Hostilities Escalate in Europe

News Bulletin
New York - As disputes over territory heat up across the Atlantic diplomats from each of the seven powers have agreed to meet to diffuse this potentially explosive situation. The meeting, which is being hailed as the D7 Summit, will aim to find an amiable resolution to what has become the most fearsome threat to public order since the Seven Weeks War of 1866. Stocks were up upon news of the summit after several days of record losses.

Condensed Rules

I realize that the rule pdf looks a bit intimidating but that is mostly due to the game designers being very careful to explain how each rule works in detail so that there is no ambiguity during play.

I am writing below the summarized points for the flow of the game. The only thing left to go over after this is what actions you are allowed to take but we will go over that too and I can make cheat-sheets so its easy to deal with.

Maybe it seems a bit complicated now but its actually pretty straight forward and once we take a few turns it should seem pretty clear.

BASICS

Objective: Control a majority of 'supply center' spaces on the board

note: average game length is 15-20 turns

• Each supply center generates one military unit for it's owner, can be either an Army or Fleet piece
• Every military unit is of equal strength
• Army Unit - Moves on land and coastal locations
• Fleet - Moves on water and coastal locations

TURNS

• Each turn represents 6 months and has several stages.
• There is a Spring turn and Fall turn (6 months apart)

Phases of a Turn

• 1. Diplomatic Phase (for us this will be all day, the time when you can decide on strategy, make alliances, and plan your moves)
• 2. Order Writing Phase (write down what actions you want to take this day)
• 3. Order Resolution Phase (playing all the actions written down)
• 4. Retreat and disbanding phase (responding to how board changed from phase 3. This may require moving or disbanding armies)
• 5. FALL TURN ONLY - Gaining and Losing Units Phase - At the end of the Fall turn you add or lose armies as necessary to have the same number of armies/fleets as supply centers
  

BREAKING NEWS - EUROPEAN POWERS READY FOR WAR

As none of us have played the game before i'm expecting a bit of a slow start. We will go over the rules when we begin and I am posting them here for future reference.

http://www.diplom.org/~diparch/resources/rulebooks/2000AH4th.pdf

In addition I will take photos of the board state and record the notable actions taken by players in each round for us all to have as a reference moving forward.

Diplomats:

Matt Reed - Germany
Mike Hatridge - England
Brian Vlastakis - Russia
Gerhard Kirchmair - Italy
Devon Cimini - Austria
Kurtis Geerlings - Turkey
Nick Masluk - France