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This will be fun, Claude said, which should have been Hilda’s first hint that it would be anything but.
She’d agreed to Claude’s “game day” idea, because the alternative was going out on yet another training mission, and she was so sick of swinging her stupid axe around she’d do anything to get out of it. Game day sounded kinda cheesy, but, well, the weather was pretty nice. Throwing some horseshoes or doing some lawn bowling while working on her tan wasn’t a bad way to spend a Saturday.
So when she strolled toward the Golden Deer classroom (fashionably late, as always), and saw, not cute lawn ornaments or horseshoes, but Ignatz unfolding a wooden game board, with a few dozen little carved pieces scattered beside him—
“Claude.”
“Oh, hey, Hilda,” Claude said, with a friendly wave, as if she hadn’t made her opinion on board games exceedingly clear after The Catan Incident. “Glad you could make it.”
Hilda curled a finger, bidding him to come closer. Then, as soon as they were out of earshot from the others: “You didn’t tell me this would be a board game thing.”
“You didn’t ask!” Claude held his hands up in mock-defense. “This one’s a really easy one. Promise.”
“That’s what you said when we played Scythe.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And when we played Terra Mystica.”
“Right, okay, but this one—”
“Hey, Claude?” Raphael called from across the room, as if on cue. “The country names on this map sure are funny. Russia? Germany? Am I saying them right?”
“Well,” Lysithea cut in, scrutinizing one of the little wooden boats with an appraiser’s air, “they’re all clearly made-up fantasy kingdom names. So there may not be a right way.”
“How many countries are there?” Hilda asked, forcing herself to sound chirpy.
Lysithea glanced at the board: “Seven.”
Seven! Even Scythe had only had five. Hilda swerved her glare right back at Claude.
He at least had the decency to look abashed. “It’s less complicated than Terra Mystica,” he whispered. “Promise.”
“Claude, translating the fifth rite of Indech from Old Fodlandish is less complicated than Terra Mystica. Hanneman’s lectures on the history of crestology are less complicated than Terra Mystica.”
Claude looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Okay, well, it’s less complicated than those things, too.”
Hilda arched one cool eyebrow. She was going to stand her ground this time. No. More. Board games.
“Technically,” Claude said at last, “the game’s only for seven people, and we’ve got eight. I was thinking you could team up with Marianne, but if you wanted to sit out—”
“Oh. Great! I’ll just watch, then,” Hilda said, already reaching a hand into her oversized tote, pulling out an embroidery hoop as she strolled to the far corner of the room, the one with all the comfy chairs. Good thing she’d thought to bring her stuff—at least this day wouldn’t be a total waste.
To Claude’s credit, he did make a pretty good pitch.
He explained the rules, the setting, everything with a showman’s flourish. When he read out the name of the game—”Diplomacy, the game of international intrigue!”—everyone gave a little shiver of excitement. And okay, yes, the game was less complicated than Scythe. Suspiciously so. Seven countries, seven kingdoms in the fantastical land of Europe. Send your armies to attack other armies. Whoever controls eighteen territories first is the winner. Simple enough.
But after just two turns, Ignatz was distraught—and, somehow, he thought Hilda would be the one to care, sidling into the corner where Hilda had curled up on an overstuffed armchair, stitching out a fresh row in her latest little cross stitch piece.
Ignatz looked over his shoulder before whispering: “You’re not playing, right?”
“Nope.” Hilda stabbed another stitch into the cloth.
“This game’s really confusing. I mean, not confusing, just—stressful! Can I bounce some ideas off you? Clear my head?”
“Go ahead,” Hilda said, without looking up.
Ignatz collapsed into the chair next to her. “I don’t want to attack Russia, is the main thing.”
“Then don’t attack Russia.” Seemed simple enough.
“But I don’t want to attack Turkey either!”
“Then don’t do that, either.” Hilda tied off the end of her thread, and reached for the next one.
“But there’s no other moves I can make.”
“Can’t you just like, spend a turn stalling or drawing a card or whatever?”
“That’s not how this game works. I don’t think I realized it, when Claude was explaining the rules, but—all the empty territories are occupied after turn two, so you pretty much have to start attacking people. And there’s not dice rolls or anything; the bigger army always wins. So it just comes down to, who’s better at negotiating with their allies?” He gave a bleak little laugh. “Guess that’s why they call it Diplomacy, huh?”
Hilda tilted her head, set her cross stitching in her lap, and shot Claude a look from across the room. Leave it to him to pick some zero-sum gritty-realism board game for their “fun” game day. Didn’t they get enough of this in class?
“Claude says I should ally with him against Russia.”
“Okay, then do that.”
“But Leonie says that I should really join her and go after Turkey.”
“Flip a coin, then.”
“A-Alright.” He reached a hand in his pocket, pulled out a beaten-up little bronze piece, and called it in the air. Tails—side with Turkey. Gosh, Hilda thought, that was easy. If only everyone took her advice so readily.
She was about to return to the next row of stitching (she was finally getting to the cute little flowers!) when she realized—wait. This was Claude. Claude, playing a game where you could just lie. And she didn’t know anything else about this game, or strategy, or whatever. But she was pretty sure that Leonie was one hundred percent worse at lying than Claude.
“Hey, Ignatz!” Hilda called, but he didn’t hear her—he was already rushing to drop his orders into the tray in the center of the room. And instead of running after him, she shrugged, and went back to her stitching. He’d learn.
Ignatz attacked Russia, alright. And without any of the promised Turkish assistance on his side, his attack failed miserably.
“Sorry, Ignatz,” Claude said, in a not-even-a-little-bit-sorry voice. “Leonie just offered me a better deal, you know?”
Hilda put down her stitching to watch the carnage play out. Just for a little bit.
And thus, while Claude happily gobbled up Bulgaria and Rumania (seriously, these names), and Germany rushed in from the west, Russia retaliated against Austria’s betrayal with due ferocity. (“Sorry, Ignatz,” Leonie said, in an actually sorry voice, as she plucked up Ignatz’s forces piece by piece. “It’s only because you attacked first.”)
First loser. Rough luck.
“You can take my spot, if you want, Ignatz,” Marianne offered as he picked up his last piece from the board. “I just got lucky. You’d probably be better at this anyway.”
“Marianne!” Hilda said, “You can’t just quit. You’ve got like, all those boats and stuff. Boats are good, right, Claude?”
Claude tilted his head. “Oho? I thought you weren’t playing, Hilda.”
“I’m not,” Hilda said, biting the words. “Nothing wrong with offering some encouragement, though, right?”
“Right,” Claude said, with a knowing grin.
Most of this game, Hilda realized, as she lurked and skulked around—most of this game wasn’t even played around the board. Most of it was all these secret little side-meetings—Lorenz dragging Raphael off into some corner to negotiate a cease-fire in Sweden, or Claude whispering to Leonie on the other side of the room.
And while the energy was mostly a pleasant buzz—Hilda loved a good round of gossip, after all—she couldn’t help but notice, by Fall 1904, that Lysithea’s intense stare had hardened into something more like a scowl, and she wasn’t even talking to anyone.
Well, that was no good.
Hilda sauntered over to ask: “What’s up?”
Lysithea’s eyes flashed: “What do you mean?”
Geez, so touchy. “You’re all tense and stuff,” Hilda said. “If you don’t let it out you’re gonna like, explode or something.”
Lysithea opened her mouth to protest—then closed it, because, well, Hilda was being perfectly logical. Then she narrowed her eyes, somewhere between suspicion and scrutiny: “You’re not playing?”
“That’s right.”
“So I can tell you things and you wouldn’t have any tactical reason to go telling the others.”
Hilda shrugged. “I guess.”
Lysithea scrutinized her for a moment longer. Then, like a flipped switch, she went off: “I calculated from the start that Italy only had a ten-point-five percent probability of winning. In a fair game Italy would have more like a fourteen percent chance of winning, but this game’s geography is remarkably unfavorable for the central powers, and Italy moreso than most, due to her coastal proximity.” She sighed. “Italy’s best opportunity for an early game alliance is Austria, but when I went to Ignatz, he said he told me he was already deciding between Russia and Turkey, and talking to me too would just confuse him more. Which, well. Look how that worked out for him.”
The scorn in her voice was just short of contempt. Geez. Lysithea sure would be scary on a real battlefield, someday.
“I told Leonie not to ally with Claude,” Lysithea continued. “Eliminating Austria helped them both, but it helped Claude more than her, which puts him in a perfect position to turn on her in... oh, Fall 1905. Mark my words.”
Lysithea was panting as if she’d just run a mile. Hilda gave a little whistle. “Wow. You, uh, must be really into this.”
“No. This is all incredibly childish.” She crossed her arms, as if that was the sum of it. But after a few seconds, she blurted: “But if I am playing, I would like to be proficient at it.”
She was staring at the board in the center of the room. Oh, she was in deep.
“If only I had a fleet in the Mediterranean,” Lysithea muttered, “but there’s no point; I won’t be getting any maritime builds this fall...”
Hilda shot another glance at Claude, who was smiling magnificently, deep in some conversation with Lorenz. Probably plotting a backstabbing, to hear Lysithea tell it. Which just didn’t seem very fair. Well, sure, it was fair in that it was totally in the game rules, but—this was everyone else’s first time playing! Claude had probably played it like a dozen times before. Didn’t he know it was polite to go easy on people when you bring out a new game?
Hilda glanced over her shoulder at the board. Then back at Lysithea. And back at the board.
“Hey, Lysithea?” she asked. “What would you do with a fleet in Mediterranean? Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
Everyone was huddled around the board, now, Claude noted to himself with a satisfied smile.
Even though Leonie, Lorenz, and Ignatz had been eliminated, the three of them still hovered nearby, hotly debating the merits of different board positions, whilst Lysithea stared daggers across the board. Even Hilda was nosing around, fiddling with the little pieces and asking how different moves worked. The air was electric, everyone’s eyes shone rapt with purpose, and even Marianne had been pulled into some scheming—gods, Claude loved a good board game.
Even better: Claude was winning.
The others hadn’t realized it yet. But the eastern bloc had collapsed in a mess of infighting far too quickly, and the half-dozen turns that Lorenz, Marianne, and Raphael had spent nipping at each other’s heels had taken their toll. Marianne’s France was rallying, sure, but she still held fewer centers than him. Barring something drastic, Claude predicted a Spring 1909 victory to Turkey. He rushed his troops north, turned sharply into Germany, and nipped out Raphael’s last territory there—
—which brought the total number of combatants down to three. France, Italy, and Turkey.
Claude wrote down his next move in a rush. All his scheming was coming to fruition; soon, Munich would be his.
Hilda had designated herself gamerunner, presiding with a queenly air over the basket where everyone turned in their orders. “All the moves in?” she asked, when Marianne at last dropped her own paper into the basket. “Alright.” Hilda pulled the first paper out: “French army in Ruhr, attacking Munich. French army in Burgundy, supporting the attack in Munich.”
Claude snickered. He’d been expecting that. Luckily, he had an equal force to bounce them back.
“Turkish army in Bohemia, attacking Munich. Turkish army in Tyrolia, supporting Bohemia’s army—” Then Hilda paused, glancing at the board in mute confusion. “But Claude, you don’t have an army in Tyrolia.”
“I—what?”
Hilda tapped the blank space on the board where Claude’s army should’ve been.
“I must’ve written the order wrong,” Claude said, scratching his head. He hadn’t had a misplay like that since Nader first taught him the game, years ago.
Lysithea leaned closer: “So Marianne’s troops seize Munich, correct?”
“Right.”
Then Hilda read out the next set of orders: “Italian army in Albania, attacking Serbia.”
“Lysithea, what?” Claude racked his brain: had he gotten sloppy? They had agreed to a standoff there, and Lysithea couldn’t possibly hold Serbia even if she did manage to steal it from him, so why would she betray him now—
Lysithea shrugged. “There’s still a five percent chance of an Italian victory if Turkey’s front line is turned back. Not much, but it’s superior to the zero percent chance of an Italian victory if France is eliminated.”
“Marianne! You’re listening to this?”
Marianne tilted her head. “She’s right, isn’t she?”
Brutal. Who knew Marianne would be the calm, calculating, realpolitik type? She must’ve picked up some tips from Margrave Edmund.
They played another turn. Lysithea swung for the only opening she had against France, a naval attack in Portugal; Marianne rebuffed that attack with one hand, and pushed Claude further back with the other. The last two supply centers Marianne needed were in easy reach. Claude might’ve been able to rebuff those attacks with some support from Italy, but that didn’t seem likely, so...
“Alright, Marianne, you got me.” Claude held out a hand for a shake. “Vive la France.”
“Oh.” Marianne stared at the proffered hand with mute confusion. “Don’t you want to play the turns out, though?”
Not... really. He’d been so close; everything from here on out was just going to be an exercise in disappointment. But he couldn’t say no to her when she was looking at him like that (regardless of the very strong counterargument that Hilda’s smug little grin was offering).
So they played through another two phases, and Marianne mopped up a few last pieces, and by the end of it she was actually smiling. “Hilda was right,” she said with a giggle, as she pushed her last army into Munich. “This is fun.”
The sun had long set, and the dining hall was only going to be serving food for another fifteen minutes—a fact Raphael blurted with far more alarm than when his own Berlin had been crushed by a Turkish onslaught in Spring 1906—and everyone else scrambled to follow. Except for Claude, who was left picking up the game pieces—fair enough, he was the one who set this thing up—and Hilda, because of course she never hurried anywhere, on principle—
—and as soon as they were alone, she flicked a last little piece onto the table. Yellow.
Claude picked it up with a laugh. “I knew I was short an army in Tyrolia.”
“That’s for luring me into another board game.”
“Fair enough,” Claude said, sweeping the piece into his pocket with a little wink. “Can’t win ‘em all.”