“Seventh Fiddle”
Umble asked me to write a Second Fiddle article for my seventh-place finish on the DBNI top board. Here was my submission for the March 18, 2022, Diplomacy Briefing.
“I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.” — Antonio Salierei (Amadeus 1984)
Dear Briefing Reader(s),
(CONSTANTINOPLE, FALL 1907). Reports of my demise are greatly … well … correct. I lie dead in a pool of my blood. Anatolia is now under the control of a triumvirate of determined neighbors. Et tu, Seren?
I had it good there for a year or two. Remember when I made it to Ionian? I could see the gates of Tunis and Naples from my ship’s cabin. Or how about that time I made it to Rumania? Oh well, as we learned in the movie Rushmore, “the paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
It’s bad enough I hold the record for Second Fiddle articles. Now, The Briefing has commissioned a Seventh Fiddle submission. Yes, standards are so low that seventh place deserves its fifteen minutes in the DBNI sun.
I suppose I should explain what went wrong. That’s the simple part. Outlined against a gray February sky, the Four Horseman rode again during the DBNI. You remember their names: Death, Famine, Pestilence, Farren.
I chalk my game up to one indisputable fact: Farren Jane and I cannot work together in any capacity. And that saddens me. If one bases his entire game on diplomacy, one cannot afford to write off another player. Yet, time after time, Farren and I mutually decide to Thelma and Louise ourselves off the proverbial cliff of top boards.
The virtual Diplomacy community knows our feud well. Both of us blame the other for its origins. The truth, like most truths, lies in the middle of these perspectives. But it is a fact that each of us is irredeemable to the other. If either one could claim success in the fights between us, then maybe I would feel better about it. At least one of us would have some victory to point to over the other. As it stands, it’s just 18 months of us stalemating the other, with neither having anything to show for our efforts. It’s Mutually Assured Destruction, and it is mad.
We both knew that we would be in the East in this game. Before the game, we spoke to each other—not about strategy. During this pleasant conversation, neither assured the other that we would work together. Instead, we spoke of our mutual aspiration of not writing the other off out of the gate. And yet, we found ourselves fighting again from Spring 1901 until her fleet landed in Smyrna.
Ultimately, and not for the first, second, third, or even fourth time, we ruined each other’s game. In this latest episode, Farren would say I lied about moving to the Ionian, and she would be right. I would say she first lied about going to the Aegean. I’m not sure if she would admit to that or not.
The more challenging question is, where do I go from here? If all I’m going to do is run into Farren on a top board and lose, what is the point? I’ve twice watched her get stabbed to England. I’ve eliminated her once, and she eliminated me once. We’re both 0-4 with the two of us playing together. If I had an answer, I’d write it down. As Joshua observed in Wargames, sometimes “the only winning move is not to play.”
But, right now, Diplomacy is all I’ve got, and I’ll concede that while my tactics have improved, my small-d diplomacy needs work, particularly with one highly accomplished U.S. Army officer. For now, I’ll simply raise the white flag, be Roberto Duran, and whimper “no mas,” and wait for her to eliminate me again.
Why exactly would I resign myself to another failure? Playing Diplomacy for me is like Salieri composing music. I can play with real geniuses like Jason Mastbaum, Seren Kwok, Brandon Fogel, Nicolas Taillet, Katie Gray, and yes, Farren Jane, but in the end, at least for now, my mediocrity prevails.