Play Diplomacy Tournaments & Online

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Upcoming Events

march, 2023

Tournaments

Tournaments in the NADF Grand Prix circuit make up the backbone of the face-to-face hobby.  Some of these events have been held for over thirty years in the same location, others are brand new.  Some traditional FTF tournaments became virtual events during Covid, but face-to-face play is now again being contemplated.  Below is a list of confirmed  events as well as basic information for each stop in the Grand Prix during a typical year.  If no contact information is given then details can be found either on the vWDC Discord server or by contacting David Hood.  Also, the Diplomacy Briefing newsletter has established a Google Tournament Calendar which includes events from FTF, Virtual FTF and Online Extended Deadline play: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=6c5fp75jd8lu3agmfcs1uupvn0@group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Detroit 

  • The Cascadia Open will be held again near Vancouver, British Columbia and run by the very capable past World Dipcon champ Chris Brand.  The 2023 event will be held February 4-5, with registration at the following link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfkwxQUHabz94Z5xhoSwbfgXXZ- kN6IODoCnrgbtAruAAZU2Q/viewform
  • Totalcon is a general games tournament in Marlborough, MA which hosted a Diplomacy event mostly for new players on February 25-27  under the leadership of Alex Maslow.   For more information about next year’s event, contact Alex on the vWDC Discord server or visit http://www.totalcon.com 
  • The 2023 Regatta will be held in the Denver, Colorado area likely in June.   This will be the relaunch of an event held for many years under the supervision of Manus Hand and the Armada Diplomacy club.  Any one of the three current organizers can be contacted as follows:  manus2hand@gmail.com, gabe@racz.org, or ebercondrell@gmail.com or you can visit http://armada-dip.com/2022/ 
  • Badass Whipping, which also doubles as the 2022 Dipcon,  was held April 29-May 1 at the Hotel de Anza in San Jose, California.  Tanya Gill of Ontario took first in this 2022 event.  Contact Siobhan Nolen at badassdiplomacy@gmail.com for information. 
  • Dixiecon has been held over the Memorial Day weekend in May since 1987, in Chapel Hill North Carolina.  The 2023 event will also be the host site for the 52nd Dipcon, the North American Diplomacy Championships.  Email TD David Hood at davidhood@dixiecon.com or visit http://www.dixiecon.com for information about the May 26-28, 2023 event.
  • The last Boston Massacre  was held August 12-14, 2022 run by Tournament Director Alex Maslow. There were three rounds, played at a game store in Cambridge, MA.  Robert Schuppe from Dresden, in Germany, took the top spot for his first ever face-to-face tournament win.  Info about the 2013 event will be posted when available.
  • The second annual Summer Classic, a specifically virtual FTF event, was held over the weekend of July 22-24, 2022, with the Top Board being played on the following Saturday, July 30.  Katie Gray of New Mexico took top honors, besting a very strong Top Board, with California’s Jason Mastbaum coming in second.  Full results are available here: https://diplomacytv.com/tournaments/50/scores/ 
  • Craig Mayr (craigmayr@gmail.com) has announced that his second Skycon event in Billings, Montana will be postponed again due to housing and venue issues.
  • The Windy City Weasels, Chicago’s Diplomacy Club, held the latest edition of its long-running tournament WeaselMoot on September 24-25, 2022.  British hobbyist Seren Kwok won the event in dramatic fashion with a very strong Italian board top in the last round.  For more information, visit their website at https://windycityweasels.org/weasel-moot-xvi/ 
  • October 7-9 2022 saw the return of the Liberty Cup in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, back as a live three-round Diplomacy event by Bill Hackenbracht.  Contact Bill at william.hackenbracht@gmail.com for information about the 2023 event.
  • Dave Maletsky once again ran the Diplomacy tournament at the Carnage gaming event in Mt Snow, Vermont, which this year doubled as World Dipcon, the World Championships for face-to-face play. The field was hot and heavy, but Dan Lester from the United Kingdom took home the coveted championship belt as the first place finisher.   Join the Carnage Discord server now for more information: https://discord.gg/qJ5ug3sX 
  • Virtual Diplomacy Championship is a co-equal world championship, along with World Dipcon for FTF and the ODC for online play.  The 2022 event will be held December 16-18 on the vWDC Discord server.  There are six rounds of preliminary action, of which one can play up to four, and then a Top Board featuring the top seven qualifiers.  For more information, join the vWDC Discord server, and use this link to register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScJxsdRtqycFB8Bmkg0808iQLjZZ_9xqJvSikYGGbWaVsRMPA/viewform 

Websites & Apps

Online Diplomacy games are sometimes called asynchronous, because players negotiate and submit orders whenever they wish before a preset deadline, as opposed to negotiations and order writing done all at the same time in a face-to-face game.  Players write “press” to each other, in the form of written communication handled either by a chat function within the website or app used for the game, or in some formats, by email.  Below are several options from which to choose the platform for your first online game.  Whether you play under your own name or a pseudonym also varies by platform.

 

Whether you play in a tournament or on one of the sites/apps above, your game may be scored under a particular scoring system.  While 18 supply centers is the object of the game, it is actually rare for a Diplomacy game to be played to that conclusion, either because the position becomes “stalemated” (i.e. no one can achieve 18 centers) or because the players do not have (or want to take) the time needed for completion.  Because of this reality, and in order to allow for multiple games over the span of a tournament or league season to be amalgamated into an overall rating, various systems have been developed for use.

Draw Sized Scoring (DSS) is used in some online games as well as at the Dixiecon tournament.  Players achieve a higher score by reducing the number of players sharing in a drawn result.  In the original version, called Draws Include All Survivors (DIAS), each survivor in a draw receives the same number of points, with some variations also added points per center as a tiebreaker.  In more modern versions, survivors are able to vote themselves out of the draw (non-DIAS) but still receive lesser points for survival.  The Dixiecon Scoring System is a non-DIAS version of DSS.

Place-Based Scoring is another popular type of system, in which the goal of the game, short of taking 18 centers, is to have more centers than other players when the game is called.  While the number of centers is obviously key, it usually matters very little in such systems how many more centers a player has versus the next place in the end-of-game pecking order.  A popular example of Place-Based is Carnage Scoring. 

Lead-Based Scoring encourages the board leader to widen the gap between that score and rival players, by increasing the benefit of that lead with each additional center.  An early version of this type was Sum of Squares, which rewards a large spread between the topper and all the other powers.  A more recent version, which combines this effect with additional play incentives for the non-topping players is called Tribute.

There are other systems as well.  Though you may end up preferring one over another, you should try to learn how to succeed regardless of which system is used.

 

Discord Servers

NADF

The North American Diplomacy Federation hosts its own server within Discord, where you can find discussion, formation of classic and Gunboat games, and other important content. Click here for an invite. 

If you are new to using Discord, click here for an introductory video from Zach Moore of the Diplomacy Broadcast Network:

Other Discord Servers

Once you learn how to navigate Discord, there are other Diplomacy servers you will want to check out.  The Nexus community runs online tournaments utilizing multiple websites and apps to encourage a “nexus” of players between those otherwise disparate communities. Click here for an invite.

The Virtual World Diplomacy Community is the hub of Diplomacy activity in the new medium of virtual face to face play.  This server hosts the virtual version of various face to face events cancelled due to Covid, it hosts the Virtual Diplomacy Championship, hosts Masterclass meetings most weekends where players chat in a conference call format about Diplomacy subjects, houses the Club Growth Initiative, and lots of other features.  Click Here for an invite 

For an explicitly non-tournament vibe in your online Diplomacy play, try the Casual Diplomacy server. Click here for an invite. 

Virtual Diplomacy League (VDL)

One good thing to arise from the 2020 pandemic was the creation of a totally new way to play Diplomacy, virtual face-to-face.  Run by Commissioner Zach Moore, the Virtual Diplomacy League runs monthly gamedays using a version of Tribute  scoring, to culminate in a January Championship Top Board.  The games are run on the Backstabbr platform, with player negotiation and overall organization hosted on the vWDC Discord server.

There is also VDL information on the Diplomacy Broadcast Network website.