Replaying History

A group of us spent the day playing the boardgame Diplomacy round at G&L's flat. And when I say 'spent the day', that's not an exaggeration as it's one of the 'hardcore' boardgames. We started gathering about 10am and after some explanations of the rules and mechanics of the game, that was us until after 8pm, pausing only for lunch and tea!
The game portrays the struggle between the Great Powers in Europe at the start of the twentieth century and while the rules are fairly straightforward and there aren't a great number of pieces - a maximum of just thirty-four can be on the board at any one time - what takes the time is the diplomacy. Each turn consists of fifteen minutes of frenetic negotiations as different combinations of players call each other into other rooms to discuss plans and alliances. Your best bet is to try and forge a reasonably solid alliance or two early on and then only turn on your allies later in the game - trying to pick the perfect moment to backstab them just before they do it to you!
I haven't played the game in years as it's always pretty difficult getting enough people together to play. And even this time we were one short as the game is really designed for seven. Still there are variants for fewer players so we started with no one playing Italy, which gave a little more breathing space for the other two central powers, Austria-Hungary and Germany. Perhaps not entirely surprisingly in a game with four complete newbies when we called a halt to proceedings to give time for another game I was well on my way to domination of the continent and the 18 supply centres that represent victory. Consensus was that I would win, sooner or later, and I think there wasn't the appetite for either the formality of my victory in a few more turns or the potentially long drawn out campaign that would have been required to wrest victory from my grasp. I was playing Turkey - yellow on the board - and was just getting into my stride when this picture was taken at our lunch break.