What is the phase length?

Looks interesting. I would be willing to help if needed. Just curiously, why did you choose not to include the great lakes?

Sky_Hopper, the phase length will be comparatively slow. This is a new map and there will be lots of players to talk to. I think we are looking at 4 days for movement phases and 2 days for retreat and adjustment phases.

Essence333, good to hear. This will be run primarily through email, so either PM me your email address or email me at zendip18AToptonlineDOTnet. As to the Great Lakes, they would not have added much to play and at this point would not have been viably connected to the sea (Niagara Falls). The same is true for many other inland bodies of water. The only one I included is the Caspian Sea, which is bigger and more historically significant. Even there no one starts with a fleet on the Caspian.

You don't have to make them accessible to fleets, just to be there for context and the right mapping

I tend to strip all nonessential stuff from my maps (note for example that Greenland, which is far larger than the 5 Great Lakes combined, is not there either) so as to make them less cluttered.

Come on folks. I need bodies. Reliable, skilled bodies to fill out this roster, so I can play in this playtest and pound you into hamburger. Step up and feel the love.

Up to 8 players, with 2-3 maybes. We therefore need 4-7 more players for a full roster. Step forward, folks, for a chance to play what is in my not so humble opinion, a masterpiece of the variant designer's art.

This is a fascinating variant, set in 1701 with a global map. There is a mix of colonial and regional powers, and to compensate for imbalances, each power has its own victory criterion. I played in the first playtest, and am very much looking forward to the second one. Let's get a few more players on board, and we can get this going!

That is what we needed! An honest testimonial!



(Your check is in the mail.)

Meh, it was alright. The designer decided to make the units super tiny, and the ocean spaces super big, so unless you had it projected on a 60" TV, you were practically losing units into the deep blue sea. And lets not even get into the lack of an orders map, just the results map. I mean, you had to scour the map for tiny units, then recreate all the orders on your own to make sure the GM didn't make mistakes. If that's not lazy, I don't know what is. Honestly, I'm not sure why we let this guy keep coming around. My review: 1 dagger out of 5.

:P

In all seriousness, it's a pretty cool map. I disagree with some of the changes made for v2, as I think things removed were a large part of what made the map unique and special (the half strength units/SCs especially), but it still stands as a pretty fun map. I'd encourage anyone interested in trying PBEM to give it a shot. Worst case scenario? It's just another world map and you're not impressed. At least in that case, you can beat up on David Cohen on the map instead of having to deal with him as GM! :D

No really though, thanks David for putting it together!

It was a tough decision removing the half strength units and the multi-unit high seas provinces. But it was a huge pain to hamd adjudicate and I understand it would require a ton of extra work to code. The learning curve for players was high as well. It all came down to: "Why have a great variant if no one will ever play it?"

And the units have to be tiny to fit into the smaller provinces and still be able to show the province names!

Understood on your thinking on removing them, as we've discussed before. I still feel it's a larger change than we appreciate though, as now the local superiority of the Asian powers is easily threatened by the colonials whereas in the past, if the Asian powers got the full strength SCs early (through Spread of Knowledge), they'd have the distinct local advantage. It's not hard to imagine the colonials bankrolling invasions of Asia with builds from North America now, and the Asian powers don't even have that small advantage in their favor anymore.

"And the units have to be tiny to fit into the smaller provinces and still be able to show the province names!"

Bah, just use numbers! We already have all the rules printed on the SW corner of the map, just include a legend that 1 = Switzerland, 2 = Berlin, etc. IMO, having easily seen units is far more important than having a full name on a province. I can't tell you how many times I scanned over a fleet in the big oceans. This was also confirmed by other people as well that they missed seeing them, especially the darker colored powers like Portugal. And it goes double if you were trying to view the map on mobile. Ease of interpreting the map trumps aesthetics by a long shot in my opinion.

The units can be/are located next to the province names. Easy to find even in the largest provinces. Plus those big oceanic areas now each have 7 managably sized sea province boxes (the 7 Seas--LOL), so people will know exactly where to look.

And the play balance concerns are handled by the variable victory criteria. Remember, the largest Powers have a victory criterion of 44 dots, while the criterion for the smallest Powers is only 29! If certain Powers are consistently being stomped on, those victory criteria can be tweaked.

"The units can be/are located next to the province names. Easy to find even in the largest provinces."

Understood on your thinking. I'm simply telling you that when it was viewed on mobile, it was easy to overlook them due to how small they (and the province names) were, especially in the big ocean spaces. Plus the black text on dark blue spaces made the text sometimes easy to overlook, which coupled with how small the text was compared to how large the space was, made things easy to overlook sometimes. Should it have been? Probably not. But I'm just commenting that it WAS overlooked by people many times. That said, hopefully it's better now with the 7 sea boxes, which should make things a lot more clear.

"And the play balance concerns are handled by the variable victory criteria."

I know this has been discussed before, and I'm sure it will continue to get discussed as games get played, but I'm not sure this will necessarily balance things either. An asian power like China or India has to capture literally all of mainland Asia east of the Caspian sea to reach 29 SCs. Or they have to break out into Indonesia where they're at a massive disadvantage due to colonial powers having tons of fleets to start plus the ability of colonial powers to bankroll their builds from elsewhere in the world. As we saw last game, that's VERY easy to blockade. And to capture mainland Asia, one must defeat Russia, 2 other Asian powers most likely, and then all the colonials that start in southern India. A very tall tale to accomplish. I somewhat feel the natural setup of the board puts the Asian powers at a massive disadvantage, but I really don't know how to rectify that without losing historical accuracy.

A little challenge for those who have taken an interest in this variant: I do not think there are any stalemate lines. A Diplocookie to anyone who finds one.

Still need 4-6 plyers to round out the roster. C'mon, real men don't need stalemate lines!

We still need players to fill out the roster.
I am playing, so join up and stomp me so I will shut up about what a great player I am.

Greetings David!

Where do we join?

This will primarily be PBEM, perhaps with a backup publication at one of the more active forums. Please email me at zendip18AToptonlineDOTnet or PM me if interested.

Almost full. We have 13 players and need only 2 more.

Still need 2 players. Please sign up for what in my opinion is a masterpiece of variant design with a very nice roster of players.

Still looking to fill this one out.

I *think* we have a full roster. I will confirm once we are rolling. If you want to observe, let me know and I will get you on the list.

Hmm, I'm up for observing.

I would also like to observe

Observers, PM me your email addresses, please.

Roster is full. Playtest is underway. You can observe via email, but the GM will also be publishing adjudications here:

http://webdiplomacy.net/contrib/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1625