UK: First goal of the game for me was to eliminate the UK from contention in my area. I've played a lot of NWO games, and having a colonial power in your area is usually bad news. So I lied my ass off to Jimmy in order to get him to leave SNG...and it worked! Unfortunately, I could not get Thailand to bounce UK out of SNG, and he instead supported UK back in SNG. Still can't figure that one out. Jimmy was a good sport about it and we continued talking after my backstab.

Australia: The map dictates that Indonesia and Australia can't get along. I said to myself, "Screw that!" and tried to forge an alliance with Australia which, in the end, just gave him a free hand to get big easily before he crushed me. I tried to convince him to let me survive, which he said he would, but didn't.

USA: No idea why he double crossed me and didn't support me against Australia (or at least didn't attack Australia instead of me).

UNTF: Sweden came forward with the idea to have all the E powers band together and support UNTF orders for each other, which I thought was a great idea. Then, the second season, Randy sent one email (among many) requesting support for the UNTF (which he didn't need it turned out). Nobody replied to his email, so he decided to gather support for a competing UNTF support. We lost by one vote, and Ukraine lost an SC as a result. I therefore didn't think that Randy should be given further consideration in this bloc. He did and started going on those Randy email diatribes we all know and love so well. The bloc never really coalesced successfully and after a second 1 vote failure because of a couple of E's voting for another bloc, I dropped out of the discussion. It was a little disappointing but I think I saw the group as one thing (a commitment) whereas others saw it as an email chain to discuss the UNTF. I did continue to get and read the emails throughout the game, even after being eliminated, to my amusement. I did still follow the game somewhat and saw that they had a couple of successes toward the end (notably defending Ho).

Israel/Canada drama: Wasn't really a part of this other than being an observer, and I was not aware of the causes as I've been away from Redscape for a few years. That said, I hope that newer players weren't put off too much by it. This kind of thing is rare in my experience (I've been playing Diplomacy on and off on Redscape since 2001) and my experience is that cheating like this is very rare (I've never encountered it myself).

Joe, thanks for the game. I definitely enjoyed it!