3th Round

Situation after Prussia’s last move in the game. Nothing can keep Sweden and France from taking their last objectives, while the Empire was two rounds away from getting its last objective.

The least experienced player in the tournament, David Fernández, plays as Prussia for the first time in the competition. He fights intensively, keeping Silesia relatively free of enemies. But attrition on the other fronts is enormous and the more veteran players know how to profit from that. In the west Hannover disappears completely from the board. In the east Christian Blattner manages to put himself in a winning position to take Russia’s last objective – Küstrin – and win the game. But right then and there (Round 11) the Tsarina dies and David gets a few rounds of relief, which he uses to completely forget about Sweden. Christian makes the most of his opportunity and conquers all Swedish primary objectives by round 13. Meanwhile Andreas Zölitz does the same with France in what is the only double victory in the tournament.

Right before Elisabeth’s death, Austria is attacking Prusia in the clubs sector south of Magdeburg. In the center a Hannoverian general might be seen close to Berlin.

Mark Luta playing Russia, José Manuel playing Austria and Andrew Brown with France are veterans from several championships facing the North American newbie Ty Wyman as Prussia. The Tsarina’s death in round 7 makes the game noticeably easier for Ty. But if this were not enough, he brings Frederick of Brunswick along to help against his eastern adversaries. The combination of luck and an unusual strategy brought him victory after 17 rounds

With all the Swedish primary objectives conquered and Silesia’s defence hanging by a thread, John McCullough’s situation is quite desperate.

In spite of his successful early defence against France (Guy Atkinson), the situation becomes very complicated for John McCullough (Prussia). Sweden (Arnold) has all of its primary objectives conquered already in round 6. But the Tsarina refuses to die. Bjorn (Austria) destroys 14 Prussian troops in Silesia, a victory which will enable him to conquer all Austrian objectives by round 8.

Sweden attacks Prussia attempting to conquer Cammin, its last primary objective.

Austria (Maurice de Wijs) sends two generals to Silesia and three to Saxony, but is kept in check for many rounds by Prussia (Alberto Romero). Russia (Alex Calderón) clears East Prussia rapidly and conducts a constant offensive in Kammin early on. The late appearance of the subsidy reductions (rounds 16 and 19) allowed Prussia to withstand the attrition of constant fighting with Russia. But as the Russian insistence was starting to show results,  Austria came back into action and managed to score a victory in round 20 in a game where most of the battles were fought by Russia.