War for Britannia Diplomacy Commentary 

Thanks for commenting, 2nd Mercia! It was a fun game, and I felt especially threatened by your performance for a while there.

@@floridamandiplomacy Unfortunately, so was everyone else 😅. Thankfully, Mercia has a deceptively defensible position on this map, even with enemies on all sides, so I'm just glad I made it to the end

@@profbuffalo2028 Well, it all speaks to how good you were at posing a threat. I hadn't seen it as a very defensible position, but you proved the truth of Mercia's strengths. My favorite thing about playing variants is discovering new features of a map I haven't played before/often.

That's why I make 'em!

I don't know if your moves were so stupid, as much as you suffered a semi-irrational attack on you from early on, and that attack continued until your ostensible ally joined your enemy in attacking you. Bad luck, mainly. Very fun game, though.

Same here! I'm glad you had fun. It's quite a map, isn't it? Thanks for commenting!

You can do it! Feel free to recruit players from my Discord for your playtest (I'm open to it as well). I agree that this map was good. I tried to give useful feedback, but it's clearly a good variant.

@@floridamandiplomacy I agree! keep up the great videos!

That's very interesting. If I had looked at pronunciation more carefully, this game probably would have sounded much better to your ears. I'm guessing Gwyneth Paltrow is named after this ancient kingdom in Wales then?

@@floridamandiplomacy It does seem to be a variation, and certainly it derives from Welsh. The 'th' here though is the non-voiced one (as in 'thin'), so it doesn't help with the pronounciation of the 'dd' in Gwynedd (explained above). Things evolve, and English pronounciations of Welsh names can wander quite far from the original - Floyd for example is the English attempt at saying Llwyd. I'm not going to get into how to say 'll' in Welsh (though it's easier than people think), but it's a sound that only two or three other languages use. I find these things interesting! Over-indulgence alert!... Jorvik is Skandinavian, and those languages say the 'y' sound but spell it as 'j'. However, the name is only another variation of peoples trying to pronounce the original, pre-Roman, Welsh (Brittonic) name 'Eboracum'', after the pre-Scandi English had tried 'Eoforwīc'. Today, the English say 'York', but to this day we Welsh say 'Efrog' (pr: evrog), which is still close to the 2000yr old version when the Welsh lived there as 'Britons'. Can you guess what we refer to when we say Efrog Newydd? It's a city I've enjoyed visiting a number of times. New York. I'll stop now!

@@drychaf That was definitely overindulgent, but nevertheless enjoyable. Thank you for your educational words. I probably will not use them for anything, but I hope I will remember to refer to them if (let's be real, more like when!) I have to describe locations in Britain in future.

Thanks for commenting, Gun! I haven't played Heptarchy, but I've just gone and looked at the map on VDiplomacy, and it looks a little better balanced, albeit possibly even worse for Ireland in my opinion. What do you think?

also I always enjoy watching you try out these variants, FloridaMan!

Thanks, Thomas. I thought it was a great map too. I've mentioned my minor critiques, but I really enjoyed trying out this variant, especially getting to play as my ancestors' country of Alba. I usually seem to enjoy the variants myself, but I derive most of my motivations for trying them from the greater volume of comments I get on these, and how overwhelmingly positive they are.

There were only two Mercias, I believe you were Northumbria

Yes, Professor Buffalo is right. You were the new Northumbria. I tend to enjoy the variant content a lot myself. Always interesting to analyze a new map.

I will have to see about possibly joining more test games on this map, then!

Well, almost all of the variants I've played have made some appearance on this channel unless I'm currently playing them. It might be a lot to some, or not very many to others. I think playtesting is pretty fun, and I enjoy variants quite a bit.

We really needed some kind of a written guide as to what each of these abbreviations meant... I've never spent any time walking around Ireland. For all I know, there's a Munich there!

Draw this map? Does that mean you're planning to run your own game?

@@floridamandiplomacy somehow i have like 13 friends in real life arpund my state, we all get together from time to time and duke it out

Wow. What region is this?

@@floridamandiplomacy California, Sacramento metro area. I taught all my coworkers how to play at summer camp, which has the added benefit of letting you play games with full day turns, on account of us all living together for 2 months

@@theevilsandwitch8520 Very nice. Well done spreading the religion of Diplomacy.

Did you just hear a weird voice say, *I accept this offering, mortal* and then cackle evilly? Or was that only on my end?

Well, look at that, I just got a new subscriber...

The algorithm acts in mysterious ways.

@@shieck3178 It does seem to giveth and taketh away without clear rhyme or reason.

Restart does not always mean make a new strategy, haha

@@floridamandiplomacy Hey, if it's the same people and you haven't soured them on you yet, why not?