Players may play in any or all of the rounds.
2) Signing up for the Tournament :
There will be Diplomacy Noticeboard in the main Diplomacy room. For the Friday and Sunday rounds, there will be a signup list on the noticeboard. Players must sign up for each round of the Diplomacy tournament they are interested in. There is a nominal signup deadline, of 5:30pm Friday for the Friday round, and 9:00am Sunday for the Sunday round, although players who sign up after the signup deadline may be accepted. A multiple of seven players will be required for these rounds. If there is not a multiple of seven people signed up, then people will be dropped in the following order:
For the Saturday round, players must form teams of seven players, with one player playing each of the seven Great Powers. There will be a list of players requiring a team, and teams requiring players, on the Diplomacy Noticeboard. Team captains may use these lists to fill their team (with the agreement of the players involved). Each team must be submitted to the Tournament Director by 8:30am Saturday (submissions before the end of the Friday round would be appreciated). Each team must submit:
If once all the teams have been formed, there are still seven or more players on the list of players requiring a team, then one or more scratch teams will be formed. Once formed, they will be considered in the same way as all other teams. If there are not a multiple of seven players available to form scratch teams, then scratch players will be dropped in the following order:
Each player may only play in one team!
3) Arriving for the round.
All players should arrive before the specified start time of the round. The Friday and Sunday round will start with a roll-call of all signed up players at the specified start time. Any player not present for the roll-call may be struck from the sign-up list (depending on how late they are, whether they are required to complete a board, and the whim of the Tournament Director).
For the Saturday round, when you arrive, please sit at a board with your team-mates. Team captains will be given a receipt confirming their entry. Any captain who wishes to change his team must correct the receipt, return it to the Tournament Director, and receive a new receipt. Once a receipt is received with the correct team listed, and all seven players are present, the captain must sign the receipt and return it to the Tournament Director. Once the receipt has been signed and returned, the team may not be changed.
4) The Draw
The rounds will be drawn so as to attempt to fulfil as many of the following conditions as possible :
5) The 1971 Avalon Hill Rulebook will be used except as amended herein. The 1976 Rulebook is identical to the 1971 Rulebook.
6) Deadlines will be every 20 minutes.
On the tournament director's desk, there will be a box for each game. By the deadline, players must attempt to have their orders written and in the box. However, no penalty will be applied to a player who does not write anything after the deadline, and attempts to get his orders into the box as soon as possible after the deadline. Players who are late will be penalised as follows :
1-15 seconds late : 1 Unit NMR
16-30 seconds late : 2 Unit NMR
31-45 seconds late : 3 Unit NMR
46-60 seconds late : 4 Unit NMR
61-75 seconds late : 6 Unit NMR
76-90 seconds late : 10 Unit NMR
91+ seconds late : NMR
A 1 unit NMR works as follows. Once the players orders have been submitted, the unit in the alphabetically earliest province will have its order deleted. For a 2 unit NMR, the first two units will have their orders deleted, etc. Orders for non-existent units will be ignored. Unordered units will be considered to have been ordered to hold, and may have their order deleted.
Players who repeatedly or intentionally miss deadlines may be given increased penalties. A player will never be given a penalty greater than a complete NMR for missing a deadline.
7) Order sheets.
Order sheets will be provided, coloured according to the power played. Players must use these sheets for writing their orders. Players must write the round number and board number on the top of the sheet.
Once in the box, orders may never be removed before the adjudication. Players wishing to change their orders should request a revised order sheet from the Tournament Director. The player's name must be written on the revised order sheet before it leaves the Tournament Director's sight. Orders on the revised order sheet override those on the original order sheet.
All orders should be labelled with the game turn, and all order sheets must be signed by the player before being submitted. Players who abuse or attempt to abuse the boxes will be ejected from the tournament.
8) Dating of Orders
All orders should have the year and season written against them. However, in the case where there are no orders or multiple orders for the turn, the following rules will be applied.
9) Writing Orders
Throughout this section, "may still be valid" means "are valid unless they are found to be invalid for some other reason".
All orders contain the unit to be ordered. The specification of the unit must contain the province in which the unit started the turn. It may also contain the type of the unit, and the coast that the unit is on, but it does not have to, and if either or both of these are wrong the order may still be valid.
All provinces may be abbreviated to an unambiguous abbreviation. The following abbreviations will always be read as follows, even if this makes the order invalid:
For Tyr, the following will be applied, in order of priority:
For other ambiguous abbreviations, please ask the Tournament Director for a ruling.
All orders should conform to one of the following layouts. However, if an order does not conform to the following formats, but it is never the less unambiguous as to what the order means, then the order shall be followed.
9.1) Movement Phase
9.1.1) Unit holds
holds may be any appropriate alternative word or abbreviation, including hold, stand, h, or nothing. It may not be Hol.
9.1.2) Unit - Space
The hyphen may also be an arrow, or any other appropriate indication of movement.
Space must be the destination that the unit moves to.
9.1.3) Unit supports Other
supports may be abbreviated, and may be preceded by a hyphen.
Other must contain the province in which the supported unit is located. It may also contain the nationality of the supported unit, the type of the supported unit, and the coast that the supported unit is on, but it does not have to, and if any or all of these are wrong the order may still be valid.
9.1.4) Unit supports Other - Province
supports may be abbreviated, and may be preceded by a hyphen.
Other must contain the province in which the supported unit started the turn. It may also contain the nationality of the supported unit, the type of the supported unit, and the coast that the supported unit is on, but it does not have to, and if any or all of these are wrong the order may still be valid.
Province is the province the supported unit is moving to. It may not contain a coast, and if it does, the coastal specification is ignored. The support is valid to any coast in the specified province.
9.1.5) Unit convoys Other - Province
convoys may be abbreviated, and may be preceded by a hyphen.
Other must contain the province in which the convoyed unit started the turn. It may also contain the nationality of the supported unit and the type of the supported unit, but it does not have to, and if any or all of these are wrong the order may still be valid.
Province is the province the convoyed unit is moving to.
9.1.6) Other
Mutual support orders may not be given, and if written, will be considered to be an order for the first unit only.
Ordering a support to move is an order for the supporting unit, but not for the moving unit. If no separate order is given for the moving unit, then the unit does not move, and the support order is invalid.
9.2) Retreat Phase
9.2.1) Unit - Space
The order must conform to the same format as a move order in the movement phase.
If the power only has one unit, then Unit may be omitted.
9.2.2) Unit disband
disband may be abbreviated, or an alternative term used.
9.3) Adjustment Phase
9.3.1) Build NewUnit
Build may be abbreviated, or an alternative term used. It may also be omitted completely.
NewUnit must specify the location in which the unit is to be built.
9.3.2) Remove Unit
Remove may be abbreviated, or an alternative term used. It may also be omitted completely.
9.3.3) Waive
Waive may be abbreviated, or an alternative term used. It may also be omitted completely.
10) Misorders
During the movement phase, any unit which is misordered, or is given an illegal or impossible order, or is not ordered at all, holds in the province in which it started the turn, and may be supported to hold. This includes units that are ordered to move to a space to which there is no possible route (i.e. a space which is not adjacent, and to which no combination of fleets could have ordered a convoy). A unit that is ordered to a space which it could have reached, but the required convoys were not ordered, is not misordered, and may not be supported to hold.
During the retreat phase, any dislodged unit that is misordered, or not ordered at all is disbanded.
During the build phase, any build or removal that is misordered is ignored.
11) Insufficient and multiple orders.
If a unit has orders on an original order sheet and a revised order sheet, then the orders on the revised order sheet shall be used, and the orders on the original order sheet shall be ignored. If a unit has orders on multiple revised order sheets, then the orders on the higher numbered revised order sheet shall be used, and the orders on the lower numbered order sheet shall be ignored. If both revised order sheets have the same number, then both shall be used as a single set of orders.
If a unit has multiple valid orders, it is misordered unless all valid orders for the unit have the same meaning.
If insufficient builds are ordered, then the remaining builds are waived.
If insufficient removals are ordered, then the remaining removals are determined using the Civil Disorder rules.
If excessive builds or removals are ordered, then the last written orders are deleted, assuming a normal writing order (i.e. top to bottom, left to right), until the correct number of orders remain. If the writing order can not be determined for some or all of the orders, then those orders are deleted simultaneously, which may lead to insufficient orders.
12) Adjudicating.
You will usually have to adjudicate the boards yourself. One player collects all the orders from the box, and then reads them all out, reading his own first. Other players move the units on the board and adjudicate. The player reading the orders does not have the right to stop reading in order to consider the consequences of the orders until all the orders have been read.
During the adjudication, no mark should be made on any order sheet being read.
You should contact the Tournament Directors or an Assistant to rule on any disputed points as soon as they arise.
13) Ordering Retreats and Adjustments
Any player may request clarification of the available retreat options for a dislodged unit, and the number of adjustments that he and each other player has, but otherwise, players may not negotiate before retreats or adjustments. Players who do negotiate will, at the discretion of the Tournament Director, have their retreats and/or builds NMRed. Players who intentionally break this rule may have a greater penalty imposed.
If during a retreat or adjustment phase, only one player has to order, then he may choose to action the order on the board without writing it. However, if he actions an illegal order, then the result is the same as if the order was written and illegal, and the player may not change the order. An action has been made when the orderer releases the unit.
14) Situations not fully covered in the 1971 Rulebook are dealt with as follows :
15) Other clarifications
The following rules are either often forgotten, or vary from rulebook to rulebook. For this tournament, they apply as follows:
16) Game-end proposals can take the form of either a concession to a named Great Power, or The Draw, as currently specified by the supply centre chart. Any player may propose a game-end immediately after an adjudication, any time after the 1905 centre chart has been entered. Any player may publicly veto the proposal. If not, a secret vote must be taken immediately, before the next Diplomacy period starts. To do this, players just call over the Tournament Directors or an Assistant to collect the votes and determine the result.
If there is more than one proposal to be voted on at once, then the concession proposals will be voted on first (starting with the power with the most centres if there is more than one, tie-broken by alphabetical order of power name), then The Draw. As soon as one is passed, the remaining proposals fall.
If there is at least one "NO" vote for every proposal, the proposals fail, and the game continues. Voting figures will not be revealed. Abstentions count as "YES". Any player revealing their vote will be considered to have vetoed the draw. If the proposal passes, the remaining players should sign the s.c. chart. The final s.c. count will be that of the Adjustments season just played, or the s.c. count of the previous Adjustments season if The Draw is agreed after a Spring season. There may only be one vote per proposed result each season -- revotes are not allowed.
Draws may not be proposed which do not reflect the current centre count on the supply centre chart, and the supply centre count may not be manipulated before or after a draw vote.
Game-ends which have not been agreed using the above procedure will be treated as abandoned games, and all the players involved will score zero.
17) Game Length
All games on Friday will run to Autumn 1909. All games on Saturday and Sunday will run to Autumn 1911. All games will end as an automatic Draw at the end of that year, if they haven't already finished.
18) Assistance and Collusion
No player from outside the board - save for the team captain in the team round - may aid or abet another player with their orders. diplomacy etc, unless agreed by all the players on the board.
19) Scoring System
You should try to achieve the following, in order of priority:
In general, your best bet is to play a normal game - that's all you really need to know. But for the curious:
19.1) For the Team Tournament, the team's score is the sum of the individual scores of the seven team members in the Saturday round.
19.2) For the Individual Tournament, an individual's score is the sum of their best two results, plus half of their third result. Players with only one or two results will be scored as if they scored zero in the other rounds.
19.3) For each result, any solo beats any draw beats any other result. (Thus, "second place" behind an Outright Win is worse than a 1-centre position in a Draw.)
19.4) A solo scores 75 points.
19.5) Draws are scored by calculating p = c^2 + 4c + 16 for each player, where c is the number of centres they held at the end of the game. Each player scores 100 * p / (sum of p for all seven players on the board)
19.6) Eliminated players score 0.1 * (y - 1900), where y is the year they were eliminated. Losers to a solo score as if eliminated in the year of the solo.
19.7) For the Individual Tournament, if two players score an equal overall score, then the tie will be broken by the following criteria, in order of priority:
19.8) For the Team Tournament, if two teams score an equal overall score, then the tie will be broken by the following criteria, in order of priority:
19.9) Best country awards will be decided by most centres, and then tie-broken by Highest score. However, a player on a board where another player achieved a solo cannot win a best country award, unless no player achieves a draw with that country.
20) Posting of Scores
Scores will be placed on the Diplomacy Noticeboard as soon as possible after the completion of each round except the final round. For the final round, the results will be announced at the prizegiving, and will be placed on the tournament noticeboard immediately after the conclusion of the prizegiving.
21) Loss of a player
If a player withdraws from the game, then the Tournament Director may decide to allow the power go into civil disorder, or to assign a new player to play the position, depending on the position in the game, the reason for withdrawal, the availability of replacement players, and any other information the Tournament Director deems to be appropriate.
22) Etiquette
23) Notes
It is noted that these rules are written using "he" and "him" for ease of reading, but apply equally to female players.
24) Modification of the Rules.
These rules are intended to be definitive, but the Tournament Director reserves the right to add to, amend or waive any of these rules as he sees fit.