Venue: Stone & Wood Brewery, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

Kaner:  Stone Rock porter and West Coast Extra IPA from Stone & Wood

Amby:  Cloud Catcher Pale Ale, West Coast Extra IPA and Stone Rock porter from Stone & Wood

Under the never-ending clickity-clack of the train line, the guys catch up in a brewery for a little Diplomacy chat… and the odd drink or two!

Intro

• The guys introduce the show, the venue and their drinks (0 mins 10 secs)
• They talk about surfing, waterskiing and serenity (2 mins 45 secs)

Around the grounds

• They flag there may be a bit of train noise in the background as they’re near a rail line. Kaner asks Amby how his games are going. Amby talks about the Big Hitters game (5 mins 20 secs)
• Amby discusses his offer to GM a Winning game for players in the Winning thread (7 mins 15 secs)
• Amby goes onto discuss how badly he’s doing in the Cloak and Dagger series, being played on a Modern Europe map (10 mins)
• He then discusses his (surprise surprise) elimination from the Media Wars game and how the other players are going (12 mins)

Kaner in Quarantine

• Amby thinks he stuffed up the recording (he didn’t) before giving a drinks update (16 mins)
• Kaner discusses the impact of his workplace being shutdown due to Covid-19 (18 mins 15 secs)
• Amby explains why the podcast was delayed a week due to the changes Kaner needed to accommodate into at work (25 mins)
• They talk about the Patreon episode they recorded while he was in quarantine. They discuss their alliance game against the bots at webDip (25 mins 45 secs)

Around the grounds (part 2) and Diplomacy chat

• Kaner gives an update on his “Where’s Kaner” Europa Renovation games and the troubles of internet loading issues when orders are due (30 mins 15 secs)
• Amby touches on his Atlantic Colonies game (32 mins 45 secs)
• He goes onto mention one of the games he’s trying to get started: Italian Stallions using the Machiavelli map, the first Diplomacy map Amby ever played on (35 mins 15 secs)
• They talk about old military/political strategy books and whether that’d help gameplay eg Machiavelli’s “The Prince“, von Clausewitz’s “On War“, Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” and the Roman general Frontinus’ “Strategemata” (37 mins 30 secs)
• Amby discusses Aristotle’s “Modes of Persuasion” in the devices of rhetoric: ethos, pathos and logos (40 mins 15 secs)
• Kaner raises a Reddit post about strategy for multiple people playing together as a single country and how to approach things (44 mins 30 secs)
• Amby thinks a bonus WDC day of tournament players doing this group game would be awesome (55 mins)
• Kaner gives credit to the teacher/professor for creating such a game scenario. Amby touches on the playDip forum thread for teachers (56 mins 30 secs)
• They touch on their upcoming interview. The guys give an apology/clarification about their comments about the Conspiracy app and its recognition of variant creators (58 mins 45 secs)
• Amby brings up Kaner’s United States of Panhandle t-shirt which was originally posted on Reddit. They go onto discuss the r/MapPorn thread including where in the United States you can own a kangaroo. They go onto more American/Australian crossovers with emus (1 hr 2 mins)
• They mention their next interviewee is David E. Cohen (1 hr 8 mins)
• The guys give another shout-out for their Patreon bonus episodes. Amby reflects on Kaner’s value add to the podcast before they wrap up (1 hr 9 mins)

Just a reminder you can support the show by giving it 5 stars on iTunes or Stitcher. And don’t forget if you want to help improve the audio equipment… or get the guys more drunk, you can also donate at Patreon, plus you get extra podcast episodes!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe so you get the latest Diplomacy Games episodes straight to your phone.

Thanks as always to Dr Dan aka “The General” for his rockin’ intro tune.