From: jonadab@bright.net (Jonadab the Unsightly One) Subject: Hasbro's edition of the boardgame It arrived today. So here you are... Jonadab's Notes on Hasbro's Diplomacy Boardgame. In spite of being released in 2000, all the copyright notices say 1999, so this will forever be known as the 1999 edition, I expect. I can't say I'm displeased. The Box: 16"x10.5"x3", give or take a smidgen. You've seen scans of the top cover art, so I won't waste bandwidth on that here. The edges look similar but with less in the way of a picture, saying "Diplomacy" and "THE GAME OF INTERNATIONAL INTRIGUE". The bottom has a "Whom Do You Trust?" sidebar with a good terse explanation of the basic style of the game and a photo of the board with units set out beside it. (IMO the photo makes the French units look lighter than they are.) There is also a little image of a plaque explaining that the game is for ages 12 and up, 2 (!) to 7 players, a "challenging" (as opposed to "moderate" or "advanced") complexity level, and a list of (most of) the game's contents. The Board: The board looks good. At twenty inches on a side, it is smaller than I would have expected, but I don't think clarity is inhibited for that. It's a one-piece quadfold design (split from the center (in Berlin) to the eastern edge (in Moscow)). It's an attempt at a compromise between the advocates of political maps and those of geological maps. I would not have expected such a comprimise to work, but I actually rather like it. If you don't look closely, it looks like a geological map -- not a contour map exactly, but the mountains look mountainous and so forth. The sea looks especially good, darker the further you go from shore. The borders are nice: black borders within countries and between bodies of water, and white outlined in black between countries (including between neutrals). Coasts are nicely shaded and look good, and there is a fair amount of detail in terms of islands, fjords, and lakes. Different countries each have different amounts of brown/yellow/red/green and dark/light (although not too much variation in the dark/light department except that Switzerland is pretty dark) built into their shading so that it is easy to determine where national boundaries lie, even without the white borders, the line between Germany and France being one possible exception. There is a superfluous but not unpleasant graphic of a cannon in Sevastopol and one of a ship (albeit an anachronistic one, like the markers (more later)) in the Norwegian Sea as well as a nice gold compass (with an N for north) in the North Atlantic, just above the word "Diplomacy". Supply centers are marked with a nice-looking round button-like graphic, shaded to look 3D, of a gold star on a black circle outlined in gold. Province labels (and coasts) are spelled out in full (but are abbreviated on the conference maps (Add "Ty" to your list of abbreviations for the Tyrrhenian")). There is a misspelling ("Galacia"). Each country has a label around the edge of the board with its colour in the background of the name of the country and its flag on either side. (Russia's flag is white with a blue X, for example; I assume this is from the time period (unlike the ship) since I don't recognise it.) It is clear that Spain does not touch North Africa. It is not altogether clear that the Baltic Sea touches Kiel. The Dardanelles and the Bosphorus both have border lines drawn across them; we all know this is because the intervening sea is part of the Constantinople province, but could have been more clear. The SC dot for Copenhagen has been strategically relocated to bridge the gap between that Island and mainland Denmark (vicinity of Ebeltoft); I assume this was done for clarity. (The rules state that Islands cannot be occupied except for England.) The SC dot for Constantinople has also been relocated (to roughly modern Luleburgaz or a little east; the southern edge of the dot barely touches the Marmara Denizi). Why it was not placed at Istanbul is beyond me, as that would cover the Bosporus and clarify the unified nature of the province, or so I would have thought, quite aside from the impression I've always had that Constantinople and Istanbul are the same place. Conference Maps: You get twenty. As mentioned, provinces are abbreviated; coasts, OTOH, are spelled out. They are black and white, of course; the seas appear grey, but I assume this is done via dithering. Pieces: You get ten armies and ten fleets in each colour. They look good, although as mentioned the ship is an anachronism. The cannon seems appropriate, though. I can tell all the colours apart even in dim light, although England (relatively dark blue) and France (royal blue?) are clearly the closest. Italy is a fairly dark green; Russia's "white" is nearly silver in colour, or light grey at the least. Germany's black is grey, too, but it's quite dark. The red units aren't too flashy but are clearly red. Turkey's yellow units are pretty dark; they could almost pass for "gold". They come between sheets of plastic that are melded together in rows and columns between each sheet, so there are two rows of fleets and two rows of armies in each power's package. I don't think, having opened each little pouch, that you could realisitically store the units in there, however; you'll probably want Ziploc bags or the equivalent, unless you want to store everything in the plastic tray provided (if it would even fit) and keep the game upright at all times. There is also a sheet of cardboard markers to designate SC ownership. These are 5/8 inch neosquares with rounded corners; one side bears the nation's flag and the other side bears its traditional colour (green, red, white, yellow, black, navy, and sky blue; these are bold and bright and flashy, unlike the more subdued units). There are 22 for each power, and they all come in a single sheet, prepunched so that you can pop them out easily (and, in fact, keeping them in the sheet if you don't want them out could be a problem; again, I suggest getting zipper bags if you don't want to lose parts). The Rulebook: Standard US paper size (8.5" x 11"), 23 pages. This is where the big changes were made. Most of them are not the the rules themselves so much as the presentation. My biggest disappointment: the handy reference numbers on the rules that allow us to rever to (e.g.) IX.3 or VII.3.b are gone. The rules have also been reordered; this makes comparing versions tougher, but I don't dislike the new order. The rules seem, for the most part, quite clear. There are copious examples, with diagrams. "Turn" has now been given a definition; there are two turns per year, Spring and Fall. (Winter adjustments are phase 5 of the Fall turn and are called "Gaining and Losing Units Phase" (yes, ugh), although when the phase is explained in more detail the term "adjustments" is also given.) Bodies of water are now called provinces; there are also inland and coastal provinces. I see here what I _think_ is a new rule or possibly a change (although my other version is not the previously most recent, so I'm not sure): "If a Fleet is ordered to one of these [bicoastal] provinces, and it is possible for the Fleet to move to either coast, the order must specify which coast, [so far so good] or the Fleet does not move [new, I think]". I'm going to attempt to correlate the order in the new book with the rule numbers from my 1976 edition; these are imprecise by necessity, as some reorganisation has been done. Page 1: I and II. Page 2: VI.1, Types of Provinces (new?), V, VI.2, All units have the same strength (a clarification from VIII?), VI.3, Flag Markers (new?) Page 3: IV.1 (very expanded), turns and phases (which work the same as before but have had some renaming done), IV.2 (expanded), VII.4, VII.6. Page 4: VII.7, VII.5, part of VII.1, VII.2, more of VII.1 (expanded). Page 5: more of VII.1 (expanded), VII.3.b, VII.3.a, VII.3.c. Page 6: VIII (expanded (it needed it badly)) with IX.5 incorporated, and mention of the third part of XIV.5. Page 7: Part of XIV.5 (the second part), IX.1 and IX.2 (combined and expanded), Part of IX.6. Page 8: More of IX.1 and IX.5. Page 9: IX.7 (expanded). Page 10: X (expanded). A nice clarification is made about attacked units still being able to cut support elsewhere. Page 11: More of X, XII.1, and the first part of XIV.5. Page 12: Part of IX.6, XII.2, XII.3. Page 13: IX.3. Page 14: More of IX.3, IX.4, part of IX.6, the third part of XIV.5. Page 15: Example from XIV.5, Land and Convoy Routes (from the 80's ruleset, I think), XII.4. Note that XII.4 has altered; I think this follows the spirit of the '80s ruleset more closely: "An Army convoyed using alternate convoy orders reaches its destination as long as at least one convoy route remains open." Page 16: XII.5, reworded: "A convoyed Army does not cut the support of a unit supporting an attack against one of the Fleets necessary for the Army to convoy." Further explanation and clarification is given. Also, "An Army with at least one successful convoy route will cut the support given by a unit in the destination provice that is trying to support an attack on a Fleet in an alternate route of that convoy." Page 17: XI (expanded a bit), XIII.2 and XIII.1. Page 18: More XIII, XIV.1, XIV.3, XIV.4, replacements (new?) Page 19: XIV.2, start of sample game (runs through page 22, with commentary). There is a handy list of abbreviations on the back, organised by country, with neutrals and bodies of water each being a category. There is also, on page 23, a list of 22 simple rules to help resolving most situations: things like "Units cannot trade places without the use of a convoy". (That one is #6.) A note says, "if you are unable to resolve an issue using this listing, refer to the instructions and examples within this booklet for more detailed explanations." IMO not enough is said about the Game Master. The Pouch is not mentioned at all. You also get a plastic storage tray (with seventeen indentations; eight each in two sizes and a long skinny one) and a flier advertising "the new Avalon Hill" (Legends, Diplomacy, Axis & Allies, Battle Cry, and Acquire). -- jonadab http://www.bright.net/~jonadab/dip/ -- end of forwarded message --