Why not just play seven player vanilla, Drake?
That's classic EU II. Spain, France, England, Sweden, the OE, Russia and Austria. Hopefully somebody else joins to give us a Portugal or Holland, but some of the best games ever played were majors-only.
It's like Diplomacy or Risk. Every country can powergame and the majors generally meet in: the Netherlands (Sweden, France, Austria, Spain and England), Italy (France, Austria, Spain, and the OE), the Balkans (Austria, the OE, Russia), and North Germany/Poland (Austria, Russia, Sweden, and sometimes England and France). I've always thought minors like Venice and Poland, and to some degree even BB, just obstructed conflict. You have to annex or marginalize them to compete over the historical battlegrounds, which often leads to Russia being remote or a nonentity and Poland serving as a (very poor) substitute for Russia, the Habsburg-France/OE rivalry being much less interesting, and Sweden becoming a naval/trade power rather than the pretty significant major it can be with N. Germany. There are exceptions, of course, but I don't know why we wouldn't give it a shot with this number.
I imagine Tonio would play, too.
At any rate, I'll be around some tonight and tomorrow morning, and I'm happy to play this weekend if enough people show up.