1st Round

The presence of Swedish and russian troops in the prussian heartland doesn’t seem to unbalance the veteran Prussian player.

Guy Atkinson sits as Prussia before two players well known to him – Alex Calderón as France and José Manuel as Russia – and before a new player – David Fernández, as Austria – . The mix of old and new is not enough to beat the veteran Prussian player, who seems in full control of the board all throughout the game. Russia doesn’t seem to have enough club cards to fight Dohna out of Kammin, and French losses pile up. What’s up with Austria?. Finding trouble to attack Schwerin and Keith with troop superiority, David has the plan to attack there with the Imperials and their four diamond cards. But José Manuel gets hold of the Empire as this attack is about to be carried out, and the game ends in the next round anyway. After 21 rounds France is the main victim of Prussia’s victory, holding only 4 objectives.

It’s the 4th round of the game, and Andreas Zölitz holds a promising russian hand full of club cards. To no avail, as Elisabeth will die out two rounds later.

Maurice de Wijs benefits as Prussia from a great luck in the fate card draw. Russia quits the board in round 6, and Sweden in round 7.  Encouraged by this severe drawback to the allies’ fortunes, Maurice even launches a counterattack in Silesia which causes a great deal of difficulties for Mark Luta (Austria), who, nevertheless manages to contain the Prussian offensive and end the game with just one objective left to conquer. John McCullough, playing France, is unable to break into Magdeburg. Its defence includes a Hanoverian general with accompanying supply train. Maurice leaves the table victorious after 23 rounds.

Alberto Romero  decides his first move with Austria while under close scrutiny by Andrew. Meanwhile, Christian Blattner (wearing a cap) thinks about his own move.

Andrew Brown runs into early trouble in this game, as Sweden has all of its primary objectives conquered by round 6. Unfortunately for Bjorn von Knorring, the only Swedish player in this tournament and leader of both Swedes and Russiand in this game, Elisath enjoys a good health and Andrew manages to recover one of the swedish objectives back and thus avoid defeat. Alberto Romero, playing Austria, couldn’t get the proper cards to break the Prussian hold on Silesia, despite launching several attacks there early on, and even sending Laudon to assist Russia. It was the misfortune France, played by Christian Blattner, to quit the game in round 13, as he was about to launch his first attack on Magdeburg. Andrew achieves victory after 22 rounds before two world champions (Alberto and Christian) and a CAFE finalist (Bjorn).

The pile of blue cubes before him give testimony of the high prussian losses.

With characteristic agresiveness Rubén Martín was involved in many combat as Prussia early on this game, including several cross-border ones. As a result, his card hand was dramatically reduced as his losses were increasing. More by chance than by planning he found out the suits where his adversaries were weaker. Thus he held on to Küstrin in hearts before Russia (Richard Sivél) and Cosel before Austria (Arnold) in clubs. His problem was that he barely had any control of what was happening beyond those sectors. And thus Richard was able to score a win by taking all 10 Swedish objectives in round 14.