Andy Marshall 

Personal Bio:

 

Diplomacy History:

I started playing war games in high school; the 1962 edition of AH’s Gettysburg started me down a path that I reacquired in the late 1970s.  That path led quickly to Diplomacy.  I played in and won my first tournament in 1980, a two-board affair at a local game shop, and attended an Atlanticon in 1981 or 1982 (it was also Origins back then).  I then took a long break from the hobby.  I re-entered in the late 1980s on Prodigy, playing a lot of email games and acting as the local hobby god, organizing play and keeping track of everything until I burned out in 1992 or 1993.

 

In 1992, I attended AvalonCon and played in the Diplomacy tournament.  That Sunday I met and thwarted my very good friend Tom Kobrin, and it was such a moving experience that I have built a small permanent shrine to the event in my back yard, a small marker inscribed with the word “Uff-da.”

 

Not many years thereafter—probably in 1994—I made the plunge and attended my first DixieCon, and I have been a North American tournament regular ever since.  At some point in the late 1990s, after a couple or three years of banging my head against the walls of Carmichael Hall, I began to acquire a reputation as “that guy who finished seventh,” gradually improving my DixieCon placement year by year (except when it was DipCon—my 2004 top seven finish at DipCon in Portland was by far my best finish ever in a non-regional event).  Then my NADF rating began to climb—damn you, Buz Eddy—and people really began to get the idea that I was a good player.  This continued until I accidentally won the Diplomacy tournament at DonCon in 2002, after slipping Melissa Nicholson a mickey so that she couldn’t play the final round.  My global reputation as the Diet Coke of evil was solidified by the odds board at World DipCon XIV in Birmingham, England, which stated:  “Andy Marshall 17-1 to win, even odds to finish second.”

 

At the DipCon in Denver in 2001, there was talk of moving some hobby responsibility to the Potomac Tea and Knife Society, a local organization I had theretofore avoided like the Black Death, although I was friends with many of its members, seeing them at DixieCon, DipCons, DonCons, and the like.  During one of those discussions, someone asked, “Wait a minute, is Marshall one of you guys?” in a tone that, oddly, implied that this would somehow increase the group’s trustworthiness.  I was startled, and looked at Ike Porter and Tim Richardson, the PTKS representatives attending the event, got a deeply worshipful and darkly threatening look from both of them, and groaned, “Oh God, I’m a Pitkisser.” 

 

History was made, because this agreement led to me deciding to become the total absolute dictator of PTKS’ relationship with the national hobby.  I forced down the group’s throat the notion that we were going to become respectable and bid on DipCons and World DipCons and stuff.  And we did.  We were selected as the host organization for DipCon 2003, which we hosted in Washington, DC, and subsequently as the host for WDC XV in 2005, which we will host in Washington, DC.  These were the jobs that PTKS wanted me to do.  With the gracious cooperation of David Hood, Jim Yerkey, and Dan Mathias, and later Melissa Nicholson, we invented the Eastern Swing to encourage travel to regional tournaments, an idea which was promptly stolen by those people on the other coast.  We established PTKS’ reputation as a willing and frequent contributor of bodies to tournaments all over North America, and Tempest’s reputation as the premier regional tournament in all the world—go on, I’ll meet you outside if you want to argue about that. 

 

I don’t know why people think I had anything to do with any of this; all I did was hide Richardson’s twelve-pack.

 

I play the game and work for the hobby because I enjoy the company of my many good friends who inhabit the hobby.  I have made dozens of friends, many of them living thousands of miles away, both in North America and abroad.  My very best friends in life are, with one exception, people whose names you know because they are the hobby, some of them here, some of them far away. 

 

Diplomacy is a game about relationships, and I am grateful for the many enduring and wonderful friendships I’ve experienced as a result of hanging with the hobby.  Thanks to all of you for so many good times over the last twelve years.

 

 

 

Andy Marshall 

sketch by Buz Eddy

Andy Marshall is the ideal NADF All-Star.  He has been a top quality Diplomacy player for many years and has coupled that with being a top quality Diplomacy organizer.

I first ran across Andy Marshall in the postal zine Upstart  where his sharp commentary and sharper play set him apart.  He came the world's attention in the early days of the Potomac Tea and Knife Society as one of  several  people that glued the first long lasting FTF Diplomacy Association in North America together.  Andy  went on to rise to the primary leadership position of the Society, and under his guidance it has achieved landmark accomplishments in the FTF tournament and Club world.

For his entire career Andy has posted very good results in every part of the country. He has developed quality play where he has spent time.  He has developed quality, long-lasting, enjoyable  organized Diplomacy for himself and others when he has applied the effort.

Andy Marshall is a great all-around NADF All-Star

 

 

 

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