributed)
Has it really been 50 years since the advent of Diplomacy? Apparently so, because Hasbro/AH has released the 50th Anniversary Edition.
You can even get a t-shirt emblazoned with this logo:
But wait, I am getting ahead of myself.
THE GAME
What is Diplomacy? At heart it's a very simple game. You begin with a map of Europe circa 1900. It can accommodate up to 7 players, each of whom takes on the role of one of the key imperial powers of the time, namely: Austria, England, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and Russia.
The map is divided into roughly 80 zones, including both land and sea areas.
There are only two types of units in the game - armies and fleets. Each power gets three units (except Russia, which gets four). Each power begins with a mix of armies and fleets depending on their starting position on the map.
The players units all begin on their respective "supply centres". Each country has three supply centres (save Russia, with four). There are a total of 34 supply centres in the game, and to win you must control 18 of them. Easy right?
THE BASIC RULES
The game is played in years, and each year is split into two phases - the spring phase, and the fall phase.
In each phase players will command their units to do one of four things - move, stay put (hold), transport a unit across the water (convoy) or support another unit.
Ordering your units is simple. 597
You secretly write down what you want them to do (as do your opponents), and then everyone reveals the orders simultaneously and the orders are adjudicated.
Samples of each order type could look something like this:
A Marseille - Spain - the army in Marseille wants to go to Spain
F Liverpool Hold - the fleet in Liverpool is sitting still
A Moscow Supports A Warsaw - Ukraine - the army in Moscow is providing support for the army in Warsaw to move to the Ukraine
F Baltic C A Berlin - Sweden - the fleet in the Baltic is going to convoy the army in Berlin to Sweden
There are many combinations and permutations of the above. For example, it is technically possible to convoy a unit from any coastal region on the map to any other coastal region on the map provided each sea area from point A to B has a fleet in it and the various players have ordered a convoy command to help the army move and none of the fleets has their support "cut".
If two units try to enter the same area at the same time, they "bounce" - in other words, neither unit advances into the area in question and instead stay where they are. The same applies if a unit tries to move into an occupied zone without support.
However, if two units try to enter the same area at the same time, and one of them has support from another adjacent unit and the other does not, then the supported unit gets in and the latter remains where they were.
Just to complicate matters, if unit A tries to support unit B, but unit <PERSON> is ordered to move into the zone unit A is in, then the support is "cut" and unit A's support is no longer available. So in our second example, if a fourth unit cut the support, then the original bounce condition would apply.
If a unit is sucessfully ordered into an already occupied area, then the original occupant is considered dislodged and must retreat to an adjacent area that is both unoccupied and not the area from which the attack came.
Once all the movement orders have been processed, any dislodged units must retreat or disband (be removed from the board).
If it is the spring phase, everything is repeated.
If it is the fall phase, then an additional build/removal phase is executed. Simply stated, each player counts how many supply centres they control, counts how many units they have on the board, and then either stand pat, build additional units (in unoccupied home centres, each power can build at most three units), or removes units (their choice as to which) if they don't have enough supply centres to support all their units.
If all your supply centres are captured by opposing players (i.e. you have none left), you are out of the game. Losing all your home centres is possible, but you're not out of the game until all your units are gone and you have no supply centres left.
THE NOT SO BASIC RULES
As you can see from how crowded the map is, players will be in conflict for supply centres in very short order. Therefore, you will need to negotiate with the other players. 449