Chapter 2: The Awakening

Season Covered: Spring 1901 Negotiations

Winter 1900

Are you kidding me? Naturally, I draw England.  Goal 4 (“Don’t Be England”) is out the window.  I observe that Backstabbr has set my stage for probable doom or improbable glory.  Like any great movie, I would have to face my biggest fear before getting the girl at the end.  Unfortunately, life ain’t the movies.

Crap, I’m England.  What do I do?  OK, let’s go over the Five Goals again:  Don’t be a prick, write often and with my style of humor, find a friend, don’t be England, and get lucky and win.  OK, one of those is gone.  Let’s see if I can do this.

I receive this disconcerting message from our Game Master, Ajax:

I think it was meant to be encouraging??

In any event, my God, there’s a lot of press flying between everyone.  I’m usually the guy messaging the other powers more than anyone else. Now, the other powers are pressing me faster than a school’s best senior heavyweight wrestler versus a freshman flyweight. 

What’s happening now?  Russia is using the Cyrillic script.  I can’t compete with that!

I thought everyone would be as arrogant as the types I saw on Discord.  Here, everyone writes so well, so persuasively; and so perfectly.  At best, my writing is a wash.  At worst, I’m overmatched.  I feel like the guy at the high-school dance afraid to ask the girl for a moment on the dance floor.  

OK, screw it, let me see if I can build some relationships.  The first thing I found is that everyone was so darn nice, like Minnesota nice.  Everyone was friendly. So, all I needed to do was be pleasant, as well, and find my one friend who would work with me.

Easier said than done.  Russia told me he wasn’t going North, which would mean he was not aiming his units[1] towards me.  I believed him.  We sort of hit it off. But what kind of partnership could I build with Russia, and wouldn’t that just cut off an area of growth that everyone says England needs?  His press was just what I wanted to read, and it seemed credible.  He is an affable fellow.

I loved France from the get-go.  He was my first press of the game (and I told him so), and he seemed like a great guy.  Germany was slow to press at the start of the game, and after a few hours of waiting, France wrote back to me:  

France wrote: “I have not spoken to Germany yet, but I see no reason why we can’t just commit to this now. If you agree, I say we just dive right in and start hammering out some ideas.”  That’s what I’m talking about, BABY!  We keep going.

Alas, it turns out his ideas were more things we agreed we would not do that helped him, like building fleets or DMZ-ing the English Channel,[2] than something we could do together.  The guy’s smart.  He hooked me in on an alliance and then cut out my legs by limiting my movement.  I will have to remember that trick in the future.

Germany then gets involved.  I told him he was my first press of the game.  A needless lie, and I would soon become accustomed to making several unnecessary lies in this game.  

It turns out Germany was another nice guy.

Due to my history of abysmal play as England, I boned up on strategy and read as much as I could find on English openings and subsequent moves.  England benefits from the Western Triple,[3] so in separate press to each, I floated the idea.   First to France:

That didn’t work. Let’s try Germany:

That didn’t work, either.   Has France already gotten to him?  Oh well, I’ll think optimistically and convince myself that I’ve got my pick of the litter between France and Germany.

Brief thoughts on meeting the other players.  I knew Italy was @Conq from his first press, which read:

@Conq’s press so distinctive.  I’m sure he knew who I was, as well.  We are both successful lawyers.  @Conq is a legit badass lawyer who works for the one of the most badass firms around, and he’s a partner there.  They don’t take smart lawyers there.  They don’t even take really smart lawyers.  They take the best of the best, and to be a partner there is an accomplishment reached by fewer than 1 in a million lawyers (fewer actually).

Nevertheless, I know lawyers, and I know how they think, so that could be helpful if it weren’t for the fact that @Conq can read me like my dad could read the Sunday paper.  I was also happy about him drawing Italy.  I saw him play Italy in NT48, and I figured he would not get the same type of cooperative Austria he got in that game.  Also, if it later became a race to the Med, I am confident in my fleet play, even against a player of his skill and ability.  

Turkey seemed like a mensch.  We sort of played footsie with information about Russia.  He kept telling me he was getting attacked and implied I should go north.  Nothing surprising.  

I liked Austria.  Dude was totally direct.  In his first press, he pushed for an attack on Russia.  

Austria did not feel around or engage in pussyfooting.  A bit too convenient for the final match, IMHO.  Such press told me he surely presses everyone else similarly.   Nevertheless, I like direct people, and my initial thoughts were favorable.

Good conversation with Russia (some of it censored).

While we never really finalized anything, France did call us “Team Ass.” As in, let’s not show our asses.  I suggested a more inappropriate name as a joke (not produced).

As negotiations drew to a close and the moves for Spring 1901 became due, one bit of press hit me in the gut.  Italy wrote:

The Game Master also messaged me:

My heart sank.  Had I been too over the top?  Had I been too willing to enter alliances?  Is my game potentially over before it begins?  That guy knows just what to say to a weakling like me.  I made sure to enter non-crazy orders and go for a standard opening.[4]

After all these initial discussions, the game plan was:  Play it straight; don’t commit all out against one or the other; keep trying to develop friendships, and see what happens at the end of the Spring.

Notes

[1] “Units” are Diplomacy pieces.  On Backstabbr, units are either armies—represented by circles—or fleets—represented by triangles.

[2] “DMZ” means demilitarized zone.  In this case, the English Channel, or “Eng,” is a vital piece of real estate between England and France.

[3] The Western Triple or “WT” is an alliance of England, France, and Germany, all of the Western powers, against the other four Eastern powers of Austria, Italy, Russia, and Turkey..

[4] To “enter orders” means to instruct your units, either to move somewhere or to hold in place.