Of all the cute, cuddly animals in the world, the koala is probably the most awwwww-inducing. After all, if any animal looks like a plush toy, it’s the koala.
Koalas are marsupials: they have a pouch into which the live young have to climb immediately after birth. Which is a pretty tough start to life.
Almost three-quarters of the world’s marsupials live in Oceania and some of the islands of Indonesia, the latter area being known as Wallacea. The rest are in the Americas, all but one in South and Central America, that exception being the Virginia opossum.
While koalas look cuddly, and they can indeed be cuddly, they can also be unpredictable. If you catch one in a sour mood, those long, sharp claws that make it possible for koalas to climb trees after those delicious eucalyptus leaves can be dangerous.
The Diplomacy ‘Koala’
In Diplomacy, a ‘Koala’ is a player who comes across as a lovely, cuddly, Carebear of a player, but actually turns out to be dangerous. Once they get their claws into you, you know about it.
When I say lovely and cuddly, I don’t mean the way they look. Have you seen us Dippers? Lovely-looking? Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but most of us look like we spend hours pouring over a board game.
Cuddly? Well, in the sense that rotund might well look cuddly, perhaps. Other than that, the closest any of us get to being cuddly might refer to a beard, although this is often described as ‘thin’ and is nothing like the fur of a koala, possibly Jim Simko aside.
Is Jim a Koala? I don’t know; I don’t think I’ve ever played against him.
A Dip Koala, then, will sell themselves as a strong alliance player. “Stick with me,” they’ll say, “and we’ll share the win.” “Let’s go for the 2-way,” they’ll suggest.
In reality, however, they’re players who have no interest in this. They’re clever at persuading you to cuddle up, though. A ‘shared win’ is a clever phrase that entices the newbies and Carebears. There’s no such thing. You either win or draw – a ‘shared win’ in Diplomacy is spurious. Suggesting a 2-way draw is aimed at the greedy or miserable players who think that a 2-way draw is an acceptable outcome; it isn’t.1
In reality, all they’re doing is dangling a morsel of hope in the same way an angler baits their hook. Get your teeth into this… and ignore the claws I’m sinking into you.
- To achieve a 2-way draw, both players have to give up on the primary objective in Diplomacy, which is to win. They’re either greedy in trying to get the most points they can, or miserable in that they think they’ve achieved something remarkable while not bothering to play the game as it is designed. ↩︎
THE DIPLOMATICON 
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