MOST DIPLOMACY GAMES END WITHOUT A CLEAR WINNER, because of tournament time limits, stalemates or fatigue. (Invariably, our games during high school were called on account of dinnertime.) With no end in sight, the surviving players can call a draw.
At the Hunt Valley Inn, in the early hours of Saturday, as Hudson Defoe is cleaning up at the poker table, Evil Tom pulls off a solo victory on Board 4 while wearing a button that says, "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice Doggy' while you look for a big enough rock." Other boards have settled on three- or four-way draws and dispersed to the bar or the poker table, but Board 6 is still hard at work.
(Ian Pollack)
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With 12 supply centers, Nathan Barnes is two-thirds of the way to a solo victory as Austria. At the table, he floats the possibility of a three-way draw with France and England -- Bad Tom and Carl Willner. In one-on-one talks, however, Barnes explores with each of them how they might eliminate the third player. And this may all be for show, because Barnes appears to have too strong a position to settle for a draw.
"Austria's got a solo sitting at his doorstep," Bad Tom tells Willner.
"I'm happy to work with you," Willner replies, but these two have had a testy relationship all night. As neighbors, they have prospered, but Willner, perhaps wisely, never lets his guard down, and Bad Tom grows impatient with Willner's "defensive squirrel actions." So Bad Tom and Barnes team up, and Willner can't find any way to shift the momentum.
The sun begins to set on the British Empire. Willner, a gifted tactician, holds his ground as long as he can. At 2:30 a.m., he notices that Bad Tom, secure in his nonaggression pact with Barnes, has left France's position badly exposed; by fall 1910, Austria could move into Munich and Rome, which would bring Barnes up to 18 supply centers and a solo. "You've done very well," Willner tells Barnes privately. "You got him to move out of position. Refusing to take the last two centers just prolongs the agony."
After cultivating Bad Tom for more than eight hours and laying the groundwork for a two-way draw, Barnes could put himself in contention for a tournament win, maybe take home the Golden Blade and have something to boast about for months or years to come.
What Diplomacy players compete for is bragging rights. Twelve hours earlier, Barnes had been smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey in the Hunt Valley Inn bar, swapping war stories with veteran players. My favorite came from Steve Koehler, a North Carolinian. "I've driven people out of the hobby," Koehler had said with a mixture of pride and disdain. "We had a three-way alliance for eight hours. Germany was the front line, and England and I slaughtered him. And he said, 'We've been at this how long and you turned on me?' And we said, 'Of course.' And he got up and left the tournament."
Koehler's point was: Back-stabbing is fair play, but abandoning your position is unsportsmanlike. In other words, an ethical violation. From a distance, the Diplomacy circuit, which condones some "antisocial" behaviors, looks like an amoral free-for-all. But the game has rules, as does the culture that has grown up around it: See the game through to the end; respect the authority of the tournament director; and play in your own best interest.
Unquestionably, Barnes has Bad Tom by the short hairs, but he decides that, taking the long view, it is in his best interest to spare him. An hour later, the two have seized enough of Willner's supply centers to declare a two-way draw between France and Austria.
"If I won this game, I wouldn't have any fun the rest of the weekend," Barnes explains before returning to his hotel room. A solo would have put him in excellent position for the tournament, but it also would have made him a target, and he fears early elimination in rounds two and three. He doesn't want to have flown 3,000 miles for one glorious evening and two days of idleness. Getting to play all weekend, and having a chance at another solo, sounds much more appealing. And there are other weekends to consider; Barnes will face Bad Tom on another board one day, as well as other people who will hear about this game. He might need them as allies. "France and Austria, we did the whole handshake thing; I wasn't willing to go back on that." Besides, he says, "you have a reputation."
NATHAN BARNES NEVER GOT ANOTHER CHANCE AT A SOLO, but he made his way into two more draws. He placed third in the Tempest, right behind Evil Tom, whose Friday night solo led to a humbler approach Saturday; the "Nice Doggy" pin was nowhere in sight. While fending off attacks to escape with a three-way draw involving Carl Willner, Evil Tom spent much of Saturday afternoon egging me on to play the next day.
When I had first talked to Satan about covering the Tempest, I explained that I had played Diplomacy years ago, and he invited me to join in the third round. We had left the question open, and I showed up Sunday morning not knowing whether I would be using my notebook to take notes or to order a Lepanto Opening. Satan finished the country assignments without calling my name, and largely I was relieved to be left out. My tactics are rusty, and I saw how these guys grind up fresh meat. Also, I'd have to go home and write about what happened, and, though I've matured since high school, I wasn't convinced that I'd be able to leave what happened on the board.
Maybe what makes Diplomacy so difficult for most people to take is how closely it echoes human relationships -- not the way people are supposed to treat one another, but society as it actually is, full of compromise, disappointment, betrayal. Nothing happens in this game that hasn't been tried before on a blind date, a sales call, a family vacation or a reporting assignment, on Capitol Hill or at the United Nations. Most times we are still entangled with the same small group of people, and we can't walk away from the board. We get swept up in our own tempests, and have to negotiate the turns to come.
Blake Eskin is the author of A Life in Pieces and editor of Nextbook.org, a Web site about Jewish culture.
