Diplomacy

For the first time since acquiring diplomacy last week, I managed to try it out with 6 of our batchmates yesterday. At the end of the game, and although I’m really not trying to be chauvinistic, I do somehow seem to have reached the conclusion that diplomacy is more of a game for guys (although players like France played brilliantly). But at the same time I have that much respect for the four of them who tried out and played the game with us (the three guys) right to the very end, even though some did say after it was finished that they weren’t ever going to play it again, and more for any of them who would look forward to taking on the game again the next time around.

As a preface, diplomacy is a game centred round Europe around the 20th century during the years leading up to world war I. There are seven great powers to be controlled by one or two players and the only purpose of the game is for..... well..... players to take over Europe, and the only approach to this is to eliminate the other six. The brilliance of the game (or atrocity, as some would put it) however, lies in the fact that this dominance is impossible to achieve all on your own. You will be forced to make allies out of the other six powers, and in doing so invariably choose to bunch up with them against those that you don’t, and herein lies the dispute.

As was expected during the game, alliances were formed (some were broken) but at least when the time came for us to stop, the core and concept of the game had gone through. It was a vicious game no doubt, and it feels awful during the session to be gang-ed up on, but in the end when the game has finished and the board and all the game pieces has been bundled back into the humble box from which it came, it doesn’t take very long to pick yourself back up and appreciate that that is just precisely what it was. I’ve played diplomacy quite a few times before, and lost equally as much. But somehow I don’t regret purchasing it, and all the time as soon as I finish playing one game I look forward with as much enthusiasm as to when I’ll be able to next play it again.