[wts]

Diplomacy is the greatest board game of all time, but it has some very specific limitations. First of all, you have to have exactly seven players to play. There are variants to get around this but they all suck. Have six of your best pals over or don't play.

It bears some comparison to chess because it's simultaneously simple in concept with tremendous layers of strategy. The players randomly select a country in Europe and the game starts at 1900 pre world war 1. Each country starts with either three military units or four (Russia, which is spread out and must fight on multiple fronts immediately).

The map is divided into spaces, and only one military unit (army or navy) can occupy a space at any given time. Prior to a turn, each player writes orders for their units and places them face down on a pile. The moderator then reads all of the orders, and moves for all seven players happen simultaneously.

If two units are trying move into the same space, numbers win. A unit can be supported by another unit that is adjacent to the space it is attempting to occupy. Support can come from another unit owned by the same player, or by a unit owned by another player.

This is where diplomacy comes in. Prior to each move, there is a period of time for all seven players to interact with each other and make schemes and plans before submitting their orders. It's best to play in a house that has plenty of rooms for secret allies to sneak off and scheme. And spying is perfectly legal. If you can go outside and listen at the bathroom window as your supposed ally agrees to betray you, it's on the people you spied on for having bad infosec.

An army can support a navy into a coastal space and vice versa, but an army cant support a navy into a sea space, and a navy in a coastal space can't support an army attempting to occupy a space that is not adjacent to water.

So moves are submitted, and wherever there are conflicting moves, the moderator has to apply the rules to see which player gets to occupy the space. There is no random element to this game other than picking your starting country (usually you put a piece from all 7 countries in the box top and everyone draws blind).

Superior numbers always win, and if the numbers are even then the two pieces that are trying to occupy the same space "bounce" and return to their space of origin for the turn, unless a superior force has simultaneously dislodged them from that space, in which case the dislodged force can "retreat" to an adjacent, uncontested space. If there is no adjacent, uncontested space, then the dislodged piece is destroyed and removed from play.

Be warned, this game will permanently impact your relationships with people you know. One person will emerge as the biggest schemer and backstabber (this was me in my high school gaming group), and future games will be impacted as everyone will know to take that player out first and then squabble among the survivors.