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Bulgaria, Spain and St. Petersburg are the three provinces in Standard Diplomacy that have more than one coast. Because of this, at times, the coast is specified in order writing. But just when must, should, can or can’t the coast be specified? The question is not as clear as some might think. I have always been of the opinion that there should be some benefit to writing accurate, clear and specific orders, but not everyone in the hobby places the same emphasis on the matter. I am told that in many cases for example, when using a judge to adjudicate moves, incorrectly written (according to the programming of the judge, anyway) orders are immediately rejected, and a message to that effect is sent to the player. This poor programming has the effect of making some of the more creative misorder techniques impossible. Perhaps this article may encourage the programmers of adjudication software to make some changes, if not in the way misorders are handled, at least in the way coastal specification is handled. Certain portions of this article, therefore, will only be relevant where there is a possibility of an adjudicated misorder. Specifically, there are circumstances in which coastal designations are mandatory, but there are also a significant number of cases where they could (and in my opinion, should) be permitted. There are six varieties of orders where coastal designations may be relevant:
For examination of the issues, I will be using sections of the rules from the 1999/2000 Rulebook. I compared the relevant sections to their equivalents in the 1976 Rulebook, and found that there had been no material changes, so rulebook edition arguments can, fortunately, be dispensed with. I have numbered the rules, for convenience purposes, in the order they appear in the Rulebook. Unfortunately, when they re-did the rules, Hasbro removed much of the organizational structure previously present, but that is a gripe for another article. In the “Order Writing Phase” section:
In the “Specific Movement Clarifications” section:
In the “How to Support” section:
In the “Supporting a Unit” section:
All bold face, italics and punctuation are as in the 1999 Rulebook. Any examples omitted do not have a bearing upon the discussion. In movement orders of a fleet to a bicoastal province, when movement to only one coast is possible, and the order either is missing a coast, or lists a coast either nonexistent or impossible for the fleet to move to, what should the adjudication be? Many GMs make the presumption that a player will always wish to submit a complete set of valid orders. There is, however, no such presumption stated, or even implied in the Rulebook. In the first instance, an incomplete order has been submitted, and information, if added, could make an order either valid or invalid. I would therefore conclude that the only logical application of Rule 1 would be to rule the order as ambiguous, and therefore the unit should be adjudicated as holding. The second instance, where a unit is ordered to a coast it cannot legally move to is sometimes (to my amazement!) adjudicated as an attempt to make a legal move to the other coast. F Gas-Spa(sc) is just as illegal an order as F Gas-Mos. The last case, where an order to move to a nonexistent coast is made, is just as ambiguous as an order lacking a coastal designation. The second paragraph of Rule 2 states that an order for a fleet that can move to more than one coast must state which coast. It does NOT say that an order for a fleet that can legally move only to one coast may omit the coast. That is a decision some GMs choose to make, and wrongly so. At best, it is a house rule. The Rulebook gives no support to the practice of "stripping" impossible of nonexistent coasts from orders so as to give the effect of substituting a valid coast, thereby creating a valid order. In orders concerning movement from a province containing two coasts, a slightly different question presents itself. An omitted coast would not invalidate the order, as there is sufficient valid information actually present to identify the unit. In other instances, a GM must again make a decision as to whether to strip “nonsense” such as a nonexistent coast from an order, or merely rule that the order is ambiguous. A clearer case would be when a fleet on the north coast of Spain was ordered as F Spa(sc). Here, there is no such unit, and a GM or programmer clearly goes beyond the Rulebook to convert an invalid order to a valid one. A fleet located in a province with two coasts that is ordered as though it is located on the other coast. It is the question of how far the GM (or the programmer of adjudication software) should go beyond the Rulebook to interpret an order as a valid move for a unit. At this point, many readers should be thinking “Why would I ever want to specify a coast on a fleet order when it was not required, since it can’t help, and if I make a mistake, it can get me in trouble?” The answer is that coastal specification, along with other information that might at first thought seem superfluous, such as unit type or unit nationality, can sometimes help clarify an otherwise ambiguous order. We all like to think that we turn in carefully crafted orders all the time; the result of careful deliberation and analysis. But consider the fairly common plight of a FTF or email player who realizes with only a minute or two to spare that they have not turned in an order set. There is no time for careful consideration. Something needs to get turned in, and turned in fast. As an example, let us say that the player, England, has just been stabbed by her German (former) ally. She has pieces strung across the edge of the board from North Africa to St. Petersburg. Among the things she wants to do are land an army on English soil for defense (or reconquest) of Edinburgh, and to delay a German advance on St. Petersburg from the lone German unit in the area, Army Prussia. England has, among other units, F StP(sc), A Spa, F MAO and F Iri. She hurriedly scribbles (or emails) as part of her order set (irrelevant orders omitted):
I will ignore, for the purposes of this article how "LIV" should be interpreted (though I have an opinion about that too!). As the reader has noticed, England’s “stripped down” order writing style omits the “superfluous” unit type designations. There is no way for the GM to make a conclusive determination as to whether “SPT” refers to A Spa or F StP(sc). Since the order is ambiguous, neither unit moves. But what if England had managed to include the “superfluous” coastal designation? The order would now read SPT(SC)-LIV. That “superfluous” information has just turned an ambiguous order into “A poorly written order that has only one meaning” and which therefore “must be followed”. England itself is still one unit short defending her home dots, but at least St. Petersburg is no longer threatened by a German army in Livonia, since it bounced, and remained in Prussia instead of advancing. Extra information is therefore not always harmful. It can also be helpful, and players should think twice before concluding it would be wise to omit coastal designations whenever possible. The next three categories all concern support by a unit of a fleet moving to, from, or located in a province with two coasts. The underlying problem is that in some cases, there is a conflict between two rules. The case for allowing coastal specification in the fourth category as per rule 4, support of a fleet located in a province with two coasts, is in general, similar to the earlier cases. Still, as with the other categories, though the rules state that a unit CAN be supported by an order that mentions only the province of the unit receiving support, the rules do not forbid coastal designation in such orders. In the final two categories, concerning movement orders, the case for allowing coast specific supports is stronger. While Rule 3 allows support to be given to movement to, from or for holding in a province with two coasts (so that F Mar can support F Spa(nc)), Rule 5 specifically states that the support order must “match” the movement order of the unit receiving the support. No matter what the opponents of the ability to specify the coast in a support order may argue, they run straight into the very specific brick wall of Rule 5. Despite the fact that support CAN be given without regard to coast, nowhere does it say that it MAY NOT be specified, and there is no ready explanation leading to a different meaning of the plain wording of Rule 5. It defies logic to say that F Por-Spa(sc) and F MAO-Supports F Por-Spa(nc) match, when a plain reading of the two orders would lead to the conclusion that the two orders are different. Much of the time the coastal location of a fleet located in a province with two coasts is significant, in terms of specific game tactics related to the position in question. I would suggest, based on this analysis, that players and GMs reconsider how they write and interpret orders, and that programmers rethink the way their adjudication software handles the questions raised here. At the very least, there are several more clarifications that need to be made in the next edition of the Rulebook.
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