Creating a Face-to-Face community, variants, billionaires & democracy sausages

The guys squeeze a lot in a short time: Rebranding, getting the word out about diplomacy groups around the world, Amby shares his efforts to get a Diplomacy community going in Brisbane & how you can do the same, new variants, site updates, billionaires & the good ol' Australian democracy sausage.

Intro

• The guys stuff up the podcast entry and then get into an argument about pronouncing Toowong before talking a little about the Royal Exchange hotel, known locally as the RE (0 mins 5 secs)
• The guys introduce their drinks (2 mins 20 secs)

Face-to-face and old school wisdom

• Amby and Kaner discuss rebranding the podcast to reflect both face-to-face and online Diplomacy (3 mins 40 secs)
• The website now has a Google Map showing where people can find Diplomacy groups, or can advise their group/interest in creating a group (7 mins)
• Amby talks about his efforts to get a Diplomacy community up and running in Brisbane, and what you can do to copy their strategy. The guys have almost got enough people who’ve expressed an interest in playing a game face-to-face in Brisbane (10 mins)
• Amby has finished reading the Diplomacy chapter of “The Playboy Winner’s Guide to Board Games” written by Jon Freeman or… Byjon Freeman. He reads a couple of choice quotes and then discusses its strategies for playing each of the seven players’ countries (17 mins)
• Kaner reads up the Italian section and after some more drinks they discuss the strategy suggested for playing Italy (22 mins)

New variants, updates & democracy sausages

• Kaner discusses his anonymous games including the new 1937 A World At War variant by michael_b at vDip. They talk about the imbalances in the game and Amby puts on his history nerd hat. They find the approach to sea territories really interesting (26 mins)
• While talking vDiplomacy they discuss the coding changes to the site that came across from webDip. The guys both love the changes to the Hall of Fame that now includes a list for people who’ve played in the past 6 months and kick off a run through of the Top 20 (36 mins 30 secs)
• Kaner discusses forum conversation between the merits of sea lanes to break stalemate lines vs stacking. He uses the example of stacking proposed in the upcoming variant Dawn of the Enlightenment by David E Cohen. Amby mentions one of David’s variants - Conquest of the Americas - is currently being proposed over at PlayDip (40 mins 20 secs)
• After lunch the guys mention they had an off-tape discussion about Amby’s Divided States game. They both mention they signed up for the Funboat game. Amby discusses a story about the ship in the “Love Boat” TV series from the 70’s (52 mins)
• They talk about the idea of recording players in a game that could be used to give people an idea of gameplay. Kaner suggests doing this in an online game while Amby thought it lends itself to a face-to-face game (54 mins)
• SPOILER ALERT - The guys talk about the Game of Thrones TV show (1 hr 1 mins)
• They talk briefly about the similarities and differences between the Game of Thrones game and Diplomacy (1 hr 4 mins)
• Amby mentions a Forbes article about a Matt Calkins, a US software billionaire, who happens to be a Diplomacy player (1 hr 6 mins)
• Kaner mentions the upcoming Australian election. They discuss the Australian tradition of getting a Democracy Sausage and a politician promising to “Make Australia Great” (1 hr 11 mins)
• They then wrap it all up (1 hr 14 mins)

Just a reminder you can support the show by giving it 5 stars on iTunes or Stitcher. And don't forget if you want to help improve the audio equipment... or get the guys more drunk, you can also donate at Patreon. Lastly, don't forget to subscribe so you get the latest Diplomacy Games episodes straight to your phone!

Venue: Royal Exchange Hotel, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

Kaner - James Squire's Swindler Pacific Ale

Amby - Baily & Baily, Jump N Jive Shiraz

Thanks as always to Dr Dan aka "The General" for his rockin' intro tune. Never know, we may get him into a face-to-face game soon!