This in from Jim Burgess:

Complete TEMPLECON 2011 Report (First Round of Four Tournament Nor'Easter) Let me start with the great successes. Travis Pagliarini played in his first Diplomacy game ever in Round 2, participated in what turned into a solo by the Tournament winner, then came back in his second ever Diplomacy game in Round 4 and battled (and I do mean BATTLED) to a board topping tie with that same Tournament winner as the time
draw was called. This was great. Two or three of the other players in the tournament were playing in their first Diplomacy games ever as well. But, as usual, this did not make for bad games, everyone was engaged and the games were all good -- even Dirk's solo game that won him the tournament.

Then the disappointment. I had a full board (seven people, including several people with hotel reservations that they had to cancel) cancel out on me within the last week before TempleCon -- a number of them on Friday, this was more than the usual ``I might come'' and then not that you always get. I'll rank on the one where I have the most influence, my brother David really owes me. He called to cancel on me as I was driving
with Dirk Knemeyer (who I picked up in Boston) down to TempleCon.

It was missing these seven potential players that really was the problem, we had only 15 unique players this year (counting me) as compared to 23 last year. I don't want to whine or complain, these things happen, but it was regrettable for the travelers who did come in from afar for less than they bargained for.

Anyway, I went from thinking I was pretty safe at having two boards in each round where I could do the usual pickups from people hanging around, to really needing to sell the game around the con. I ended up needing to do those pickups to get to five boards total (only Round 2 had two boards). Only Mike Boden of the new Diplomacy players we picked up last year came back and played in a round this year, though they were all
around and kept saying they might play, but then the timing kept coming up wrong. If they (five or six
of them) had played in a number of rounds we would have been OK as well, but I don't blame them for playing other games. I'm going to get them together with some of these other new players in some games at the Temple store that the TempleCon people run sometime later this year. This will help start promoting Diplomacy for TempleCon 2012.

So, since I originally started the Nor'Easter, I am going to try to claim that we count the TempleCon results for the Nor'Easter anyway, even though we didn't meet Grand Prix six boards in best of three rounds standards. Everyone who came had a great time. The background Steampunk atmosphere made the environment always interesting to look at. And that should count for something... .

As I understand the GP rules, this means we can't qualify again next year either, we can just try to get back up over the 6 board standard and then apply for 2013?

This seems unduly harsh, but I'll get over it. I do plan to keep doing TempleCon in the future.

Here's the results with the raw totals from the scoring system and the adjustment from the ante system (I know some people don't like the ante system, if that did actually keep anyone away, let me know and I can adjust or delete it, I'm no longer convinced that it matters):

Thanks to everyone and to the great TempleCon hosts, I reserved one crash room and that ended up with only two people in it because of the cancellations.I still think having a crash room is a really important part of helping travelers who come from a distance to the con.

Here are the Tournament Results

NAME Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Raw Total Adjustment Final Total
Awards Dirk Knemeyer 34.48 110 14.04 23.21 181.73 0 181.73 BEST AUSTRIA,
ENGLAND, RUSSIA Roland Cooke 5.17 33.33 19.3 12.5 70.3 0 70.3 BEST
GERMANY, TURKEY Bob Holt 13.79 24.56 26.32 64.67 5 69.67 BEST FRANCE Jim
Burgess (TD) 13.79 15.79 12.5 42.08 5 47.08 Robert Rousse 15.79 14.04 29.83
10 39.83 BEST ITALY Chris Morse 22.41 22.41 15 37.41 Travis Pagliarini
0 23.21 23.21 10 33.21 Brent Waddington 10.34 0 19.3 2 31.64 0 31.64 Carl
Ellis 5.26 0.5 16.07 21.83 5 26.83 Will Ferioli 0 12.5 12.5 10 22.5 John
Ruzzo 7.02 7.02 15 22.02 Mike Bodem 5.26 5.26 15 20.26 Dave Cohen 1.75
1.75 15 16.75 Paul Lewis 0.75 0.75 15 15.75 Jim Burgess 2 (TD) 0 0
15 15 Robert
Rousse 2 0 0 15 15 Daniel O'Connor 0 0 15 15

Here are the board results with detour09 basic points in parentheses)

Round 1, Board 1

Austria (Bob Holt): 5 5 4 5 4 4 4 5 (13.79)
England (Dirk Knemeyer): 4 5 6 6 7 7 10 11 (34.48) BEST ENGLAND
France (Chris Morse): 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 8 (22.41)
Germany (Jim Burgess-TD): 5 6 6 6 6 7 7 5 (13.79)
Italy (Dave Cohen): 4 4 4 3 3 2 1 0 (1.75) Carl Ellis 1905
substitute
Russia (Roland Cooke): 5 5 4 1 1 1 1 1 (5.17)
Turkey (Brent Waddington): 4 4 5 7 7 7 5 4 (10.34)

Round 2, Board 1

Austria (Paul Lewis): 4 3 3 0 - - (0.75)
England (Jim Burgess-TD): 4 5 7 7 7 6 (15.79)
France (Bob Holt): 6 6 7 8 8 9 (24.56) BEST FRANCE
Germany (Carl Ellis): 5 4 1 1 1 1 (5.26)
Italy (Robert Rousse): 4 5 4 5 6 6 (15.79) BEST ITALY
Russia (Mike Bodem): 4 5 4 4 3 1 (5.26)
Turkey (Roland Cooke): 5 6 8 9 9 11 (33.33) BEST TURKEY

Round 2, Board 2

Austria (Travis Pagliarini): 5 6 4 5 5 4 3 3 (0.00)
England (Brent Waddington): 5 5 5 5 5 3 2 1 (0.00)
France (Robert Rousse-2): 4 5 5 5 5 4 4 3 (0.00)
Germany (Daniel O'Connor): 5 4 4 4 3 2 1 1 (0.00)
Italy (Will Ferioli): 4 4 5 4 4 5 6 7 (0.00)
Russia (Dirk Knemeyer): 6 7 8 8 9 14 17 18 (110.00) BEST RUSSIA
Turkey (Jim Burgess-2-TD) : 4 3 3 3 3 2 1 1 (0.00)

Round 3, Board 1

Austria (Dirk Knemeyer): 4 5 6 6 6 5 (14.04) BEST AUSTRIA
England (Carl Ellis): 3 2 0 - - - (0.50)
France (Brent Waddington): 6 6 7 7 7 7 (19.30)
Germany (Roland Cooke): 5 6 7 7 8 7 (19.30) BEST GERMANY
Italy (John Ruzzo): 4 4 4 3 2 2 (7.02)
Russia (Robert Rousse): 6 7 6 5 5 5 (14.04)
Turkey (Bob Holt): 4 4 4 6 6 8 (26.32)

Round 4, Board 1

Austria (Jim Burgess-TD): 4 4 5 5 6 7 6 6 4 (12.50)
England (Roland Cooke): 4 5 5 6 6 7 6 6 4 (12.50) Greg Buchanan 1907
substitute
France (Will Ferioli): 5 4 4 6 6 5 4 4 4 (12.50)
Germany (Dirk Knemeyer): 4 3 3 3 4 4 6 6 8 (23.21) SECOND BEST
GERMANY*
Italy (Brent Waddington): 5 5 4 4 2 2 2 1 1 (2.00)
Russia (Carl Ellis): 6 7 8 5 4 3 4 4 5 (16.07)
Turkey (Travis Pagliarini): 4 5 4 5 6 6 6 7 8 (23.21)

*TD Determined to Award BEST GERMANY to Roland Cooke

This is also the first tournament in the regional sub-Grand Prix tournament that is in its third year that we've dubbed the "Nor'Easter" .The next tournament in that group is Boston Massacre in Cambridge in June;
HuskyCon in July; and Carnage, November 4-6 in Vermont which also will be North American DipCon.
We will again have a First Place Nor'Easter prize to be awarded and with more help from Robert Rousse (Carnage co-organizer) we should have Second and Third Place prizes as well.

More on that to come. Most of our TempleCon players were from Boston, so I'm hoping we can get almost all of them to Massacre and build on that tournament again as well with its relatively new Tournament Director, Alex Amann.Come on out and support Alex as originating director Mel Call is now in Melbourne.

Drop Dead Time Deadlines: These worked like a charm again, this is the way to play tournament dip, you're always moving, no waiting around while people write orders. The games really moved along, I again used my loud voice with reminders to people as needed, and people respected other players' space with need for order writing time.

And the atmosphere was great. I ended up going again with the 17 minute spring, 15 minute fall continually running clock that Melissa has been using at Boston Massacre for some time.There were NO time draws (though potential for a time draw may have ended a few games), we did have a Saturday night game go until 3AM and still had four rounds in the weekend.

Then some highlights from the social experience. Roland Cooke, Brent Waddington, and Dirk Knemeyer traveled to get here and all three were a little disappointed at the turnout. Yet, all three didn't let it affect their fun on site. A good thing about being in a hotel is having a good bar on site.This was better than previous years since we were much closer to the bar and we even had a window into the restaurant. So lots of good fun and convivial drinking was had by all.

I spent a lot of time with Dirk Knemeyer and made a great new friend, so that was a big winner for me.
Dirk is relatively new to Diplomacy, so I could take advantage of conveying lots of old hobby lore and experience.  Dirk, if he wants to be, is a future big time FTF tournament champion. I hope to see
him again at DipCon at Carnage in November.

Lastly, more experience on selling Diplomacy on site: I was still not as successful as I would like to be here. I was very careful to post notes on the game forums on the web site so that people knew we were there. Again, about half a dozen of the players either saw the inviting sounding notes or were grabbed from around. Many of these people were playing in their first ever Diplomacy games. I tried direct E-Mails to Judge players and other players I could identify as being in the area, this again was not successful, but I will keep trying again. The only person I got that way ended up being one of those last week cancellations as the snow
earlier in the week convinced his boss to have everyone work on Saturday and Sunday. I didn't try walking around the Con playing Edi Birsan's Teaching Videos from You Tube again like I did last year.... don't believe
me, yes,I really, really did this two years ago, but it didn't really gain anything but laughs, so I didn't do that this time around, but I did play it some in our Diplomacy corner.