When played face-to-face a variant played without
the intervals between seasons for discussion and hence no diplomacy whatsoever.
FTF Gunboat tournaments have been run at several American conventions.
In the postal version the players are anonymous and press may, or may not,
be allowed. There are several different versions of postal gunboat depending
upon what the exact rules are on press e.g. black press, grey press or white
press option; is there a pre-Spring 1901 press turn etc.
Gunboat is an almost purely tactical exercise, it not only emphasizes
appreciation of the game mechanics as against the players' communication
skills, but also allows a face-to-face game to be played to the finish within a
relatively short time--perhaps a couple of hours. In postal play Gunboat is
sometimes run as a "Round Robin Tournament" where the seven players play in
seven games, one as each power, simultaneously. The first such tournament was
run by Vern Shaller in 1980-81 was won by Karl Shuetz.
It's worth noting that in 1980 the term wasn't in use and this variant was
not mentioned in Mark Berch's
"Lexicon of Diplomacy". Gunboat became very
popular in the US postal hobby in the 1980's (interest has now declined) with
many games and Round-Robin Tournaments started; the number of gamestarts was
over 100. The popularity of this variant stems from the laziness of most
players who would rather play in a game with no diplomacy and the fact that
this variant requires no special effort on the players' part to set up a map.
See Variant (KW).
GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY II (1) [MN:Dec92]
Those gunboat games which specifically bar the use of press releases for
negotiation. The different versions of Gunboat were
codified by Fred C. Davis in April 1989. See Variant (KW).