In episode 3 we look at the Italian Renaissance variant Rinascimento. What's great about it, what's bad about it, and how based on recent Forum talk it can be improved. Then its onto a game inside a game (how very enigmatic), with the variant Bourse.
Venue: Regatta Hotel, Brisbane
Drinks of choice:
Kaner - Dogbolter Dark Ale Reserve, Matilda Bay Brewing, Australia
Amby - Punter's Corner Cabernet Sauvignon from the Coonawarra, South Australia

The guys discuss their history with the Regatta Hotel, with Amby once working in the drive-through bottleshop that no longer exists and Kaner regularly playing Backgammon there (who knew he played something other than Diplomacy!)
The Italian Renaissance variant - Rinascimento
Kaner and Amby both love this variant created by Emmanuele Ravaioli (Tadar es Darden). Here's what they have to say about this fun filled jaunt through the Italian countryside:
Kaner talks about how Emmanuele got him into variant creation in the early days of vDiplomacy. Kaner discusses how he talked to Shep and Butterhead when they were playing games of Chaos and Octopus about the idea of combining the two together. After posting their thoughts in the forum Tadar offered to give him a hand, creating Kaner's first variant Chaoctopi. Kaner briefly talks about how this variant played on the Classic map works and the rule changes it spawned for many other variants.
Amby brings us back to Rinascimento, talking about how he loves the look of the map and its historical setting. Kaner enjoys some of the weird rules such as Benevento's army not being able to move, the French and Turkish players starting with units but no SC's. Amby joins in with how access across the spine of Italy is often limited by mountain passes.
And the guys forget to totally mention that to win not only do you need to reach 33 SC's but one of them must by the capital Rome. Nice work there.
Kaner talks about how in his experience the Papal States get sandwiched, and why his favourite country to play is Geneva with its options on land and sea and how you can work with the nearby city-state players, middle and larger powers.  Amby reflects on his one-time surprising win as Turkey.
Rinascimento is often recognised as one of the most unbalanced maps with mega players Venice, Naples and the Papal States, mid-size players Milan, Savoy and Firenze and micro players Sienna, Pisa, Ferrara, Turkey and France. It means smaller players really need to work hard in negotiating and working with other players to survive.
Kaner reminds Amby how the points scoring system for Rinascimento is different to most other games to help make things fair eg a small player who survives can get a better share of the pot than a large player who scrapes home with the SCs they began with.
How whoever draws the Papal States can never help themselves, behaving like the Pope.
The guys discuss recent discussions in the vDiplomacy forum about creating variations to the Rinascimento variant. Decima Legio has created a number of images showing how this could work. The three ideas that seem to be getting traction are:Combining lesser states into more powerful states to balance things (although not historically accurate)
Breaking up some of the bigger states and introducing other players such as the Barbary pirates, the Spanish, etc.
Creating a chaos style version with everyone only having a single SC.


Amby shares ancient discussions with Emmanuele on why France was included on the current map.
Of course, for any changes to happen the new development site mentioned by Captainmeme in the last episode needs to get up and running first.
Amby wraps it up with an entertaining twist on the colour scheme of the "Rinascimento" logo in the top right of the map, and shout outs to TheatreVarus' forum thread to start the conversation on improving it, Gopher27's take on diplomacy vs tactics and great suggestions from ScubaSteve, Hirnsaege, Ruffhaus and Ingebot.

A variant inside a variant - Bourse Diplom