It’s been quite a while since I’ve written anything on here for a number of reasons. One is that I’ve been working on a new Dip book, called “Powers in Diplomacy: England”. I’m sure you can work out what that’s about. The other major reason is that my mum has been ill, very ill, and I’ve been spending time with her. And I’ve been writing a series of articles for Diplomacy World.

Now, given that this is my first love, it’s time to come back here and write again. But what am I going to write about? Well, I’m dropping back on an old favourite: opening moves.

This post, then, is the intro post to the series. Below you’ll find links to intro posts for each power. I’m not going to post links to every post in this series – you’ll find links to each opening I cover in the series for each power.

This organisation is because there’ll be a lot of posts here eventually. For each power I’m planning to cover not only the most useful and other named initial moves, those in 1901, but follow-up moves. So, for instance, for England there’ll be a post about the Churchill Opening, and there’ll be posts about what the opening could lead to in Fall 1901, Spring 1902, etc.

Now, I started a series on openings before but, well, got distracted by other ideas. I expect that will happen again, frankly. But, as it’s an easy series to keep coming back to, and because I’m covering similar things in my books on playing the powers in Dip, I am going to keep coming back to this series, I promise.

One thing to point out: I’m not going to be discussing opening strategy as such. There’s a difference. Opening strategy is how you approach Diplomacy in the Early Game; it includes – in fact should really focus on – off-the-board play, the diplomacy itself. The moves you make, the on-the-board bit, are a part of your wider opening strategy.

I may write a companion series on opening strategy for the blog but, well, if you want to read my take on opening strategy as a whole, you’ll need to read the “Powers in Diplomacy” series. Not that the book on England is going to be finished any time soon (when it is, I’ll post about it), let alone the whole series (there’ll be, you guessed it, seven books in all).

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POSTS IN THIS SERIES

1. Opening Moves Again (introduction)
2. Reconsidering Classification of Opening Moves
3. England’s Opening Moves
4. France’s Opening Moves
5. Italy’s Opening Moves
6. Germany’s Opening Moves
7. Austria-Hungary’s Opening Moves
8. Turkey’s Opening Moves
9. Russia’s Opening Moves